That Solo Life: The Solo PR Pro Podcast

”Hi, Barbie!” A PR Pro Pop Culture Check-in

It’s a “Barbenheimer” world and in this episode we talk about the savvy and work that went into this massively successful campaign. We also touch on what’s going on with the platform formerly known as Twitter (it’s still Twitter to us).

 

Transcript

Michelle Kane (00:02):

Thank you for joining us for this episode of That Solo Life, the podcast for PR pros and marketers who work for themselves like me, Michelle Kane of VoiceMatters, and my wonderful co-host, Karen Swim of Solo PR Pro. Hey, Karen, how are you? Or should I say, “Hi, Barbie?”

Karen Swim, APR (00:19):

<Laugh>. I don't know what Barbie I am today. Hi Michelle. How are you doing today?

Michelle Kane (00:26):

I am Holding It Together Barbie today. <Laugh>,

Karen Swim, APR (00:30):

I might be, I'm, you know, I think saying Not Sure What Barbie I Am Today is probably pretty accurate for most days of the week for me lately.

Michelle Kane (00:40):

Oh, I hear you. I hear you. It's, I don't know why. I'm always surprised when I'm surprised by how days can unfold <laugh>.

Karen Swim, APR (00:48):

Yes. This summer has been particularly eventful for, for most people. I'm finding it's not just, just PR pros. In my past, in my past PR life, <laugh>, summer is always a quiet time.

Michelle Kane (01:05):

Yeah. No more

Karen Swim, APR (01:07):

I don't know. I don't know anything anymore. I don't know if it's going to hail or snow or rain in the middle of August. I don't know. I just don't know. So that's the way that I approach my days these days.

Michelle Kane (01:23):

Exactly.

Karen Swim, APR (01:24):

Optimism, knowing that anything could happen. And you know what? We used to say, when pigs fly, and now that just doesn't even seem out of the realm of possibility

Michelle Kane (01:35):

I hear that might be being worked on. Who knows? I'm sure <laugh> No, sure. <Laugh>.

Karen Swim, APR (01:40):

Elon Musk is figuring that out.

Michelle Kane (01:42):

Oh, goodness. I'm sure he is. So, as you might've guessed, today's episode, we're just going to do a pop culture PR check-in because as this is airing, this will hit right after the second weekend of Barbenheimer. So I don't know if many of you have seen either Barbie or Oppenheimer, but there's a lot to admire about the PR that's gone into it and just, there's just a lot of points to consider, especially through the PR lens. I mean, first of all, that even though I know personally and across the board it's been really challenging to get people to engage in the way they did in the before times, especially in-person events, things like that. Just because our priorities have shifted, our time, the way we spend our time has changed. Anyway, all that to say, in the midst of all that, a ton of people went back to the movie theater. To either Barbie or Oppenheimer, they’re smashing records. So it's pretty amazing. And unless you've, you know, truly been checking out this summer, and if you have good for you it's kind of hard to miss any of the promotion for either Barbie or Oppenheimer. And I have a pretty low, low bar for being annoyed by this kind of thing, and I'm not annoyed yet. So they must be doing something right, <laugh>.

Karen Swim, APR (03:12):

Yeah. I think from a PR perspective, and many PR professionals have noted this on social media, that this was really a masterclass in a great execution of a campaign. So a couple of things that stood out to me from the communication side for Barbie in particular is that number one, it just reinforces what we as PR pros know to be true. That having a strategic plan that is comprehensive and robust and the time to be able to execute that plan means everything. Because this did not come together in months. This was a plan that rolled out over a long period of time, and it was a campaign that incorporated not just that lever of earned media, it was paid, it was the PESO formula. It’s beautifully done. It also stood out to me that going into the planning of the messaging, they understood that there were people that don't like Barbie. Maybe not passionate activists against Barbie but the people that just don't like Barbie or have an issue with it. And rather than trying to navigate around that, they leaned into that and considered that their audience as well and developed messaging that embraced the detraction. And I thought, beautifully done, because sometimes we want to avoid, you know, the “antis” <laugh>. Right. And rather than doing that, they fully embraced that. And I thought that that was genius.

Michelle Kane (05:07):

Yeah. They really did. I mean, even for those who have not seen the film, I won't reveal a whole lot. But there's definitely the acknowledgement that Barbie is somewhat problematic.

Karen Swim, APR (05:20):

Yes.

Michelle Kane (05:21):

But as anything, many things are full of shades of gray. And what I thought was incredible was that even though Barbie's a Warner Brothers film, Oppenheimer, I believe is with Universal, they played well together. I mean, they're building on the whole Barbenheimer of it all. What sticks out to me, like you said, with this long game, I mean, it started with the set photos of Ryan Gosling and Margot Robbie in their full on neon roller blades, to make people take notice. And that was, gosh, easily, at least a year ago, to make us say, “Oh my, what is that? Oh, so this is how it's going to come together. Okay. I'm intrigued…” and just, then go about our lives. But even, I don't know if you saw the photos of I think it was Margot Robbie and Greta Gerwig at the movies holding their tickets for Oppenheimer. And then, everyone was kind of returning the favor of I got my tickets to Barbie of I just, that collegiality that built up, “Hey, you know, we're all in this together” and “There's enough room for everyone.” Let's, you know, as the little jingle says, let's all go to the movies <laugh>.

Karen Swim, APR (06:34):

I think the first trailer was, it was a weird one for Barbie. And they didn't realize that it would be so popular. In full disclosure, I have not seen the movie. Yet. So, my discussion about this is purely from looking at it from the comms perspective, and what I've read and what I've seen on the story behind how this all came together. I know that this was a well-executed campaign because I’m actually planning on going to see a movie that I probably never would've planned to see. Because there's something special about having this environment again, of the summer blockbuster and having everyone talking about it, because let's face it, with streaming, you know, there's a pocket of people that may talk about something, but it's not the same as when something grabs hold of the culture and people are dressing up and they're excited. And I'm here for it. I love it. I'm so glad. This makes me very happy.

Michelle Kane (07:53):

Yeah. And it shows that we can have those experiences again, where everyone is, let's say most everyone, is excited about gathering together and just really getting involved or getting caught up in the excitement of it all. So that's been encouraging and it's just been a fun ride all around just to see how this has rolled out and to see how it continues to. And it also speaks to another thing that we are hungry for - original stories. I mean, certainly, you know, Oppenheimer's a real person, Barbie's a doll, but, you know, just refreshing to see something that doesn't have a “part six” at the end of it. I think we might be at the end of those rides, but who knows? What do I know? I'm not a studio executive.

Karen Swim, APR (08:41):

You know what I love? So yes, Barbie has been problematic as a child. It wasn't necessarily problematic for me. There were issues that even I, as a small child realized playing with my Barbies, and I gravitated towards, you know, my personality  gravitated not towards Barbie and Ken, but you know, towards Skipper, who no one remembers. But over the years, obviously as I became an adult,  I really began to have issues with it. And what I kind of love about this, and this segues into something else we can't avoid talking about, is that the Barbie brand has evolved over the years. And they've evolved their brand in a way that was acceptable to their audiences and they attracted new audiences. It was exciting to me to listen to one of the teens on my street and see her bouncy, happy about wanting to go see Barbie and her knowing Barbie from the cartoons.

But they didn't, you know, they didn't run away from the problematic past. This is part of the whole story of Barbie, and they understood that Barbie's embedded in our cultural discussions, it's an icon. They didn't rebrand arbitrarily. They could have done that. Mattel could have created something else and just steered away from Barbie in the problematic era, but instead they did not do that. I'm going to say that in my opinion, that's the smarter way versus Elon Musk and Twitter running from their problematic past. And I don't know if that was the motivation and rebranding something that it has been such an important icon in our history. Twitter is Twitter. We grew up with the Twitter bird, with the Twitter sounds, the bird sounds, it's has meaning, it has cultural significance, good, bad, ugly. I'm not quite sure why this company would lean away from what has been such an important institution for people and one that's recognizable.

Can we just talk about brand recognition? It's baffling. Why would you change the name? Which to me feels like a personal, very egotistical thing in that here's a person who names his children these, so it feels like this was personal and not a brand decision, which completely disregards your audience that it's there, or at least to win back and you have an opportunity to win back new fans. You really do, because no one has replaced Twitter as of today. There are lots of other social media platforms they're not catching on in the same way. There's still something different about Twitter, although people are now not participating there, myself included, because it's a trash platform. But I just, you know, just to contrast, here's a company that did it right and owned the failures and mistakes and went through some really hard times where they were really not the beloved brand, but they didn't change their name and forget they didn't try to trick their audience. Like, Hey, we're this now <laugh>.

Michelle Kane (12:22):

Yeah. I mean, I'm seeing a couple of things. The, the first is, and forgive me, I forget the reporter's name, but he brought to light that this is not Elon's first rodeo with trying to rename something “X” apparently when in 2000, when he was leading PayPal, he wanted to do the same thing and he wanted to make it almost like in in Asia where they have the WeChat, he wants this “X” to be an all-purpose thing. And it's like, okay, well even if that's your intent, what sense does it make to completely trash the running thing you bought, decimate your staff? I mean, there's something off there that we all know, once you get into that stratosphere of being a billionaire, you're not making rational decisions. And the other disturbing trend is, I was just reading comments of a thread of people pointing out this very thing, this doesn't make sense. It's not good business. It got you in trouble before, it got you ousted before. And yet there's still the fan base of “Oh no. Secretly he is the super genius that knows what he's doing. You just wait and see.”

Karen Swim, APR (13:32):

And not to take anything away from Elon Musk, he is brilliant. Let let's just be clear on that. No one is disputing his intelligence.

Michelle Kane (13:51):

I am…<laughs>

Karen Swim, APR (13:52):

What I am contrasting is that I feel like this particular business decision is, it's just a bad decision. And it's not something from a communication standpoint that any of us in this audience would ever have said, sure, let's do that. Because there's no reasoning behind it. And again, as public relations professionals, part of our job is protecting our publics. And I feel like this really dismisses your publics and I'm totally not sure that it's going to lead to the ultimate goal of winning back advertisers or having people want to pay a premium to use this service. I think it just continues to drive away. And maybe that's the goal. Maybe it's to drive away all of the old users and turn this into a political platform that is very much focused on one political party or one political point of view, and have it be all brand new. And, and if that's the goal, then have at it, you know?

Michelle Kane (14:49):

Yeah.

Karen Swim, APR (14:50):

Go, do you, be you. But I certainly am not spending any money on this platform, and I'm barely spending time there. Pop in there. Yeah. On occasion, because it's, it's a habit that's hard to break.

Michelle Kane (15:05):

Yeah. Yeah. I mean it's, it just, it makes no sense from a real nuts and bolts, let's do real business point of view. It just doesn't, and you're right. It dismisses anything that makes sense from a communications standpoint. So I don't know. I mean, we're we're definitely not on the same page as they are, maybe not even on the same bookshelf as they are. So it's just interesting to watch. And I didn't know anything about the whole PayPal thing until I read that article.

Karen Swim, APR (15:37):

Now, let's be honest, on a smaller scale for we communicators, this has happened to us with clients. We have clients that have wanted to change the name of the company or have a brand new logo for absolutely zero reason at all. And so, I can only imagine, I don’t know if there are any comms people left at Twitter, but clearly not. And so, again, for us to do our jobs well, and if there are any non-PR people in this audience, and you are thinking of engaging with PR people for us to do our jobs well, it really requires for you to trust our strategic counsel, our expertise, and understand that if we're saying no to you, it's not because we are trying to limit your vision. It's not because we are not visionary ourselves.

It's not because we don't like you. It's because we do have our eye on the big picture. But our picture includes your publics, it includes your brand equity, it includes the reputation of your company. And so we're taking a long view and a broader view than you might be looking, and you may have a different vision, but it's worthwhile to have that discussion and not just pull the plug on something without having your comms team involved and having you guys come to a point of alignment. I mean, trust the people that you have hired and take their advice. Sometimes you're still going to go off and do what you want to do. I get that. I've dealt with this too, where companies just changed the name and you have either come in after they just did it, and you're like, “Why?”

Michelle Kane (17:32):

Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>

Karen Swim, APR (17:34):

Or you are unable to move them off of what they want to do, and so left to their own devices, people will change the name sometimes.

Michelle Kane (17:50):

Oh yeah.

Karen Swim, APR (17:51):

I have engaged with companies where they already have a new name, and it’s a name that's so hard to SEO and so hard to monitor. Sometimes companies choose names that are simple, but they're so simple that they get confused with like a million other things. And so it fails the SEO value, or it's unique and weirdly spelled, and then it's hard for anybody to find. So, you know, these are things that we all think about.

Michelle Kane (18:16):

Yeah. We're not in here to be Debbie Downer. We are communications pros. We're not just here to blow out your messaging. We're here to consider how you are perceived and look out for you on all those points. I've had that too. And sometimes it takes, sometimes it does come around in a couple of years where if a certain aspect of something has been branded and named and I've counseled and said, you know, that's going to make your, your, your potential audience think too much. They're not exactly going to understand. It's not going to be perceived as you wish with everyone who sees it. And at the end of the day, it's going to be confusing. So sometimes, if it's not an earth shattering decision and the whole company's not going to tank as a result, let it play out. And eventually it comes around to, oh, that wasn't working. Interesting. Okay, let's try this. <Laugh>,

Karen Swim, APR (19:21):

I mean,

Michelle Kane (19:22):

Yeah,

Karen Swim, APR (19:22):

Facebook just did it, right? They became Meta,

Michelle Kane (19:27):

Yeah, <laugh>,

Karen Swim, APR (19:27):

But it's still called Facebook. It's still called Instagram by Meta. Yeah. But it just, X puts me in mind of XFiles, <laugh>

Michelle Kane (19:38):

And then there’s this little thing of Microsoft owning the, is it the patent or the trademark for “X”?

Karen Swim, APR (19:46):

Yes. And it's a black and white logo. Like Okay. The Twitter bird was iconic. Twitter was iconic. Yeah. We're not going to say whatever he wants to call tweets. It's a definite contrast to the, you know, colorful neon, fashion forward Barbie and their whole message and the Barbie brand. So good on you.

Michelle Kane (20:25):

Kudos.

Karen Swim, APR (20:26):

I mean, this is to me like what you would submit an award for, because they really did the doggone thing. And while we also know that I love this interview, and I believe it was Vanity Fair where the comms person shared that, “I've been doing this for 35 years and this level, like of success has never happened.” I love that he was transparent about that, because once again, we have people that see successes, you know, in the areas that we play in.

Michelle Kane (20:56):

Oh yeah.

Karen Swim, APR (20:57):

They want to duplicate it. So they say, “oh, well they were on TikTok, so let's go on TikTok.” And then they jump to these shiny new tools and they want to do stuff. And then they're like, “well, why isn't this working?” Or they'll, they're like, “well, wow, look, so-and-so was in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, and okay, let's go there.”

Michelle Kane (21:14):

Yeah.

Karen Swim, APR (21:15):

But do you have anything to say, really? Are you, do you think that that's what really got them to what you're seeing? Because there's a whole lot of things that happen in the background that you don't know about. Let's talk about those things.

Michelle Kane (21:31):

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And, I love that they said that too, because it's true. And I'm sure that at the time when they were scoping this out, they were hopeful, but they definitely did not have certainty that it would play out the way it did.

Karen Swim, APR (21:49):

No one could have predicted when this movie came out, where we would be in our collective consciousness - that we are turned out, we're tired, we haven't had a lot of fun. Life is life and really hard. And so there was a little bit of magic and a little bit of luck, right? And we know that that's happened to even other viral campaigns that weren't on this level but were tremendously successful. Sometimes there's just a little bit of fortune that favors you. However, what's that saying? Fortune favors the prepared, they came and they brought their A game. And they did a really great job. And so yes, there was a little bit of fortune, but they were prepared for that.

Michelle Kane (22:38):

You know what's going to happen? This is my prediction. Twitter is going to be renamed Barbie <laugh> since it's popular, without regard for patents or copyrights.

Karen Swim, APR (22:52):

Because it's popular, bright and shiny, Elon Musk would immediately <laugh> put the hammer to that. It's not a mathematical formula. I'm thinking that he's going to be like, no.

Michelle Kane (23:09):

Oh, well, yeah. Right, right. Exactly. Well, the new alleged name for tweets, “xeet,” I guess X E E T. Yeah. when I saw it in print, it just made me think, being a Philly suburban girl, it made me think of our slang for “Did you eat yet?” Is “jeet” J E E T <laugh> I was like, jeet? Oh, what? Is Elon asking if I ate already. What? Oh, okay. Whatever. Next tweet.

Karen Swim, APR (23:34):

Already I'm an ex tweeter.

Michelle Kane (23:39):

I tell you, I think I'm

Karen Swim, APR (23:39):

officially an ex tweeter, so don't look for me there. <Laugh>.

Michelle Kane (23:44):

Yeah. I certainly don't spend as much time as I used to, which is, it's a bummer because it brought so much to our world. But you know, what do they say? The only thing constant is change. So there you have it.

So we hope you've enjoyed spending this little time with us, checking on some pop culture things, maybe encouraging you to get in line, buy some popcorn, and enjoy some cinema therapy, as I like to call it. But whatever you choose, we hope you value this content. And if you do, please share it around. Please follow us on all the Solo PR channels. And until next time, thanks for listening to That Solo Life.

What the Writers Strike Means for All of Us

The issues and circumstances that led to the current writers and actors strikes -- with corporations devaluing the creativity, expertise, and contribution of workers – mirrors what is going on in the larger labor market, whether you work as a traditional employee or self-employed. In this episode we talk about how this touches our solo PR world and what to do about it.

 

Transcript

Michelle Kane:

Thank you for joining us for this episode of That Solo Life, the podcast for PR pros and marketers who work for themselves, people like me, Michelle Kane, with VoiceMatters and my ever wonderful co-host, Karen Swim of Solo PR Pro. Hi Karen. How goes it today?

Karen Swim, APR:

Hello, Michelle. I'm doing good. How are you?

Michelle Kane:

Good, good. Rolling along. Can't believe we are looking at the end of July. It is wild. Ugh.

Karen Swim, APR:

Wild is a huge understatement. Yes, I am very much looking forward to getting on the other side of this and hopefully recapturing in August as a little bit of me time.

Michelle Kane:

I agree, and that's usually how it goes. I don't know why I am surprised that I'm feeling this way because just the way the work cycle goes, there are things happening, things going on, and why everyone's out and about, you know, hanging out on the beach and enjoying the boardwalk and things. And I'm just like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Later, later, later. And then by the time I'm there in August and September, they're all, back to school. I'm like, stinks to be you, <laugh>.

Karen Swim, APR:

Well, you know, it's interesting because in my industries that I work with, typically this is a quiet time. Everybody is on holiday, they're away. And summer is quiet and then it ramps up hard in September.  This year, you and I have joked and I said that I feel like my life is a grocery cart running, going downhill, and I'm chasing after it, and I just can't run fast enough or long enough to catch it. I just can’t. I've never been so far behind in stuff. There are people that have emailed me that I haven't answered. If you're listening today, sorry, it's not personal. It's just I can't catch up. And every day I go back and I do something that I'm neglected. Okay, that's one of the hundred things that's hanging out there, but yay <laugh>,

Michelle Kane:

It has been a little bit like that. Yeah. I think just the way certain projects have happened, there were a couple that I thought, oh my goodness, you know, when is this going to happen? And now it's like, Ugh, now what's happening?

Karen Swim, APR:

Now it's happening and now it's blinking on and on and on. That's another part of the story. It's like, can we just end this? Like, is this ever going to be over? Are we ever going to be done with this?

Michelle Kane:

Yeah, I know. I know. But then I also know that me personally, like, yes, I like summer, but I also like summer spaces <laugh> not during peak season. So I'm definitely a spring and fall summer girl, if that makes sense. Like catch me in May, catch me in September, then I'm ready to do Summer.

Karen Swim, APR:

<Laugh>. I'll tell you, I'll take summer whenever, however I can get it. It'll be nice to just have days where the weather is decent, it's not storming, and we can actually outside. I don’t know. That would be my ideal day.

Michelle Kane:

I think that is a big part of it, because where we both live, Canada keeps blowing smoke in our faces and that's an issue as well.

Karen Swim, APR:

Now we're stuck indoors. Any new TV shows?

Michelle Kane:

Yes. So actually our point, we did not just come here to moan about our to-do lists or the weather, but as I'm sure most, if not all, of our listeners know, there are a couple of strikes happening. Certainly the WGA, the writers have been on strike since May and now SAG/Aftra, the actors, have joined them in solidarity and they bring some very important points to the table about compensation and the value of their work so we're going to talk about that and also about how this affects some of us, because certainly a lot of comms pros work in the industry or even work in segments that intersect with the industry that a complete work stoppage is certainly affecting. But you know, the SAG/Aftra union is bringing to the fore the issue of it, basically, it's not the 2%. It's not Tom Cruise that's suffering, it's the working actors, the, I forget, what did they say? Is it 13% of their union qualifies for health insurance?

Karen Swim, APR:

Which I mean, so yeah. Let's frame this.

Michelle Kane:

Yeah.

Karen Swim, APR:

So even though these are unionized workers, I think the broader issues hit the entire labor market including people like us solos, because at the core of this is how do you value people and the creative and intellectual talent that they bring to the supply chain of their output. And there's such a huge disparity when you see - so writers have to earn $26,000 in order to qualify for healthcare. So just keep that in mind. $26,000, that seems like a very small number. So you have that, but then you have these heads of studios making 192 million. They definitely have healthcare and all of the benefits, and I'm not, this is not a rant against millionaires, but it is something that we're seeing play out across the spectrum. And when you throw automation into it, which is a part of their negotiations as well, they want to be protected from -  I would label it as the unethical and inhumane use of artificial intelligence because I'm a technology fan, I love innovation, but innovation is not a replacement for human beings. It's something that can help human beings to work more effectively. And yes, there are some jobs that will go away, but other jobs will be created. We've seen that over history. However, we PR people are also creative people. How many of us recently have had people believe that our work or expertise doesn't deserve, first of all, the amount of money that we charge, they don't see the value. And then how many of them are replacing the writing portion of our jobs? You're thinking that they can replace the writing portion with AI. So the writers are standing against this, but it's this mentality that scares me because you have things like the actors, one of the things that came up in the actors strike is that studios wanted extras to sign away the rights to their images for life forever in perpetuity.

Michelle Kane:

For $200. For $200. Yeah.

Karen Swim, APR:

And in many cases it's less than $200. So you have an extra that goes onto a set. And if you've never been an extra, it's a fascinating experience, particularly if you're trying to break into the industry. Yeah. If you want to break into the film industry being an extra yields, tremendous benefits, it's like, it's akin to internships where you get to be in this environment in which you want to work. You learn things, you learn about the different roles. You learn about how the set works for writers. This also is happening where you're taking away this environment of learning and development because with the writers, they have these things called mini rooms, which means that those writers are not even getting to interact with the rest of the show. So they're not getting to interact in a way that traditionally writers' rooms have happened. And so you're limiting their ability to see the whole picture and to learn and to grow professionally. And so,

Michelle Kane:

Yeah. And to do good work because if you have a room full of 12 writers of varying degrees of seniority, I mean that's where the good stuff happens. If you have your four core senior writers and oh, okay the others are going to come in on Thursday…

Karen Swim, APR:

Yeah. Well the mini rooms just happen within a bubble. They're not interacting with all of the people that the traditional writing rooms get to interact with. And you're not learning about the things, of how your content works on set. And so, again, this is not just about diminishing it, it is diminishing it, it's a value proposition, but it also is bumping up against fear and greed from a certain sector. And we're seeing that play across corporate America as well as people focus on dollars and cents, are they devaluing what humans bring to the table, the creativity and the intellect that we have to offer. And so, you know, I think that, that we all have to be aware of, yes, this is a union, whatever you think about unions, whatever you think about Hollywood. But these issues mirror what's going on in the larger labor market. And yeah, anything that happens in the labor market is going to affect every human being whether you work as a traditional employee or you're self-employed as we are.

Michelle Kane:

Yeah, it's true. It's true. And you know what? Those that are making these, what I would call shortsighted decisions, if they pull back and realize, okay, that might make your next couple of quarters really sing and look fantastic, but how's this going to work for you 10 years down the road, 20 years down the, down the road when people don't want your product because it's not any good? And you know, I'm sure the few at the top, they're like, well, I'll just hang out on my yacht and it'll be fine. But it's,

Karen Swim, APR:

Yeah,

Michelle Kane:

I don't know. I mean,

Karen Swim, APR:

Imagine, as a viewer you are watching a TV show and it was filmed in Hawaii and you see the extras and you know, two months later you see that same exact scene manipulated by AI and like five other things. Is that fair to viewers? I mean, I think that viewers, you're also diminishing the intelligence of the people who watch these things, who consume your content. We are not stupid. We notice those things. And you know what? Extras, even though I sort of hate that name of extras, because I think acting happens without words as well, I think that they're vital to creating and setting a mood and a tone. We look at all those things. We notice it, we appreciate the depth and breadth of the, the entire creative process. And it is meaningful. So to somehow chop that up and say, it doesn't matter, we can just AI our way into this or we can AI our script.

Michelle Kane:

Yeah.

Karen Swim, APR:

Because machines are not human beings. And they can crank out words, but they can't crank out nuances, emotions, and personal experiences. If you've ever read articles about how scripts came together, about how ideas came together, about how an actor was in the moment and created something that wasn't on script, AI cannot do that. Oftentimes people developed entire series based on personal experiences or they bring something to their life, or you're in the writer's room and somebody goes, Hey, how about this? And then that, that reality makes its way into the creative process. Can AI do that? No, because AI is not a living being who's interacting with other human beings and has that to bring to the table. So yes, it's helpful in circumstances.

Michelle Kane:

Right. Case in point. So, the new Indiana Jones movie. They used AI to create a younger version of Harrison Ford. However, it was still Harrison Ford, 80-year-old Harrison Ford doing the acting. They had the luxury of having a catalog of all of his reactions from all of his films that he had done with that same studio. So, I don’t know if you've seen him describe this, he said, they put the little dots all over his face and he still did the dialogue. But then they did the magic using him. So that's a great use of AI that came in really handy. It kept you in the story. What would not be cool is if they took that whole catalog of Harrison Ford and brought him back as Han Solo in a hundred years. And I guarantee he would probably haunt them. <Laugh>. Yeah. That's the last thing he would want. And honestly, it's just like you said, it's so cringy and unethical.

Karen Swim, APR:

Yeah. Imagine this, imagine that they did use this to create the next Indiana Jones movie and they paid him zero or they sent him a check for 4 cents. Because lots of actors and writers are receiving checks, residual checks for 4 cents. It costs more to mail the check than what you're receiving when you get something for 23 cents, 27 cents. Don't believe me. Go on social media. Follow the WGA strike hashtag and you'll get lots of information on the writers strike. So imagine as a public relations person, as communicators, we often write things. Can you imagine like somebody using you one time for something and then taking your work and profiting from it over and over and over and over and over again, rather than hiring you. Maybe they throw a bone your way and say, “Oh, we're going to send you 10 cents.” Because that's what they think it's worth.

Michelle Kane:

Yeah. I think recently Mandy Moore said that for a streamed episode of This Is Us, an incredibly popular, profitable show. Don't quote me on it. I mean, it was under a dime.

So that is literally what they're renegotiating. They just want to be paid fairly. And I get it, we're in capitalism. The CEOs are beholden to their shareholders. They're beholden to make their shareholders richer. You'll still get rich shareholders, you will still get rich. In fact, you might get richer if you fund these creatives in a way. Yeah. I mean, let's face it, I think Tom Cruise in the last two years, and he's not my favorite person but in the last two years, he has been leading the way to get people back into movie theaters to keep that business going. Why? Because he knows it's good for everybody. And if they can't realize this, that funding good, creative content is in their long-term best interest, then that's just really sad and unfortunate.

Karen Swim, APR:

Well, another unfortunate trend that we're seeing play out in the labor market, and you know, again, this hits our industry as well, is that this, this reluctance to present people with professional development opportunities and kind of easing out those entry level people. So we're seeing this with the many writers rooms and not giving people a chance to advance their career. We're seeing it with the actors and the background actors. We also are seeing this in corporate America where people new to the workforce are not receiving training on how to work. All of these things, this is the same issue, played out differently across various industries. We need people entering professions. The reality of our life right now is that there are more open jobs than there are people to fill them. The entire global workforce has aged. There's a map out there somewhere that shows how this aging population impacts the entire workforce.

We're getting older, the median age of US workers has risen. And so if we're not willing to train and we're not willing to give opportunities to people entering our professions, where does that leave us in the future? That's a little crazy. And it says to me, is this where we are right now? So we don't want to pay the people that have the experience. We want to take whatever we can from them. And then we want to, you know, use AI to like cover it up and do other things. But we also don't want to help people to do what we do. Like there's, there's a disconnect there. This is all going to come back and slap us.

Michelle Kane:

Bite us. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and you know, at both ends of the spectrum, I think there's ageism at both ends of the spectrum. And what I'm seeing a lot is people applying for what they are told are full-time jobs and then once they're hired, they're only given part-time hours. Well, there goes their opportunity for health insurance, there goes their opportunity to make their living. I'm not saying it's all corporations, but some of the corporations who are bemoaning the fact that people don't want to work, well, they do want to work, they want to be able to provide for themselves. And I'm pretty sure even if you don't love your job, you still like the feeling of contributing to society even if you don't realize it. So if they're not provided the proper platform, like you say, with proper training, and that could be as simple as we know, Karen, everyone's talking about Gen Z, they don't know how to operate in an office. Well maybe, just maybe, you need to start a program to help that, to help nurture them, nurture their intelligence, you know, nurture the gifts that they bring to you. And if you say you're looking for full-time, hire them for full-time.

Karen Swim, APR:

The reality is I think that we need to, we as communicators also need to make sure that we're not playing into that narrative. And we don't allow companies to play that narrative because it's actually, it's erroneous. Gen Z, how do you learn to work unless people teach you to work, they don't teach you how to work in school. Education does not do that. No, education does not teach you how to live your life. Education does not teach you those subtle nuances about how to conduct meetings or how to participate in meetings or how to engage with your coworkers. Those are things that you learn on the job. And so I have seen a couple companies that are stepping up and coming up with training programs that are teaching these soft skills to younger workers. Unfortunately that's not being normalized. And it’s to all of our detriment that there's not this investment in the next generation of workers.

Because if we're not teaching them, how would they learn? They come up with their own rules that may not match what your expectations are. And then you get mad and you say, well, Gen Z's lazy. Well, they're really not. Maybe, maybe they're onto something. Maybe they're not willing because they live through the Covid years and they see how quickly our lives can shift. Maybe they're not willing to work 12 hours a day in an office. Is that being lazy or is that being smart? Maybe they've decided that, you know what? Work cannot be the number one thing in my life. It is a part of my life, but I also have this other life that I'm going to tend to. Is that being lazy or is that being balanced? So I think we're unfair to them as well. And, we hold some responsibility for that, which, you know, that whole generational thing is a topic that we'll delve into at some point on this podcast.

But today it's all about workers' rights and how this is shifting and how it really does impact us. And from a practical standpoint that everyone can find accessible. What happens when the content creators go away? Because fall TV now has officially already been disrupted. So enjoy those reality shows and reruns because that's all we're going to have for a while. And you know, if you don't have people making movies, promoting movies, entertainment is going to stink. And, and that's going to affect jobs. I mean, yeah. I have friends that work on moving construction sets. They build sets. There's no movie making happening right now. They're not working. What about the people who clean the costumes? What about the food caterers? They're not working either. What about all of these people who normally buy things that can't buy things because they are not working? This is everyone's issue. And I know sometimes people get caught up in numbers, like, actors make so much money. Yeah. They really don't.

Michelle Kane:

Oh, they don't. And I'm glad to see those that are out there stating that fact that yeah, we're the, we are the lucky few.

Karen Swim, APR:

Yeah.

Michelle Kane:

And you know, even with the AI stuff, if they're trying to pull this with us, what chance do those who aren't at this point in their careers, what chance do they have? There's definitely going to be a ripple effect. And you know, look, unions have done a lot of good, they're not perfect. But if you enjoy your five day work week, thank your union. If you enjoy weekends, thank your union. Someone's got to draw the line because if we did not have them drawing the line, trust, the rest of non-unionized corporate America would be far worse than it is.

Karen Swim, APR:

Yeah, and the math is Right. Whether those people are in the union or not, giving a voice to these issues that I think we all need to be aware of. And I think one of the key things for us as communicators is understanding and protecting our own intellectual property. And standing strong for the value that we deliver. Because I honestly do see this, this environment that we're in currently that is wholly focused on economics with a shortsighted view to the value of communicators. So you see companies that you know, and this happens in economic downturns. What are the first departments to go? Marketing and communication. And we know that's problematic. Companies don't care. They only care about how those numbers look right now and moving forward for the future. And they, I think that at some levels of the company, they realize the steps back that they will take, but it's a risk that they're willing to accept. But again, our profession is also being devalued and media is definitely going through dramatic shifts as well. And so I feel like these issues that apply to Hollywood writers also touch the journalists that we interact with.

Michelle Kane:

Yeah, absolutely. Well, we've given you a ton to chew on this week. So we hope you found this time valuable. And please, we want to hear your feedback. Visit us at soloprpro.com. Hit us up. If you found this of value to you, please share it around. We would love that too. We love spending this time with you. And so until next time, thanks for listening to That Solo Life.

 

Let’s Talk About It: Race and Inclusivity

As communications professionals and as people living and working together in a society we need to talk about the realities of race and inclusivity. And in today’s episode we do just that.

 

Transcript

Michelle Kane:

Thank you for joining us for another episode of That Solo Life, the podcast for PR pros and marketers who work for themselves, people like me, Michelle Kane, with VoiceMatters, and my wonderful co-host, Karen Swim of Solo PR Pro. Hi Karen, how are you today?

Karen Swim, APR:

Hello, Michelle. I'm doing great. So glad to be back from our little one week break. How are you doing?

Michelle Kane:

Yes, I'm well, thanks. Yes, it was, you know, even the things you love the most, it's always nice to have a little break, but yeah, I'm glad to be back at it, and talk with you today. And today we're going to talk a little bit about race because a lot of the work we do, we have to counsel our clients on how to handle situations, diversity programs, all that kind of stuff. And let's face it at the end of June, the Supremes dropped some nasty bits. So it gave us a lot to talk about. That was quite the day, June 30th. I'm working and listening to them, I'm like, oh, great. What now? Oh, wonderful. So…

Karen Swim, APR:

Well, the Supreme Court decision has certainly ignited a lot of discussion and reaction. In addition to that, without surprise, social media served up another little bit of scandal. But it has, I believe that it has also launched some very beneficial conversations. Kristen Bell, who I love as an actress had a dinner party and shared a picture of who was at the dinner party. And that has just invited a lot of criticism about the lack of diversity that was at that dinner. And so we want to unpack this and talk about, we just, you know, sometimes you have to confront this thing that we don't like to talk about. Talking about race is uncomfortable. It's not the fun topic, it's not the light topic, but as communicators and just as entrepreneurs and people in business, it's an issue that we should not be shying away from. And I believe that we have to have these discussions and we have to have an understanding, and we have to do our part if we are going to counsel clients to do the same.

Michelle Kane:

Agree, agree. And, also I think in recent weeks, and I sadly do not recall the entities, but I think there were three or four corporations who just let go their heads of diversity. I mean, really, what gives? And so, it's really disturbing. It's concerning and we definitely have to be conscious of it so that we can both help counsel clients and really just make our own mark.

Karen Swim, APR:

I heard the word that we live in post-racial America. That is the biggest lie that I've ever heard in my life. So let's clear that up. And let's talk about, again, when we talk about race and we talk about diversity, I want to remind you all of another forgotten class of people. And those are people that have visible and hidden disabilities. Yes. So we, if we're really talking about being inclusive as a society, we have to look at all of these factors and we have to make it okay for people to inhabit these spaces. What do I mean by that? Last week there's a Latino family that lives on my block. My neighborhood, my particular block is super diverse. It's really weird in Michigan to have a block that is so diverse, thank you auto companies for bringing people from other countries to live on my street because yeah, we are a little United Nations here and I love it.

So there's a little girl - a lot of the kids come down and they ride their bikes. I have kids on either side of me and the little girl has a dog that I've met and I've met her family and I know that she speaks Spanish. So we were talking about something and I said something to her in Spanish, and she answered me in English and I said something else to her in Spanish, and she answered me in English. Now, these roles are usually reversed. Because I was usually the one that can understand the Spanish fast enough, but can't always get my words out fast enough, so I'll answer in English. And she said to me that it felt weird to speak Spanish outside of the house, because when our family came here from Mexico, her parents instructed them as they were learning English, to not speak Spanish outside of the home.

That was heartbreaking to me because I know so many Spanish speaking Americans that feel that way and feel like they will be judged and treated differently. And they're not wrong because I've experienced this myself. When I’m in the park walking and speaking Spanish to my dog, and people pass me by and they are mean to me because I'm speaking in another language. So I know that this is true, this is not okay. So when you say post-racial America, when people are afraid to own their own culture, speak in a language that is other than English, by the way, you want to know how many people in the world speak Spanish? We always want to think that English is the dominant language, Spanish is spoken all over the world. There is no shame in having this as a second language. And people should not be embarrassed to speak in their first language in public. Right. That is painful.

Michelle Kane:

Yeah. Yeah. And it's a tradition that's been handed down through the centuries. You know, we did it to Germans, we did it to Japanese, we did it to all kinds of people. And it's, I don't know where this insecurity comes from. No, actually I do. It's a lot of these problems in our society come back to fear.

Karen Swim, APR:

Yes.

Michelle Kane:

Fear of, of the quote unquote other fear of, well, how's that going to affect my security? And you can't lie the societal forces around us sometimes they play into that to their favor. I was so internally angry over the weekend when I got wind that my former church is doing a culture and civility series. And I'm like, oh, here we go. Don't go there. And the current pastor said, “Okay, in Hollyweird now they have certain quotas to be considered for an Oscar.” And I know where he was going. He was going against the LGBTQ community. So I thought, you know what, let me look this up because I'm, I'm 99% sure he is dead wrong. I'm like, no, it's because of #Oscarssowhite - that's why if you weren't, if you were any bit mature and intelligent and loving as Jesus wanted you to be, you would realize that.

Karen Swim, APR:

There is this attitude that somehow being inclusive is tied into extreme woke. And we've made that an evil thing. But let me be really clear with our communicators and with our business people, diversity does not just happen. You have to be so intentional about inviting people into your spaces. So the affirmative action piece is really distressing. Not because I believe that you should be less intelligent and get accepted into these spaces, but because there again, there has to be some accountability for being intentional about bringing diversity into a space. And now, rightfully so, the legacy system is being challenged.

Michelle Kane:

Good,

Karen Swim, APR:

I find it pretty disgusting to be honest with you, that in this day and age that we're saying that just because your parents went to a place that you have a right to be in that same place. And that's what you considered when that definitely favors one class of people. And that's wealthy white people. And so you're ruling out so many people that don't fit into that, which is the majority of people. Can we be honest about that? Because wealthy white Americans are a small percentage of our overall society. So you're leaving out others and that's not okay. You're benefiting a class of people just because their parents went there. That shouldn't be a thing for education, whether it's private education or not, it just should not be a thing. People have the ability to enter a school without any of this. However, we haven't done a good job of making education equitable.

So challenge yourself, institutions, to think about what you're going to do to make these spaces more diversified. And that includes with your teaching staff, because those are overwhelmingly slanted as well. And so we need to be intentional. I know the Kristen Bell thing seems different and people are saying, well, you know, there's this group of people that are like, well, these are her friends, that's fine. However, let's remember that in this group of people, they belong to an industry. You want to know what happens when people within an industry get together? It's networking. Deals are done. This is where power is exchanged and shared. And when that power remains with a class of people, we never change. We never become diversified. This is true of Hollywood.

It's true of so many industries where deals are being made. You only have the same type of people in a room, whether it's on a golf course, at a country club, at a chamber meeting. If you don't have diversity in the room, guess what happens? You never diversify. We have to be the ones as communicators to guide our clients into not giving up on to on DEI and B, but to be very, very intentional and to hold themselves accountable for opening the door for people that are not all of the same race, gender, and ability. We have to, we have to do that. We owe it. This is something that, again, this has nothing to do with woke and this has to do with humanity. It has to do with making us better. And guess what, I could cite you statistics all day long on how all of these things actually benefit your bottom line as a corporation. Why wouldn't you want to do something that leads to employees being more engaged, more loyal to your company and making more money for your corporation? It would, if you look at it from that perspective, like, this is good business. You're stupid not to put some effort and some muscle behind diversity.

Michelle Kane:

You are so correct. And you know, we battle that in our hyperlocal chamber. It is Whitey McWhiteville around here. They are welcoming communities. It just isn't that diverse. Now, at the same time, we have a significant batch of businesses that are Hispanic owned. And it is a struggle to get these communities, you know, like how do we engage the Hispanic business leaders? You don't want to create like a, a little offshoot of it. You don't want to say, well, here's the Hispanic chapter. No. I mean, we want you to come on in. How do you do that without being too pandering or where there's no animosity. But I think too, it's just pulling back big picture, the white community, so to speak, has been, let's face it, in charge for a very, very long time, specifically white males.

And it is interesting to see how it then distills into fear of, oh, I, I might lose my footing. And I'm not saying that this is always conscious. Sometimes it is for sure. I think it's been so ingrained. And it's like, you know, really? What's the worst that can happen to you? I mean, if I'm applying to a school, I want to be, I want it to be on my merits. If I don't get it, fine. If someone else gets it great. I, who, who cares? Who? That's could just be me. For me, I want to learn, I want to know why things happen. I want to know real history that doesn't, as you know, those doing the the bastardization of the word woke would say, “That's going to make me feel better about myself.”

No, it's going to make me want to do better and realize what someone's sitting across from me, what their story is. I don't know. I mean, I am, but two or three generations away from a people that were, they were attempted to be murdered and exterminated in Ireland. So I I get it a little bit. And I really believe that that generational knowledge comes with you. So it's really concerning. It's always riled me when I see things happen that are just unfair and unjust just because of who you are, what faith you practice, what language you speak. I mean, thank God Gaelic is having a comeback just because of the cultural value of it. It's just kind of fun. But my goodness, for a while, if you were in Ireland in the 1700’s and you wanted to speak your native tongue, you’d be killed.

Karen Swim, APR:

I agree.

Michelle Kane:

Sorry, we'll bring it back to modern times.

Karen Swim, APR:

<Laugh> History will bear out that Yeah, this racial reckoning in America is nothing new. No, it really sadly is not. And there have been so many different ethnicities of people who have been oppressed and who have been made to feel shame and who have been forced to fit into this homogenous view of what it means to be an American. And I mean, that is really sad because again, going back to humanity, you, you, humankind is beautiful. I love that we're not all the same. I love that we all come from different backgrounds. I love that. I love that we have all these beautiful different traditions that we can share with one another. And we should be able to live in a world where we view people as people. We are not there yet. And so no, as communicators, I think, you know, some of the things that we can own and we can do is that we can make sure that we have messaging that is inclusive, that we make sure that even for our media relations efforts that we put together talking points that are inclusive so that the media says the right things about what our clients are doing.

Perfect example. Don't say “special needs kids,” you would say “children with disabilities” - it's people first language. You want to respect that they're not their disability. That's not what identifies them. They're a human being that has a disability. And I even hate the word disability these days because I believe that we all have different abilities. I believe that none of us is perfect. And I believe that because it's the truth. Not a single person is perfect. We all have something I need reading glasses. Some people need glasses all the time. That means that you don't have perfect eyesight. What does that mean? That means that you have to be accommodated.

That means if you're a kid in school and your vision is not good, that you may need to sit closer in class. So we need to start thinking about, again, all of these ways that we're different and learning how to open up our spaces to make room for everyone. I think it's also important in our messaging that we don't take for granted. And humor can get really tricky, by the way. Don't take for granted that everyone will share the humor or get the inside joke. Again, people who are not native English speakers often struggle with that because they miss the context. They hear the laughter, but don't quite understand how. That's funny. So if you're using humor in your messaging, you want to be mindful about who your publics are and make sure that your message will not be lost because it's targeted to a very narrow group of people.

So I, you know, these are things that we definitely can know and we can also, you know, if you do internal comms, you have an opportunity to work side by side with HR on making sure that things are inclusive internally. Now I get that we're not involved in the trainings and things that can happen, but companies definitely can be intentional. And as a communicator, you need to stand for that and insist that things are not put together. Strategies are not put together. Messaging is not developed, branding is not developed from a very narrow lens, but that you're looking at it from various perspectives to ensure that what you're trying to say is really what you're going to say.

Michelle Kane:

Yeah. And honestly, at the crux of it, at the center of it, this is how we should always look at communications. If we truly know who our audiences are, you want to be respectful of them, their backgrounds. We're certainly not saying that you should be afraid to say anything. It's just like, okay, well who's in my audience? Whether it's internal or external. Okay. How might this message land with them? Keeping in mind too, just the current temperature and tone of our society something that might have hit a little differently 10 years ago is not going to hit the same right now. So we know you're all smart, we know you get this, but it's good to talk about this. And I think too, over time, and because as a nation we've not done a great job at this, is because we really haven't had the conversations. We haven't had the hard conversations of, oh, well gosh, what was that really like for you? Because I need to learn. And that doesn't matter if you have gender, race, physical issues - until you've truly walked in someone's shoes, you can't.

Karen Swim, APR:

It's absolutely true. And yeah, I mean, we say this, we're addressing this topic because again, as communicators, it's important for us to tackle and to turn over these things and to have these discussions and make having these discussions be very normal. I think. You know, someone says to me, “Hey, you know that I struggle with this when people do this and I feel a little left out of that space,” that drives awareness for me and helps me to do my part to make things more inclusive. Because just because I am a black woman in America does not mean that I get to take a pass on intentionally driving toward diversity. I do not get that pass. I have a responsibility to be inclusive as well. And I have a responsibility, just like all of you, to our clients. But here's the thing, clearly we have work to do because we're not there yet. And so, no matter how smart you think you are and how open you think you are and how diverse you think you are, we're not there. We're just not there. That is our reality. And this again, has nothing to do with political agendas. It has nothing to do with wokeness. This is about humanity and it's about being effective at our jobs and helping our clients to be effective at what they're doing as well.

Michelle Kane:

And you know what, it's so much better to try to have the conversations and maybe step in it and move forward from there than to not have the conversations at all or not have the awareness at all.

Karen Swim, APR:

Agree. I mean, as communicators, we cannot be shy about bringing up the hard stuff. We have to address hard stuff all the time. We have to ask clients uncomfortable questions because we don't want things to come out later that harm our efforts. I've said to clients, like, this panel does not work, there's zero diversity. You have a bunch of men that are all the same race. Like, this is not okay. And so I think we have to get comfortable saying those kinds of things. We have to get comfortable saying could just stop inviting black people to only speak during Black History Month.

Michelle Kane:

Oh my gosh, right.

Karen Swim, APR:

I mean, could we not do that? Yeah. I don't know. I'm saying <laugh>

Michelle Kane:

Just, just saying <laugh>. No, it's so true. And they're difficult conversations. It can feel awkward, but I think once you start having them, it feels less so. And I think you will find that it feels good. I know that sounds weird.

Karen Swim, APR:

Yes. But, and I would say please be mindful. You know, Kristen Bell, I have empathy and so let me be clear, we didn't share this story because we want to have her bashed or to have her cancelled because I'm not a fan of cancel culture. I am a fan of reconciliation and healing. But she is someone who wrote a book about diversity.

Michelle Kane:

<Laugh>

Karen Swim, APR:

She wrote a book about diversity. She advocates for diversity and then she shares a picture that's like, really? Girl, do you not have any, were they just not invited to dinner? Are there people not at the table that are missing? Maybe all the diverse people are, you know, still swimming in the pool. I, don’t know what's happening. You really missed the mark. So, yeah.

Michelle Kane:

Yeah. Did she post it to her Instagram?

Karen Swim, APR:

Oh God. She posted it to her Instagram and poor baby. She, she like a lamb to the slaughter.

Michelle Kane:

Girl, just keep her,

Karen Swim, APR:

Where's purple? Where are the purple people in your picture? ‘Cause I'm not seeing purple. I'm not seeing any color here.

Michelle Kane:

It's also like, ooh look at all of us fabulous people, especially during a writer's strike. Like really <laugh> and I, not to say, I know they're being supportive.

Karen Swim, APR:

<Laugh>. I agree. But you know, how often have we as communicators, God bless her PR people. How often have we been in that situation where we have clients that don't make the connection between who they are as a corporation or who they represent. And things that they might share publicly. I've said to clients that even when you're doing things and you have interviews that are about your personal life and it has nothing to do with the job that you hold, please remember that that job that you hold as the CEO of a company or a founder, they're intertwined. And so you want to make sure that there's alignment and you do have to be mindful of that. It doesn't mean that you should be fake and inauthentic, but it does mean, think. You have to think about these things. You can't just do things without thought. That's just not a good move. And it'll ruin the good work that you really are trying to do.

Michelle Kane:

Agree, agree. Well, that was a lot that we brought before you today. But we hope it gets you thinking and we hope that you will continue this conversation with colleagues and others and let's just keep that door of conversation open. And we appreciate you for giving us your time. We would love it if you would share this around if you found it of value. Check us out at soloprpro.com and until next time, thanks for listening to That Solo Life.

 

Biting Our Tongues and Minding Our Business

That Solo Life: Episode #206 Biting Our Tongues and Minding Our Business

 

From unrealistic expectations to news that, well, isn’t, there are times we need to help guide our clients back from the brink and times we need to bite our tongues and mind our business. In this episode we talk about when to say, “No way!” and when to let it go.

 

 

Transcript

Michelle Kane (00:02):

Thank you for joining us for an episode of That Solo Life, the podcast for PR pros and marketers who work for themselves, people like me, Michelle Kane, with VoiceMatters, and my wonderful co-host, Karen Swim of Solo PR Pro. Hi, Karen. We're here. It's another episode. Woohoo.

Karen Swim, APR (00:20):

Hey Michelle. We made it into another week and I am grateful for that.

Michelle Kane (00:25):

Me too. It's always good to kick a day to the curb and go into the next one, <laugh>.

Karen Swim, APR (00:34):

Love it.

Michelle Kane (00:34):

And, and I think we're going to have a little fun today.

Karen Swim, APR (00:37):

Yes, we are.

Michelle Kane (00:39):

We're going to talk about when clients have unrealistic expectations. Now I know what you're thinking. That never happens. What, what could you two possibly have to talk about, right? <Laugh>?

Karen Swim, APR (00:51):

Haha.

Michelle Kane (00:55):

But you know, it's we say this a lot. A big part of our job is education. You know, helping our clients realize what exactly it is they're getting when they engage with a PR pro. And at the same time setting and managing realistic expectations for success. And sometimes that kicks in just fine. Sometimes they still have these lovely expectations.

Karen Swim, APR (01:24):

100%. Yeah. And so sometimes it's more than unrealistic expectations. Sometimes they're just downright cuckoo <laugh> , I can't think of, of a more professional term. Forgive us today. <Laugh>

Michelle Kane (01:46):

Right. That's right. I know. It's been a month already. Yeah. Like, they want the Rolls Royce for the price of a Honda. You've seen the graphics, right? With someone scribbling with their Paint app saying, you know, looking for a graphic designer, that kind of thing. Or,

Karen Swim, APR (02:05):

Or, and I think, here's one of the things that really comes in when you have clients that are just being unreasonable. There was a survey might have been a couple years ago, and the survey showed that it was offered by, I think, Bridge Global Strategies. And it was a survey about people who work in PR - in agencies, corporations, independent contractors, just all kinds of PR people.

These were people that had experience. So almost a hundred percent. It was like 94%. More than 94% had 10 or more years of experience. And then more than 67% had more than 20 years of experience. So these are seasoned professionals. And then they measured - it was all about failure. And it said that 85% of people admitted to having failed at one time or another. But here's the interesting tidbit - 57% said  when asked if the failure was tied to not setting PR goals or setting unrealistic goals at the start, 57% said yes. And I think that that's really important because that's more than half of those surveyed. Now, some of the other reasons for failure, the top reason is the budget was too small and the client wasn't paying us enough for hours to accomplish the goals. That is so common.

 

Michelle Kane

Huge.

 

Karen Swim, APR

And then, the number two reason was the client or company saw itself, or its product as really unique, but it turned out that it was not very well differentiated from competitors. And so we know that all of you are nodding your heads, this happens all the time. And it's a big part of what we have to continue to re reinforce with clients and continue to educate. I have been doing this for more than 15 years as well, nearly 20 years. And I would agree with all of those things. And as seasoned as I am and as thoughtful and meticulous as we are during the prospecting pro process and the onboarding process, we still have to remind clients of what PR really involves. Yeah. People truly do not, first of all, understand the amount of labor that goes into getting the results that we get.

And it starts when we're putting together strategic plans because we don't just go, “Hey, thanks for being a client and now we're just going to go out pitching.” There's a lot of things that have to be in place before we do that. And I don't think clients understand them. All of those things are for your benefit, dear clients. They're not because we don't know how to do our jobs, they're for your benefit. Us taking the time to put together a strategic plan helps us to have a document that aligns goals. It helps us to concur on what the challenges are in your company, in your industry. It helps us to affirm the trends that we're seeing and affirm that those are the trends that you're seeing. It helps us to make sure that we're looking at the right competitors. And it gives you a different lens by having somebody take and outside view on your business and make sure that we're attacking the right problems and coming up with the right solution.

 

So this is beneficial to you, this is work. But so often clients have in their mind that PR is just media results. Right. Period. And they don't understand what it takes to get there. You know, when we do secure a piece of coverage, then we have to do your briefing. We have to prepare you for an interview. We have to go through the interview, the interview has to be coordinated after the interview is coordinated and it happens, there's often tons of follow-up questions that we're managing. And then maybe the coverage will appear in two weeks,

Michelle Kane (06:27):

Maybe a month

Karen Swim, APR (06:29):

Could be seven months later, could be next year. We have no control over that. And God forbid that there's something in the final story that needs to be corrected. So there are a lot of things that happen in a lot of moving pieces, and I think that with clients, the unrealistic expectations start with not really a appreciating everything that we do to get to that final result.

Michelle Kane (06:56):

Right. Right. And that's, and even many times attempting to achieve that final result, because we do not have control over that. Which, like you said, is why it's wise to also have tactics beyond media relations. And they think it's simple. And again, I think psychologically it comes down to, well, we use the same tools. We type on a keyboard and we print things on paper so we can do it. And you know, I don't mean to devalue clients out there, but there's so much more to that, you know? Just a little bit more to that. And, like you said, sometimes the product, the project, even the event does not have the unique angle that they're looking for. So a lot of times, I will seek to temper those unrealistic expectations by coaching them that people want to feel compelled to act in whatever way you want them to. So it's got to have a human story. Reporters want to tell someone's story, not just say, “Hey, look at this great new thing.” And that can take time and that can take figuring out who the right targets are, all that good stuff that I know we all know.

Karen Swim, APR (08:29):

It's true. But we all face those situations where you have to make the decision, like, how far do I push this? Where do I put my stake in the ground? For me it's always, what hill do I die on and which thing do I walk away from? And I think that we routinely bite our tongues on what we really want to say sometimes to people, but it's our job to always provide confident strategic counsel. And so I think, you know, one of the things that helps me to decide when to let it go and when to forcefully fight for something is if it's going to harm the client or their publics, I'm going to fight you. Hard. I'm going to go to the death on it. And I don't mean that I'm going to argue with you, I'm going to advocate for the right thing. I'm not ever going to be a part of something that is unethical. I have had to just very plainly say that in the past, like, this is unethical. No, we can't do that. Even if it means that you resign yourself from a client, if they will not take your counsel and it's something unethical and you have to resign yourself to not be a part of it, it's well worth it to hold onto your reputation and your integrity.

Michelle Kane (10:09):

Yeah. Because at the end of the day, that's all you have is your integrity and your name. And so, please never, ever compromise the integrity of your work and your name, your company name. I know, I get it sometimes, hey, I really need this billing. I get it. But I promise you it's always the right thing to do

Karen Swim, APR (10:33):

Because we have seen, we have seen this, so we have lots of ways that people have cut corners and that they have done things. And eventually it does become a crisis because you cannot operate unethically and expect nothing to go wrong. So the client who wants to do that is not the client for you. And they're creating problems for themselves. They're taking these shortcuts to get short-term wins, but they won't last and it will harm them even more in the long run. And so those things I think for all of us, and we know this, we know that those are non-negotiable, but then there are those things like, okay, should I just let it go? So great example is, you know, a client has a new product and they want to do a press release. Clients love press release.

Michelle Kane (11:26):

Oh, they do.

Karen Swim, APR (11:27):

We just love them. But everything is not news. No. We know that. We know how to counsel through this. Sometimes you're not going to win and they are just going to want to announce their product. You let it go. However, in letting it go, there are a couple things that you can do. Number one, try to get to the root of why this is so important to them. Ask questions like, great, this is so great and I understand why the company is so excited about this product. Let's talk a little bit about what you think or hope for a press release to do for business. Sometimes they just want to put it out there. When you work in tech, you see this all the time, there are a lot of our client competitors and we point this out to them as a value add.

They do zero thought leadership. They have no POV, they have no bylined articles, they have nothing out there except for product press releases. That's all they do. Product press releases because that's the only “PR” that they know how to do. And so if they're in an industry that routinely does product announcement press releases, sometimes you have to let it go and let them have their product. Press release isn’t the end of the world. It really isn't. But you have to set the table, Hey, I understand it. And as long as you understand that you putting this out there aligns you with what your competitors do and what is normal in this industry. And it may have some SEO benefit, but this is not a news trigger. This is not something that we would go out and pitch stories around. And as long as we're aligned on those objectives, I'm happy to put this out on the wire for you.

Michelle Kane (13:15):

Right, right. You know, as long as you know it's a low hum, you might get, you know, a little tidbit and a business listing of “here's what's happening this week.” As long as you know that, fine. I call it the “so what?” factor. I'll say, “okay, that's great. But I'm going to counter with, “So what? So your company's 50. So what? Where's the ‘care’ in that? Are you going to initiate a program with a nonprofit in honor of this and we're going to affect lives? Awesome. That I can sell.” It'll get you a little blurb in the business journal if we're lucky. And that's ok too, but just know that that's all it's going to get you.

Karen Swim, APR (14:06):

And that's called honesty. Because at the end of the day, if you don't speak up and really provide counsel, and you're quiet about, eh, I don't think that's a good idea. And you're not really saying exactly what you need to say to the client. And then they don't get the results that they think in their mind they should get. Guess who's going to be held accountable? It's you. And so you need to speak up. But I also think sometimes you can redirect or come up with something that actually gets them the results that they want with a different tactic. Yes. So, maybe they bring you something and they're all gung-ho about doing it, and you ask questions. “Wow. Yeah. That, that would be a good idea. However, let's take a step back. What is it that you really, what's the importance?” Do they want to drive business leads? Are they trying to get signups for something in particular? Do they need to do a certain amount of demos? You know, what is it? Find out what's really going on because clients are not always articulating what's beneath the scenes. You know, new leadership is coming in and we need to do this because we're afraid we're going to be acquired. Because I am trying to show my boss that marketing has value. Sometimes you'll get this, sometimes your contact is the CMO and they're under fire. Find out what's really going on. Don't be afraid to ask a lot of questions and say, “Okay, look, I know that you know this, so let's be honest with one another. Let me know what's going on, and then let's figure out a better way to hit your goals.” Because often there is another way that you can do what they get what they want instead of the bad method that they've proposed.

Michelle Kane (15:59):

Yeah. And so often it's something that, you know, not for their lack of experience, but they just might not have thought of. I use two phrases all the time. I say, “Look, I don't need to know everything, but I need to know everything.” And “I'm only as good as the information that I have. So if I don't have the information, I'm no good.” So help me help you.

Karen Swim, APR (16:23):

Yes. How, how many of us in the audience, and I know that so many of you will raise your hand, have ever had clients that are so gung-ho about op-eds without, and it's because something has crossed their, their eyes that they are just fired up about. And they need to say it and it hits in their wheelhouse and they just need to say it. That's not what an op-ed is though. And we know that. We know that you can't just because you're mad about something and because it's in your space that you can't just write what a what a equates to a blog post and have the New York Times publish it. That's just not how things work.

No,<laugh>. So <laugh>, we've all been in that situation where you have to sort of talk them down and say, Hmm, I understand that. And if they really want to do an op-ed, you can recommend an op-ed writer. Maybe you're an op-ed writer who does PR, you can write the op-ed for them and explain to them what an op-ed really does. You know? Here's how you really get an op-ed published. Maybe they want to be on the Joe Rogan podcast. And you have to dial it back and explain, “Have you listened to the podcast? Do you see common threads with the guests that they have on?” And I mean, this is true of others, sometimes people want things and it's like, have you noticed that everybody they talk to is from a publicly traded company or they have written five books? I'm not saying that you're not important to a lot of people, including me, but I'm saying that they look over hidden gems like yourself. Because this is the playbook. Clients don't always get that.

Michelle Kane (18:16):

Yeah. And sometimes they don't get that. Sometimes it really does come down to serendipity.

Karen Swim, APR (18:22):

Yeah.

Michelle Kane (18:23):

You know, even if you are all those things, it still doesn't mean that you're going to get the placement. And that has so many factors, you know, timing, just so many things that can play into that. And sometimes it's tough, but that's the beauty of coming up with other ideas that end up being more useful really than just the shiny thing that they might want. You know, get me on the Today Show!

Karen Swim, APR (18:57):

That used to be the rallying cry. Now it's this article in the New York Times. Can we get that too?

Michelle Kane (19:06):

No, No.

Karen Swim, APR (19:06):

<Laugh> No, you can't. But you know, again, it's sometimes you bite your tongue when it's, listen, you let them have some things, you let them have it. You still gently guide them in what they can really expect from doing this thing that they are so hot on doing. And you let them have it. And I don't want to demean clients, but we all know that in every relationship there's negotiation, right? Mm-Hmm. Whether it's personal or professional, you negotiate with the people that you're in relationship with, with friends, with spouses, with your kids. There's negotiation that happens all the time. And sometimes we have to let people do what they are so intent on doing. And we can't always cushion the landing for them.

Michelle Kane (20:05):

<Laugh>.

Karen Swim, APR (20:06):

We can't, sometimes they just have to do it and experience what you've already told them will happen. We don't want that for our clients. But there are those times when it's, again, as we've talked about, when it's not unethical, when it's not going to harm them, it's just going to be a boneheaded thing that they do. And then just be there to continue on with the good work. I've had clients do studies and me and my colleague, we are research queens. We are the queens of research. She actually worked in research before PR, we know research, we know data. We know how to sell a study. We know how to write a study. We know how to put the questions together. We work with so many of the top research firms. We know this space. But inevitably there's a client that is seduced by some big name and they spend an incredible amount of money on a study that no one's ever going to cover and no one cares about. In those instances, sometimes you got to bite your tongue and mind your business.

Michelle Kane (21:16):

Yep. Definitely. You know, for me it's sometimes you've got to let those Oxford commas go unless they really change the meaning of the sentence <laugh>.

Karen Swim, APR (21:30):

Yes.

Michelle Kane (21:31):

And you know, the beauty actually of all these opportunities, because in our line of work, we know how to find the value, even if it's a horrific <laugh> failure. But these are learning opportunities, right? It's not like you're going to go back to your client and say, I told you so. It's okay, let's reevaluate. Where could we have done better? Perhaps this will work better next time. Let's all learn from this and we dust ourselves off and we move on to the next thing. And that is okay.

So yes, as counselors, we are here to put out that mom arm as you slam on the brakes to make sure that our clients are safe. You hope they listen. If they don't, hopefully next time they will wear their seatbelt, which is listening to us.

So we hope you've gotten something out of this and I expect you were giggling along and thinking of all the times you bit your tongue and also minded your business.

We appreciate each and every one of you. And if you did get value out of this, please share it around. And if you have any feedback, hit us up at soloprpro.com. We are on Instagram, we are on Facebook, and of course, at the mothership, the website of soloprpro.com. And until next time, thanks for listening to That Solo Life.

 

The Land of the Wounded: Mental Health and PR

We can all say we’re OK. But after the past few years, are we? As co-host Karen Swim says, so many of us are walking around held together “with spit and duct tape.” In this episode we talk about how we can work on our mental health.

 

Read about the PR News poll. 

 

Transcript

 

The Land of the Wounded: Mental Health and PR
That Solo Life Episode 205

Michelle Kane (00:02):

Thank you for joining an episode of That Solo Life, the podcast for PR pros and marketers who work for themselves, people like me, Michelle Kane, with VoiceMatters and my wonderful co-host, Karen Swim of Solo PR Pro. Hi Karen, how are you today?

Karen Swim (00:18):

I'm good, Michelle. Hello. Hello. How are you doing?

Michelle Kane (00:22):

I'm good. Yeah. You know, good

Karen Swim (00:26):

in all the weirdness of PR land

Michelle Kane (00:29):

And boy can it get weird. Yeah. That's why we thought today it would be wise to talk, just a little check in about mental health. Because even though we both just said we're good, seems like I, I love what you said earlier, Karen, before we started this episode of everyone's just kind of walking around keeping it together with spit and duct tape, .

Karen Swim (00:53):

Yeah. It's so true and so unfortunate. And, you know, we started planning ahead for this topic when this article came out in PR news. And it was a poll asked, and the question posed was, do PR employees feel comfortable discussing mental health struggles? And 68% of people said no. Now granted, this was a small poll. However, you and I have no problems believing this. And I believe that this plays into the bigger narrative of traditionally work has been that place where people expect you to have nothing wrong with you. It's why pre pandemic people would have a cold and they would come to work, they'd get the flu, and as long as they could walk, they would come to work. You would say, “Are you okay?” Yeah, yeah, I'm fine. Because that's the American way. Yeah, yeah. I'm fine. Yeah.

Michelle Kane (01:55):

Yes, exactly.

Karen Swim (01:56):

I'm fine. You know, people would die and you would work. And , we pr pros, we took that into our own businesses and we amplified it because suddenly we not only felt like it wasn't okay not to be okay, but that we had to be triple okay. Because it was our own business, so we could never take the time to tend to ourselves.

Michelle Kane (02:18):

Right. Right.

Karen Swim (02:20):

And I would love to say that the pandemic changed all of that at a corporate level, but it did not. What did change is our awareness that we're not okay. Everybody is dealing with something. And it's been, I think we all had this hope, which is why there was a part of the pandemic that was a happy time for everybody. We were breaking bread, we were listening to music, we were gathering together, and we were like, we're going to get through this because we truly believed that there would be an end and that there would be a better new normal. Right. What we experienced was continuing series of trauma. And in PR specifically, our industry has undergone massive waves of change. The media landscape is different, clients are different. And we have the economic challenges. It's just, it's a lot.

Michelle Kane (03:20):

It's a lot.

Karen Swim (03:21):

And it, it breaks my heart that we all have our stuff, we all have our days, we all have our moments where we may be experiencing anxiety, depression, and we feel like we have to present to the world and to our clients this front of I'm okay.

Michelle Kane (03:41):

Yeah.

Karen Swim (03:42):

And you know, there's a part of us that thinks nobody wants to hear that we, or if I say I'm not okay, then what? You know, I have to exude trust and confidence. And if I'm not okay, they won't trust me.

Michelle Kane (04:01):

Exactly. And, we're moreso that in our business where it's our job to keep everyone together, to keep it together, to present the perfect, not false, but to present the best front possible and really represent well. And a couple of things you touched on, now granted I've only ever lived in this country, but it just feels so American, the whole pull yourself up by your bootstraps. Never let 'em see you sweat. I mean, when you were talking about that in the workplace, my gosh. You would never show any glimmer. You’d be “Oh no, everything's fine. I've got it together,” because I am a fiercely, highly competent person who is going to give my best and my all to you, workplace. I'll just cry on the way home. It's fine. .

Karen Swim (04:51):

I mean, I have to tell you that growing up in California and moving to the Midwest, and even though my parents were Midwesterners, I didn't, they were different. Moving to the Midwest, I really have to protect myself from that Midwestern like grit. It's inspiring in some ways, but they don't do complaints in the Midwest. You just don't complain. You just get or done. It's like, well, lost my leg yesterday. I'm going to go out for a walk today. You know, I've known people that have had surgeries and they're not even supposed to be out of the house and they refuse to ask for help.

I would walk your dog. Yeah, no, they're just going to take their cane and they're walker and they're going to hobble along when they're not even supposed to be out of bed and they're going to do it. And I heard someone the other day say there was a couple and the woman was alone and we inquired after her husband and she goes, yeah, you know, he can only walk so far now. And then one of the other, one of our other friends said, well, if you can't walk, you gotta walk. And if you don't walk, you won't be able to walk. And so his solution is like, if you stop…and I feel like this is the message that we send to PR pros. Like, if you don't grit it out, if you don't bear up, if you don't brute force it through, then you're gonna be terrible.

 

Instead of saying, sometimes you can't walk. You really can’t walk. You need support to get back on your feet to walk. You can't take another step. You are incapable of doing it. Whether it is a psychological challenge or whether it's an actual physical challenge. And, I want to, we would be remiss in saying we're not experts, we are not mental health professionals. This is just PR pros inside talk. Yeah. Sometimes your issues could be some type of imbalance. It could be a nutritional deficiency, it could be a vitamin deficiency, it could be something physical, it could be a hormonal imbalance. So don't ignore it and don't brute force your way through it. Talk to somebody, talk to your doctor.

Michelle Kane (07:16):

Yeah. I think

Karen Swim (07:17):

Get to your doctor these days. .

Michelle Kane (07:20):

I know there are now, so I've got the Pennsylvania Dutch work ethic side of this. It's similar to the Midwest work ethic. You just do it. And I think it's also coupled with being two generations away from the depression era. Hearing my grandmother say, “Oh, but you can't leave that company. They've been good to you.” I'm like, that's not about them, it's about me. But I do know that there are several companies in my region large, like, feeding the eastern seaboard companies, that they have always had an EAP program, an employee assistance program where they will say, “Hey, we have an arrangement with this mental health facility if you have an issue.” Which I thought was really enlightened of them. I don't know if that stemmed from experience, I don't know. So even as you seek to work with clients, if you get a vibe that they don’t give that kind of support, then it might be an unhealthy relationship.

And just to touch on your point about our global trauma that we've been through. I don't know about you, but it's funny, it's often the little things that can trip me up. But if it's like a big crisis, like, okay, let's get to the ER and we can deal, deal, deal, deal, deal, deal. And it's not till maybe a month or two after that, after you've dealt, you're just, ugh. And I get the vibe that globally that's where we are. We got through the big, heavy, scary thing. And even though scary things are still happening, we're just like, so, you know, I know many of our peers or our clients have struggled with getting people, oh, people don't want to come to events, they don't want to do this. I'm like, we're still processing a lot of stuff and realigning ourselves, and speaking into that could be, maybe you're just not right enough yet. You know, I was sharing with you before recording and you know, maybe it's my stage in life, maybe it's a whole lot of things, but I go to things and I enjoy them, but as I'm enjoying them, I still sense a little flatness and I'm like, Hmm.

Karen Swim (09:23):

Yeah.

Michelle Kane (09:24):

Is that because I'm burdened by worrying about work? Is it just, is it all that or is this just life in this era? I don't know.

Karen Swim (09:36):

But, and I think we can't accept that right. Because, and let's face it, like even getting back to quote unquote some normalcy, normal is not normal. Nothing is like it was. And so I have learned to say, you know what, I'm not going to be so hard on myself because we, there's this constant wave of change and you're trying to find your footing and then you try to do things that you used to do, but nothing really is quite the same and no one is quite the same. Whether you can pretend that you are, but we are not, none of us not one single person on this earth. Because I, I think we also sometimes forget that Covid was not a United States pandemic. This was global. And I think, you know, of course as PR professionals, we can't vomit on our clients.

We shouldn't do that. If you're at work, you, you shouldn't be vomiting on your colleagues either. I would love to see more corporate workplaces understand that. We used to think of the workforce as this monolithic unit and basically you divorced people from every other part of themselves when they came to work. They were a worker. That's it. They were a worker. They just do their work. You didn't care about their issues. You didn't care if they had children. And people felt like they couldn't disclose things. I was, it was heartbreaking to hear that there are women some of our solo PR pro members that didn't really want to share that they were moms because they felt like that would be considered a disability and I just we're done with that world. And as PR pros, we should be advocating and we should be checking in with our clients as well to ensure that their culture is not, it is not toxic for their own employees.

I mean, we can play a role in helping them to create these healthy cultures that recognize that human beings are full human beings with full lives and sometimes they have stuff going on. And this is not necessarily copping out and giving people an excuse to not be great at work. It's creating an environment that lets people thrive. It's creating tools for people when they struggle and understanding that it's okay to struggle. It's having benefits programs that really align with their needs and really saying, “Hey, it's okay.” Making it okay to take a day off without providing a reason. I even hate that we call it a “mental health day.” Because it's nobody's business. If you're having a day and you need a break, you need a reset that should be your business and you should be able to take it. Period. No questions asked.

Michelle Kane (12:40):

And, I think there is a certain freedom in a workplace that has that level of understanding of, you know, I might be the best worker you ever have, but that does not mean I have to be that every day, every minute, all the time. I mean it's, look, it's unrealistic.

Karen Swim (13:01):

It is.

Michelle Kane (13:02):

But the attitude still pervades out there. And I think sometimes we can perhaps wield that with ourselves. I was having a conversation with a couple of colleagues and they were having trouble just kind of ramping down, having come off a super-hot urgent all hands on deck project. And then suddenly everything felt that way. And I thought, where are you going except smashing into an eventual wall. Like, not everything is urgent. You don't have to speed through all the things.

Karen Swim (13:36):

I see that from colleagues too, where it's not only the urgency, but it's the stress, the unnecessary stress. You know, the client's going to be mad because we didn't get media this week. Okay. But this is the way that it works. Now we pitch stuff and we get an answer a month later. We secure opportunities and then it takes four months to publish. We've secured opportunities that are not publishing until 2024. What does that say about the landscape to you?

Michelle Kane (14:07):

Wow. That's incredible. But, here's the essence of it. You secured opportunities, so it should be all good. But yeah, I get that. I even get that mental tape in my head sometimes of, oh my gosh, if I don't turn this in today, they're going to yell at me. And then I had to sit myself down and go, Michelle, now hopefully I didn't just jinx myself. I'm like, when has a client ever called you on the phone or texted you screaming?

Karen Swim (14:33):

And I would venture to say, some of us, especially in the past couple of years, we've experienced some toxic clients. We've all had toxic clients. But I would venture to say that our audience, because we have a very smart audience, and I believe that our members particularly, they all have integrity. They're good at their jobs and they are thoughtful and they're conscientious. And we're not saying be less conscientious, but we're saying be conscientious for your own needs as well.  There are several things that you can do. One is to realize that you're not broken. You are not an outlier. You're not the only person that may be having a season of struggle. Two is talk to some type of professional, whether it's your nutritionist, whether it your physician, telehealth appointment, mental health app, to, to make sure that you are not missing signs of something that has an underlying reason.

You don't want to do that. So you don't want to ignore, if you're feeling kind of blue and or you're feeling kind of tired or you're not sleeping, don't just chalk it up to it'll get better. Because so often these things do not resolve on them their own. Don't be afraid to get support. Whatever that support turns out to be for you, it's okay. And then I would say one of the things that one of my clients really highlighted for me that is so powerful. So I work with this group called Circles and they have this app and it's online, it's on demand support groups. And he created it out of some personal experiences based on the premise that people, there's therapeutic value when people help people who are going through the same exact thing. So, if you're somebody who's been through a divorce, your ears perk up when you talk to somebody who has been through a divorce and they know exactly what you're talking about. If you've lost a parent, somebody else who lost a parent, their words resonate so powerfully with you. There's power in that.

Well, as PR pros, no one but us really understands our job. No one understands what we're going through with clients and business development and the climate that we're in. So don't cut yourself off from your colleagues because even if you're not getting together to say, “Oh my God, I can't sleep at night, I'm having anxiety,” you can at least get together and share some of the things that are causing you agita. And with people who will not judge you, who understand. And there's such comfort in that.  So, you know, like when Michelle and I talk, I always walk away laughing and feeling better. Because we get to kvetch with one another and she gets it and I get it. And so it's therapeutic. Do not dismiss the power in tapping into people who share your values. Don't isolate yourself even though you may feel like it because you're not feeling your best. You need to reach out and talk to someone. It's one of the reasons why this month, I set up these solo sessions where I offered up, I opened up some slots in my calendar for people to just book time to just chat with me one-on-one. Just us no recordings, nothing shared outside of me and that person and open enough for them to talk about whatever they needed to talk about in that moment. It's not a lot, but it's something that so many people took advantage of because they need it that time.

Michelle Kane (18:32):

That's huge. I couch myself as an, an extroverted introvert, so right away I'm wired for solitude more or less. But it's not until you either push yourself to get out there that you realize, okay, I needed to be out with people. Yesterday I had an 8:00 AM coffee meeting. On paper that sounds horrible. But I was so rejuvenated by the end of that hour conversation, I felt so much better about starting my day. And I thought, huh, maybe I should do this every day. And I thought, ugh, . So yes, I have a little ways to go, but it can be with PR peers, and it could even be colleagues. I know I have some in-house colleagues in my region that may be the only PR person in their company or something. And if we'll just do 15-minute vents, “Hey, how you doing? Blah, blah, blah. And you're like, can you believe it? No, I don't believe it. Yeah. Okay. So, you know, I I'm glad that we've both established, neither of us sucks. We're competent.” .

Karen Swim (19:42):

Yeah. I mean, it

Michelle Kane (19:43):

Just keep rolling with it.

Karen Swim (19:45):

It’s worth it sometimes to go to a networking event or go to a workshop, an in-person workshop and learn something new because that's energizing. Learn something that's different from PR. Go take an art class, take a gardening class, invite somebody to go for a walk with you. It doesn't always have to be like, yeah, let's have dinner, let's have lunch. Those things are great too. But, you know, see if there's another colleague like, “Hey, you want to take a walk and just take advantage of the weather being nice enough to do that?” Because you will be rejuvenated. And so the isolation only makes things worse. And I think we're here today to tell you that you are not alone. You are not the only person dealing with whatever you're dealing with. Whatever it is, and however big it seems in your head, I promise you you're not alone. If Belle could talk, she would tell you stories.  She’d say, “I didn't know what to get, but I tried to get the thing that was making mommy cry. And so I barked at it, but I didn't know what I was barking at, but I was trying to help and so I just went to mommy and I'm like, mommy, tell me what to get and I'll make it better for you. But I couldn't see it.”

Michelle Kane (20:58):

Yeah. And you know what? I mean, everybody's got something.

Karen Swim (21:02):

Yeah. Everybody has something, you know, whatever, whatever. It's like.

Michelle Kane (21:07):

Yeah. And, and, and I clearly

Karen Swim (21:08):

You're not alone.

Michelle Kane (21:09):

I guarantee even the most perfectly presenting person that has it all together, they got their own stuff. They just aren't as comfortable showing it. And that could be even with themselves,

Karen Swim (21:23):

Which is why you also honestly, when I have those sensitive moments, I do not look at social media. I'll go to groups. Because, you know, again, it's protecting myself from things that are triggers. And, so I think you have to understand what your triggers are too and protect yourself from those things. The news can be a trigger, too much information sometimes is not necessarily a blessing. And I know we PR pros, we're wired to think that we have to know all of the things all of the time. You do not. Whatever those triggers are, sometimes you just need to get in your own little bubble and not go there. So it's true. Don't be afraid to do that. It's okay.

Michelle Kane (22:08):

It doesn't have to be a big fat retreat, it can just be an hour break or something. You know, indulge in something that you really want to do or what you need to do. I know for me, I like to go to the movies, but sometimes it's just, I need to sit in a dark room with nasty popcorn and be available to no one. So if that's your thing, by all means do it. Ultimately, I feel like it's silly coming out of my mouth, but I know it's not because I don't practice it as much as I should. It's okay to take care of yourself.

Karen Swim (22:47):

Oh my gosh. It really is. It's not only okay, it's good for business because if you're good then you're going to do good work and you're not going to be brute forcing your way through it. So please do. Take time off. Go get a massage. I like massages. I know everybody doesn't, whatever it is that makes you feel that joy that makes you feel restored and balanced, make time, treat yourself with care and love and respect. You should not be treating other people better than you treat yourself.

Michelle Kane (23:30):

That is so true. And I know for many of us, that is a really, really difficult lesson to learn. And, hey, real talk right now. I am so ridiculous. How ridiculous am I? Let's see, I've had, my foot's been sore for maybe a month. I finally got tired of my foot being sore and I was like, Hmm, there's nothing external. So I went to the podiatrist and I said, yeah, it's been about a month. They're like, oh, well it's this tendon, the tendon is irritated, so do these calf stretches. And I said, oh, so you mean if I had gone to my yoga class like I should have been doing for the past six months, I wouldn't be here . That, that's how ridiculous I am, and I'm sure there's many of you nodding about that. So if I had invested in taking care of myself rather than doing one more hour of work, because ooh, gotta hit those numbers. So, we're all learning.

Karen Swim (24:25):

We’re all still learning. We hope this has helped you to take a deep breath, to feel like you are not alone. We hope that you are inspired to take better care of yourself, to make time for your own needs. That's not being selfish, it's not being a terrible worker. You're not a terrible PR pro. You're a great business owner, but you have to care for yourself. And if you have suggestions or things that have worked for you, as always, we always love to hear from you. Please hit us up on any of the social media channels and use the hashtag #soloPR so that we know and we can spot those because we track that hashtag

Michelle Kane (25:10):

Yeah, we would love that. We would love that. So we definitely want to hear from you and please, if you have a friend that you think needs to hear this or if you need to listen to it a lot, because I may need to listen to this a lot, who knows. But we do, we value that you give us your valuable time. So until next time, thanks for listening to That Solo Life.

 

 

 

 

Let It Go

Let it go. No, we’re not going to sing that song. We are talking about all the ways solo PR pros can delegate to people and tools so we can grow our businesses and free up time in our schedules while still delivering for our clients.

 

Transcript

Michelle Kane (00:02):

Thank you for joining us for that Solo life, the podcast for PR pros and marketers who work for themselves, people like me, Michelle Kane, with VoiceMatters and my wonderful co-host, Karen Swim of Solo PR Pro. Hi, Karen. Here we are, another day, another episode. How are you?

Karen Swim, APR (00:20):

I am good, thank you. I, you know, it's funny for listeners who will later see the video, I feel like I am took myself back to 1970 for some reason today, like I'm wearing a headset over my head today and have this purple thing on the back of my chair, because it's freezing in my office, . And so, yeah, I'm good.

Michelle Kane (00:43):

All good. It's all good.

Karen Swim, APR (00:44):

Karen Swim, hippie. Karen Swim, coming to you from 1972, .

Michelle Kane (00:50):

I'll send in my radio request later. Oh my gosh. Well, I'm excited about our topic today because it's something that really helps us through our day today, and the theme of the day is - let it go - and no, we don't mean just run away from your desk and never come back.

 

Karen Swim, APR

Are you sure?

 

Michelle Kane

Well, it has been that kind of week so far, but I'm going to grit my teeth and get through. It's about delegation. What can we delegate? Because how else can we grow our business? You know, we only have a finite amount of time and energy, and of course we solos have a whole lot of get up and go and, ooh, let's do all the things. So how do we marry those two ideas to achieve the most success? We're just going to touch on some points of things you can do.

Karen Swim, APR (01:49):

I feel like this topic comes up quite a bit, what are the practical ways that I can relieve some of my load and gain back time so that I have the opportunity to work on the business and the opportunity to do more strategic work for my clients? And so I'm looking forward to chatting about this today and offering up some, some practical tips, some things that you can think about.

Michelle Kane (02:20):

Yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean, one of those is certainly your content creation, right? You don't need to write every single piece of everything you do there. There is low hanging fruit that you can hand off, or even dare I say ChatGPT, if it's an event release, something so simple that you could do in your sleep. Well, pop those facts in, massage it up and, you know, let it go. Or, even work with others. I know my local school district has a program called Pathways 360, where they encourage you to take on a mentee. So that's a great way to get help as well. Look around you and see what opportunities there are to mentor someone and also get a little help for yourself too.

Karen Swim, APR (03:10):

I completely agree and realizing, we should have set this up top, but as you delegate things to other people, you will have to realize that there will be a period of time where you will need to train people on what you want. So it's really important to, for example, if you're going to outsource writing, I think content creation is a fabulous thing to outsource and outsourcing it in a way that you can truly optimize it. For example, if you, for your own agency, write a blog, or maybe you're doing blog posts for clients, that is something that you personally don't have to write. But oftentimes we want to take that content and we want to get the most out of it by repurposing it. So maybe you have a byline opportunity and you want to take that byline and you wiant to pitch it again by slightly tweaking it, outsource all of that at one time. If you're chopping it up into social media posts, that's something else that you could do all at once. Make sure that you clearly communicate needs in a written brief or some type of document that the writer has on hand. Provide examples and then build in a window of time so that you could step in and help to shape the content.

Michelle Kane (04:33):

That's so key. I think especially, it's not just giving them an a deadline, but because, and especially if this is someone new that you're working with, or if it's the first time that you're doing it, because let's face it we tend to be type A control freaks in this business. What? Me? Who? And so you want to make sure that it's going in the way that you want it to go. It has the right tone, it's hitting all the right points. So I agree. Set up that check-in time as well.

Karen Swim, APR (05:03):

Yeah. And here's the big game changer. AI really has been a game changer in being able to use it for content creation, but that does not mean that you cannot still outsource that as well to someone else. Maybe you have an assistant and it's a good opportunity to really harness AI. You will also do better if you start with some clear idea because you want to treat AI like an intern where you're giving it enough information in the prompts to deliver something that's actually meaningful. The more you use AI, the better that you get at getting better results because you're giving better input. And so you have to realize that AI is a computer. So in the same way that you a Google search and you don't want to say, “Hey, find me a Mediterranean restaurant.” Where? In the entire world or in your neighborhood? You want to give it specific information because the more specific that you are, the better the answers are going to come back. And so, same thing with AI, but again, it's something that you could have an intern do, provide the information, and then you can go in and you can refine your prompts and tell it how to talk to you, what not to include. All good tips. So again, and that takes something off of your plate and gives you back time.

Michelle Kane (06:38):

Exactly. I think it's a great way to do it. I would say another thing too is even if you struggle with keeping your schedule, you could try and get an assistant to help you there, and make it a real person. We've talked about that lately, no pen names with your assistants, but, get a gatekeeper in some ways if that's an issue for you or if you struggle with creating that time for deep thinking or deep project work, especially. And, I know it's hard. It's hard to say, “No.” You want to please everyone. I get asked for meetings, and if I see that it's more than two weeks out, I start to feel bad. And I know that's, even in the moment I catch myself with that, Michelle, that's not bad. That's a good thing. But at the same time, if you need some help there, I think that's another way that you can take that load off your mind and just get a little help.

Karen Swim, APR (07:44):

Yeah. It's interesting, you know, when we first chose this topic, we were really thinking along human lines. And it's interesting, things have changed so fast that so many of these things can actually be semi-delegated to AI. So for example, when we're thinking about the writing that can be semi-delegated to AI, it definitely can cut down your time. Research is another area that you can delegate to a human being or to AI. You can have AI do research for you. Again, yes, you will have to fact check some things, and you need to make sure that you're getting back accurate information. But the better that you get at using AI, the better the information does become and ChatGPT for me, I highly recommend it and it has gotten better. And now there's GPT4, which is going to be a completely different experience for you.

It's 20 bucks a month for the premium version, not a big amount of money, and the time savings is worth it. So research. You can even use ChatGPT to write plans. So I know that that's one of those areas where as PR pros, we typically do not want to delegate fully because it requires some strategic thinking. But you can shave some time off of putting that plan together, putting together the charts, putting together the timelines by inputting information into ChatGPT. So spending some time there and then saving time and, again, maybe this is step one that you can delegate to an assistant, to a junior employee or even to a contractor. And then you can take that information and now you have something to work with that's going to save you time and you've protected, you've protected your time to be able to do that higher value work.

Michelle Kane (09:47):

Yeah. And, and I think especially, I know this is often my experience and it's because it's a lot of strategic thinking, but let's face it, these are ideas, ideas that come from our minds, and that sounded dumb, but you know what I mean, , it takes your energy. And, it doesn't matter how many plans you've done, you still sometimes sit there and look at the page and go, okay, I know I've done this a zillion times, but I want to make sure this is specific as needed to the client, and let's make sure this is the best it can be. And if you can get a little help with that, there's no shame in that. That's working smarter, not harder, which is what we should all be striving to do.

Karen Swim, APR (10:34):

And here's a big one, I think for so many people. Use a virtual assistant to manage your communications in your calendar. So this can mean somebody that checks through your emails and eliminates all the garbage and gives you maybe a summary of things that need a response that they can actually respond to on your behalf. They can set up meetings, they can manage things for you. Again, it just takes you training them on how you like to schedule meetings. Are there days that you like to block off? Or you can do that yourself by using a share calendar? Are there certain emails that you don't care if you ever see and they can just, you know, either respond to them or trash them to keep your inbox clean so you can use an assistant for those things. And, and that again, preserves your bandwidth

Because you said the key thing, Michelle, it's not always about the physical amount of time. It's really about saving our brain power, our energy levels. It is, it can be draining to sift through a full inbox and those messages don't go away. They just sit there for me, personally, and I'm sure for a lot of other people that are completely OCD, that clutter zaps energy, because it does, it's digital clutter. And it just drives me bananas. So I try to keep a clean inbox. So use a VA, that's something else that you can delegate. If you're somebody that's not comfortable with having somebody manage your schedule, I see you, I am that person because I feel like, somebody's going to put something on my calendar and then the day is going to come and I'm not going to feel like doing it. It's just stupid . It's dumb. But that is me all day long. I admit that.

Michelle Kane (12:23):

Like we said, let it go. See, I'm the polar opposite with my email. I'm not really a hoarder, but I like to know that they're there with me. A 50,000 email inbox doesn't bother me at all. I know…

Karen Swim, APR (12:40):

That just gave me anxiety. ,

Michelle Kane (12:45):

I think I've inherited my grandmother's depression era mindset. I might need that someday. I don't know.

Karen Swim, APR (12:56):

Yeah. Yeah. And my mentality is, you know what? You can find anything on the Goog . I can find it again. I don't care.

Michelle Kane (13:07):

I just had to drop that in, ‘cause I'm like, oh, I'm good. How many am I up to today? You don't want to know.

Karen Swim, APR (13:11):

And full inbox does not give me joy. Just, I'm just saying .

Michelle Kane (13:18):

Oh my goodness. But, I think because we've mentioned it several times throughout this podcast episode already, it is that training time. Because I think, I know for me that's a hindrance to making this happen many times because I think, well, I can just do it myself. Yeah, okay. That one time. But if you spend that “do it myself” time, maybe the equivalent of one to three times think, how much more time is that still going to open up for you? So this is not a quick fix necessarily. This is not just a, “Hey, could you call that person back for me?” This is an investment in your business and its growth. And I didn't slow that down because I think our listeners are five year olds. I said it because I need to tell it to myself like I'm a five year old, you know?

Karen Swim, APR (14:06):

Absolutely. And when you are mentally prepared to spend a couple of extra hours training along the way, I want you to ask yourself, will that be worth it? If you could save yourself, let's say if you could save yourself 10 hours per week, what would that mean for your business and for your life? If you had 10 extra hours in your work week, that could mean spending more time on actually focusing on how to scale your business. It could mean more time on, you know, business development, actually meeting with prospective clients and nurturing people through the pipeline. It could mean 10 hours where you could actually read some of those books that would help you to, to either, you know, just for fun or those books that you've been meaning to read that have valuable information to help you to grow as a professional.

It could mean that you have 10 hours to start that physical fitness program. I mean, that's a lot of time and it is within our reach. There is an investment of both time and a little bit of money sometimes. But it pays off. And you don't miss it either. You don't miss the investment of time or of money when you get to the other side of it and realize, oh my gosh, I should have done this years ago. It's, you know, bookkeeping is another thing. Why are you doing your books? It's just such an arduous task that you can outsource to a professional who can do your monthly books, have you ready for tax time. All of that takes a lot of weight off of your shoulders. And we're all about relieving burdens. And so you have to stop looking at the pennies in front of you and thinking, you know, “Oh my God, I don't have two extra hours today to go over this stuff.” Or “I don't have three extra hours this week to look at this and oh my gosh, I have to spend how much to do this?” because it's going to save you on the other side of it. So, first of all is shifting your thinking and understanding that you're worth it and that this stuff really has value.

Michelle Kane (16:31):

Yeah. And that is key. Think of this as a mindset exercise because our mindset is everything. And it's interesting. I've been in a couple of meetings lately where just in the course of our discussions - and I just speak from the position of I'm a solo. I spend a lot of time by myself here in the office and you work with clients and stuff, but they’re clients, you're doing their work. But when you're in some other circles and not quite sure what my point is, but it just elevates what you do in your mind. Sometimes we can discount what we do just because it comes easy to us because Yeah, yeah, yeah. Whatever, you know, we're just doing our thing, and you don't sometimes feel the effects of what you're doing. So, it is important to have those experiences and you have to free up your time to get there. And experiencing those mindset check-ins, I guess I call them that because it's so important and, and valuable to you as a person and as a professional and realize, oh yeah, okay, this is, this does matter. And yeah. Okay. This is good.

Karen Swim, APR (17:51):

I'll say it this way. You know, one of the best things that you can do for your business is to really fully embrace that you are a business owner. That you're not just a worker bee. And so when I hear people say, “Oh, I just go in a Canva and do my visual content, or I just do this, I just go here and I do the,” you're doing a lot, but if you were the CEO of a Fortune 100 company, would you be popping into Canda and creating your own images or would you be delegating that to someone else? So you have to really stop yourself and think, just because I can doesn't mean I have to. And the more that you embrace that role that you are a business owner, and that does not mean that sometimes you're not doing some of the things.

It's great that we know that sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do. There's the labor shortage. Sometimes you can't find people. You need to understand the parts of your business, but you're a business owner. And the more you act like it, the more that your customers treat you like that, the more that you grow up in how you price your services Yeah. And how you take control of your business and how you start to increase your confidence about what you're doing. But as long as you hold yourself down in that worker bee position, you don't realize that it's impacting other areas of your business. So I love Canva, but I have somebody else use Canva. I love all these tools, but I'm not doing all of those things because everything is not mission critical for me personally to do. And again, we PR types are such control freaks that we hate to like, you know, it's like you pride this out of my cold dead hands. We have to let go. And we have to understand that even with training, people are not going to do things exactly the way that you do it, but the way that you judge it isn't effective. Does it get the job done? Are my clients happy?

Michelle Kane (19:56):

Right. Right.

Karen Swim, APR (19:57):

Is it producing the outcome that's desired? If it is, let it go. They may not do things the same way as you do, I promise you they will not. It's okay because you didn't have to touch it. And so that's your goal is to find those things that, you know what? I didn't have to touch it. It happened, it worked. It's great. Let it go.

Michelle Kane (20:18):

Yeah. And all the more reason to have things like brand guidelines at the ready as you train the people, if they, they know the colorways and the fonts to use, and here are all the assets, it's less likely to go off the rails. So we can get our control in that.

Karen Swim, APR (20:35):

Yeah. We've talked about this before. One of the benefits of starting to delegate things in your business is that you also now start to have this documentation around your business, your process, your workflows. So in the event that you do need to take off for a period of time, and maybe you need to have another solo come in and cover for a time, maybe it's maternity leave, maybe it's paternity leave, maybe it's caregiving that is taking you away. Maybe it's a vacation. For any number of reasons, you may need to take a, a lesser role in your own business. You have documentation that makes it much easier to bring somebody alongside of you into the business. Or maybe at some point you just want to expand and you want to team up with another solo, or two or three or four or 10. You have processes. And so it makes it easier to slice and dice the work and to share with people how your business works, because you've already started this process.

Michelle Kane (21:33):

Yeah. Systems make the world go around. They're beautiful things.

Karen Swim, APR (21:38):

And by the way, that documentation is another thing that you can delegate .

Michelle Kane (21:48):

And you know, it's like anything, the more you do it, the easier it becomes. So we hope that this little pep talk to you and maybe to ourselves a little bit has been helpful. And if you do find this content valuable, please share it around with your friends and your colleagues on your own, all your socials. We would really appreciate that. And we do appreciate you giving us part of your busy day and listening to That Solo Life. And until next time, thank you for listening.

 

Sleepless in PR

One of our roles as PR practitioners is working with in-house marketing teams. Today’s episode was inspired by a recent article by Agility PR, 33 Comms Issues Keeping CMOs and Brand Managers Up at Night. Join us as we talk about their current pain points and how we can be a valued resource.

 

Read the article:

https://www.agilitypr.com/pr-news/public-relations/33-comms-issues-keeping-cmos-and-brand-managers-up-at-night/

 

Transcript

Michelle Kane (00:02):

Thank you for joining us for this episode of That Solo Life, the podcast for PR pros and marketers who work for themselves, people like me, Michelle Kane, with VoiceMatters, and my wonderful co-host, Karen Swim of Solo PR Pro. Hi, Karen. How are you today?

Karen Swim (00:20):

I'm doing so well, Michelle. How are you doing?

Michelle Kane (00:23):

I'm doing pretty well. We're dealing with the haze from the fires in Quebec. Thanks, Canada. We know you love us. So it's, a Roseanne Roseannadanna world. It's always something. So we just gotta get through it. .

Karen Swim (00:43):

Yeah. We are also under air quality alert here, Michigan. So if you're listening to us, by the time this podcast drops, we hope that your air is nice and clean and clear wherever you are. You're not under temperatures that are either they're scorching or too cold, and you're having a fabulous start of your summer. Even though it's not summer yet, everybody has sort of resigned themselves to the fact that we're here. So, yeah.

Michelle Kane (01:10):

Yeah. Please go outside and take a big breath for us, .

Karen Swim (01:14):

Yeah, please do.

Michelle Kane (01:16):

Well, speaking of nightmarish conditions, ,

Karen Swim (01:20):

Uhhuh, nice segue.

Michelle Kane (01:21):

Thank you. We decided to take on this topic today of things that make us lose sleep, things that might cause us to worry just things in the industry that may be real or manufactured in our minds. Talking about what's going on out there in the PR world and the communications world in general. I mean, we do touch on these things all the time, quite frankly, because we're here to keep you as sharp as possible. But we thought let's focus on some of our fears. .

Karen Swim (01:59):

Yeah. I love this. And this episode was inspired by a piece that Agility PR wrote, shout out to Agility. Hey, y'all. And, the title of the article, which we will link in the show notes, is 33 Issues Keeping, who's It Keeping Up Tonight? I forget

Michelle Kane (02:22):

All of Us

Karen Swim (02:25):

Keeping CMOs and Brand Managers up at night. So it was a really interesting look at, you know, several things, and I always like to know from the marketing side of the house, the pure marketing side of the house, and also from the brand side, what's troubling people, because often in our role as outsourced PR agency, the CMO is actually one of our primary contacts, and we work closely with the marketing team. So I found it really interesting and very on point to what others are seeing as well. So let's dive in.

Michelle Kane (03:08):

Yeah, absolutely. One, thing that jumped out of me was a, collection of four or five of the issues all, at least in my mind, speaking to what is sort of an attention deficit disorder that's happening out there. Yeah. many of the things keeping these CMOs up at night is, you know, optimizing the client experience, keeping customers engaged, aligning your brand with the consumer experience. And, really this just reinforced what I and many of my colleagues are experiencing, even when you're trying to either reintroduce programming that had been put on pause or that had been put online during the pandemic in-person events. And I think we're well past issues of participation in in-person events being because of fear of getting covid. But we're still all trying to put our finger on, well, how do we get everyone back? And we're coming to the realization of it's not just like turning the switch on and droves of people will return.

I have seen this literally across the board. Chambers, I have a friend who is displaying her photography, so she's having like a gallery event and its, you know, response has been underwhelming, even though before it would've been amazing. Now, I think one of the main drivers of that is really we have realigned ourselves of not running from thing to thing to thing. We, just aren't doing that to ourselves anymore, even though they might all be fantastic choices, but as a marketer, how do we reset those expectations? How do we handle that? How do we move forward while still serving our clients fun.

Karen Swim (05:03):

You know, it's also interesting that you bring that out because this article talked about, you know, being post Covid and, and you're right across industries while we are no longer in the heat of the pandemic and some of the protocols and things that prohibited us from doing things, we're still trying to figure out what normal is. And, and yeah. And everyone's trying to figure out how to do their jobs because consumer behaviors have shifted. But now the question is, well, we know that there were some shifts because of the pandemic, but we went from thing to thing to thing. You know, we went from, you know, pandemic thing to political thing to social justice thing to economic thing. And it's really hard to determine like, okay, what's the underlying issue? Because if you understand the issue, you can often then you can address it. But I'm not, I'm honestly not sure at this point. I believe that it's a combination of things. I think habits definitely change. I think our muscles are we're still learning to rebuild our muscles for socializing and gathering, and we're choosing, we're choosing fewer things, as you said, but then there's also the budgetary issues. Yeah. You know, look, everything is really expensive, and so people are being more discerning with their dollars and because they just are not going as far.

Michelle Kane (06:40):

That's true. That's true too. I, and I think it's, it's like you said, it's all of those things. And the frustrating part as a PR professional and a marketer is you feel so helpless because we are so used to nailing what the problem is and swooping in with three ideas to make it work, and Yeah. You know, I, I find that sometimes, even with, you know, a friend of mine that I help out, I'm just like, I wish I could have a hard and fast answer for you, and I don't, and that makes me feel terrible. So we're here today to tell you, don't feel terrible, because it is still, it is definitely something that is coming together now because I've never wanted to stay in downerville I'm going to flip that into, it creates opportunities for us, you know, to do things differently or, or just really re reevaluate things.

Karen Swim (07:33):

I think reevaluate unleash your creativity. But, but here's the most important thing that has not changed. You really have to serve your audience and go to the, Solo PR Pro blog and read our blog posts from yesterday because this, this leans directly into that. You have to really give people a story and make them feel and see themselves as part of this event. You have to make it more than just, Hey, here's a writing conference. Oh, here is a media relations workshop. There has to be more to that. So it's, yeah. It's, it's in how you tell the story around those events, around those things that you're, you're trying to get people engaged around. And, and I think that this is a great opportunity to hone our storytelling skills and understand that we have to tell powerful stories in order to get people to care.

(08:34):

Then we have to clearly articulate the actions that we want them to take. Quite frankly, I'll just speak for myself. There have been so many in-person events, and sometimes the subject matter captivates me, but then I'm not really moved by the way that they're telling the story about the content. I don't, this really benefiting me, and I don't see it benefiting me in a way that makes me want to put down dollars. Right. The conferences are not cheap. And with everything having gone up, I too am watching my dollars and being, you know, very conscious about how I'm spending and the stories are not grabbing me. So, as an industry, if we're not telling stories that resonate with other PR professionals, how is that translating into the work that we do for our client audiences or for our company audiences?

Michelle Kane (09:30):

Yeah, I think you, you nailed it right there. I mean, people have to see themselves in the narrative that you're putting, in front of them that way. It's, all part of the content experience, right? It's what we preach every day. You know, establishing your know, like, and trust. You need to make sure that the person that you are trying to do business with is going to get on board at that level of, oh, yeah, you know what? That's me. I really, I really need to do this, and, and I know I'm going to get something out of it as opposed to come to my thing. You know what to do. It's, it's, it's like the, it's like the old school answering machine messages, right? Hi, here's my phone. You know what to do. Well, no, no. We really need to hone in on the whole customer experience when they engage with whatever we put out there, content initiatives, events.

Karen Swim (10:26):

Absolutely. I mean, I see a lot of dry, boring facts or, you know, it's, you know, come because this fantastic speaker. Yeah. Okay, well, that person might be famous to somebody else, but not to me. I don't even know who that is. So

Michelle Kane (10:43):

Or, you know, I can find 'em on YouTube, right. .

Karen Swim (10:45):

Yeah. Like, that's not exactly enough for me. I need, you know, and so yeah. It, it is an opportunity for us to tell stronger, more powerful stories. One of the other things that jumped out at me from this list, there are a couple things. One is that ROI was at the top of the list. Yeah. we don't even need to go into this in detail because we've talked about it ad nauseum on this podcast. There is a critical need. So I want that to really sink in today. If CMOs are up at night, because they need to show ROI simultaneously, they're worried about budgets, and of course they're worried about layoffs because all of this trickles downhill. If you cannot demonstrate roi, your budgets get cut, your budgets get cut, and then you're still forced to show ROI. You're going to have to start making harder decisions.

(11:44):

And this is happening in every industry. Right now. We're seeing marketing budgets being cut. We know that marketing budgets are always the first to get cut. They're always the first to get cut, because CEOs do not see the ROI. Now, if they saw marketing as a sales driver, and they could make that connection that this spend is actually driving in business, and rather than cutting it right now, as we're trying to drive to the bottom line, we need to increase it. Mm-Hmm. , clearly we're not doing a good enough job at demonstrating that line. And as outsourced PR people, again, if you're not comfortable with ROI please learn. There's so many resources to help you to get better at reporting metrics and showing your value. And we can no longer say, well, you know, these things take time. Well, you know, there's not always a direct line. You have to align with what your clients care about most. And today, that's money. And, and guess what? It was, it was money 10 years ago. It was money 30 years ago. Because no one wants to spend, if they're not seeing a financial benefit, they have to see the financial benefit in their decisions. And so it's up to us to make sure that we make those connections.

Michelle Kane (13:07):

Yeah. Even more importantly, because we know that their first instinct to cut is the last thing you should do, because how else are people gonna know about you? But okay, CEOs,

Karen Swim (13:22):

And, and we know that, but here's, you know, yeah. Just go back to story again, right? Yes. We know that every single marketing, PR, communications professional knows that it, it's the wrong decision to make. But are we telling the right story to the people who hold the pen? Are we, are we making it powerful enough for them? Are we articulating it clearly enough that it's not just something that we all know, it's not inside baseball knowledge, but that it's something that they now know, understand, have internalized, and are working around not making those cuts. Right. And if the answer is no, they don't get it, then we have to point those fingers back at ourself and go, okay, let's roll up our sleeves and figure out how to do a better job of demonstrating this. Because clearly we're not doing that. And, and, I mean, it's happened to me too. It's happened to all of us. And I think we have to hold ourselves accountable. Like, okay, where did I miss it? What information did I not provide and did I not tell the story in the right way?

Michelle Kane (14:33):

Yeah. And, and I mean, that's a huge point that you're making because it comes back to the, another thing that we, we keep saying is, you know, everything communicates. So you're not just storytelling for the brand or for the client. You need to be storytelling to the client as well.

Karen Swim (14:51):

Absolutely. And storytelling that plays into another thing. So here's something that really jumped out at me on this list. It said that 15% of the nightmares that they've listed in this post had increased this year. Yes. And number two on the list was aligning brand and consumer expectations. And so I found that incredibly interesting because I was just reading a piece that talked about how brands are really struggling. So consumers, you know, we went through this, you know, the pandemic and all of the things that happened, and consumers had a heightened demand for brands being corporate citizens. They wanted brands to be active in, issues in national issues. They wanted them to speak out about policies, they wanted them to speak out about social justice. The tide has turned a little bit in that we're here in the United States, and you know, I'm sure this is true in other countries because every country has had their political turmoil of late.

(16:07):

There is this turning of the tide where the divisions are so deep and where issues have become so weaponized that no matter what a brand does, they're going to make someone unhappy. Yeah. And so we've seen this with Bud Light. We've seen it with Target, we've seen it, we've just seen it across the board where, you know, even libraries, which used to be in my mind, a center of neutrality have become a lightning rod. And so it's really difficult. So, you know, you're c of a company and you want to stay true to your company mission, vision, and values. You want to stay true to your audience and be supportive of your audience. You want to be a good corporate citizen. But if you speak up about things, then you risk, like, Bud light, they said, you know, there was a quote that said they're taking a permanent 15% haircut.

(17:04):

They're, those people are gone. They're not coming back. You may as well lower your expectations to meet the new reality. So this is true of companies. And so if you're a brand, you know, they would rather stay out of this. Trust me. They would rather just stay out of this and, and let the people have their say and just keep doing their thing and serving all of their customers with, with the things that they have to offer. But the audience is not allowing that, except the audience is so polarized. Right. That were almost a no win situation. And we PR people this, this hits us squarely in our wheelhouse because Sure does. Finding that crisis management, we are exercising those muscles like never before. I mean, yep. We are ripped in the crisis muscles, muscle department. I wish my abs were as ripped as my crisis muscle

Michelle Kane (18:02):

. Oh, if only that would work. Oh my goodness. That would be wonderful. Cause

Karen Swim (18:09):

We're really having to be so sharp, and we're having to question everything, and we're having to prepare brands that even when we have done all of the right things, even when we, we are 100% on the side of Right. Someone will be mad. Someone will be mad.

Michelle Kane (18:27):

Yeah. You know, and it can be very exhausting because it, it even comes down to even social media posts of do we say anything about this? Do we say, you know, do we just wish anyone anything? And Oh my gosh. And you know, I believe that at the crux of it all, truth still matters. Truth should still be our paramount core value. And from there, you need to work with your clients or help your clients navigate. Okay. What are these hills worth dying on, so to speak? You know, it's, with, with beer, it's a different question with libraries, a completely different question. I know I've shared with Karen, I'm working with our local library now, and it's just, the onslaught is maddening. And, you know, I guess to our advantage, it's not really based in truth, but it's still a brush fire that we have to deal with's.

Karen Swim (19:27):

You know, honestly, every brand should have a matrix of the issues. Yes. And when they're going to respond. One of the things that drives me crazy are things like, happy Memorial Day. Well, you don't say Happy Memorial Day. Cause Memorial Day is honoring fallen soldiers. It's actually a very solemn Right. Very serious holiday. I get it. You know, in America, if, if there's a holiday, we're going to have a cookout. We're going to w party. Except it really isn't a party type of holiday. No. I don't care how you spend it, you know, that's fine. Like, Americans are gonna do what we're gonna do. Hey, we got a day off, we are going to celebrate it. But in the way that you communicate to your audience should be appropriate. And brands are super guilty of this. How many companies have Memorial Day sales? Why are you having a Memorial Day sale Right. On a somber Holiday. Right. And, and by the way, how hypocritical are we? Other countries look at us and they're like, we don't understand America. You guys flyflags all the time, and your military people wear hats that, that have this stuff on it. And we're not even allowed to wear uniforms in public. And we never do this except for, except for on designated holidays. Right.

(20:49):

America, the patriotic country that flies flags all the time. And our military people walk around and we're thanking everybody for their service everywhere we go, me include it. Mm-Hmm. on the holidays that actually matter. , we don't spend them doing the things that they were meant to. How many of you are going to Veterans celebrations and really honoring our military? Right. Or shopping the Veteran's Day sales on Memorial Day. We're out here saying, happy Memorial Day. Well, what's happy about a bunch of people who died for our country? So

Michelle Kane (21:20):

, I know. It's, we're, we're, we're a little special as a culture,

Karen Swim (21:28):

You know, I mean, we're out there, you know, I see companies now that have turned their logosnto the pride colors. But

Michelle Kane (21:36):

Where are you the other months of the year?

Karen Swim (21:38):

Where are you the other months of the year? Yeah. What does your company really look like? You're celebrating every month, you know, native American Month, you're celebrating AAPI month, you're celebrating Black History Month, but you're a company that has zero diversity, like none. Right. Right. And so we have to, we have to exercise sanity in terms of our communication, and we have to be authentic. Right. And if you are not doing these things, then

Michelle Kane (22:10):

Don't participate

Karen Swim (22:11):

These prompts in these months to take action rather than just join the club and turn your logo a different color it. Right. It, it's just disingenuous. It's not Okay, don't do that. We know that PR pros know these things. And so our message to PR pros is stick to giving wise counsel. Do not be afraid to stand up to clients and always provide the right advice, because we know that, you know, that these things are absolutely insane. But you have to, again, this is communication. You have to communicate this to your clients, and you have to be willing to stand behind that and tell the stories that they understand why you can't just do these things. Why you can't be copycatting what everybody else is doing. I mean, I, I'm looking at all of the stuff and I'm like, wow, this is really fascinating. Mm-Hmm. and so not aligned with who you are as a company, but okay.

Michelle Kane (23:19):

Yeah. I mean, that's the main thing, right? You want to make sure that your clients know who they are, they know their identity, they know their, their ethos, they know their why. And, just work with that. Just, you know, and, and it's okay. I mean, if you don't jump on all the bandwagons, it doesn't mean you're not supportive of those issues. Yeah. And in fact, in many ways, it makes me feel like you're less exp exploitative of it. Right. if the, the, you know, walk your talk, if you do that every day, 365 days a year, you'll be much better off. You'll be more trusted. I'm not saying that all the companies that jump on the bandwagons are disingenuous, but you, you guys know what we mean, . It's,

Karen Swim (24:08):

Yeah.

Michelle Kane (24:09):

It's just so much better if you're just authentic every day of if someone can look at your, your client's brand and say, I know, you know, most of the time they're good people. I know they try. At least I know they're trying, they're trying to do the right thing by me and by their employees. So, you know, working from that angle, I hate to call it an angle, but working from that position yes. I think will serve you best. And of course, serve your clients best.

Karen Swim (24:38):

I completely agree with you. That is such a good point. And so, yeah. You know, it's, when I read through this list of issues, and as we've talked through this today and, and we barely, you know, obviously there were 33, we could go deep on any one of these 33. Yeah. It's, you know, it reminds me why public relations always ends up on the list of most stressful jobs,

Michelle Kane (25:04):

Right.

Karen Swim (25:04):

. And we want you to know that we see you, we care for you 365 days a year. We do, we do. Whether or not we're recording that, we have your back. And we understand that it's really tough. And so we want you not to be awake at night worrying about these issues. We want you to look at these lists and we want you to just sit down, you know, take some notes, reflect on your practices, because our goal is to always learn how to manage things better. And we should all do great work. Be proud of the work that we do. Be proud of where you are today, even as you strive to grow. Tomorrow, you know, every day is a chance to do better than you did the day before, but we want you to also, at the end of a good day, we want you to just lay your head down at night and sleep and not have night terrrors or not be stressed out and, and not be, you know, popping in acids because your clients have you in such angst. This work is tough. Yeah. And it's complex, but it's also rewarding. And it can be very fun. And you should feel good about the job that you're doing and not lay awake at night. Leave that to the CMOs. If, if they want to not sleep at night and have night terrors more power to you,

Michelle Kane (26:23):

Let 'em,

Karen Swim (26:24):

My job is to try and help you not to have that experience. I'm gonna do my part. I can't control everything, but when I'm working with you, my job is let's all get a good night's sleep. .

Michelle Kane (26:36):

Yeah, no, so true. Because, you know, I know as you and I have joked off, off air, it's like, yeah, when I actually get good sleep, it's amazing how much better I feel. Oh, it's all about the sleep. Oh. And, I know how hard it is sometimes to put those thoughts down and put them away, but what I tell myself is, there is nothing I can do about X, Y, or Z in the next six to eight hours. So I'm just going to put it in a little box and I'm going to sleep.

Karen Swim (27:05):

And by the way, you are so much better equipped to handle all of these issues when you sleep at night. So

Michelle Kane (27:11):

Oh, amen.

Karen Swim (27:13):

Issues. Keep you up at night, get a good night's sleep, and you know what, you'll wake up in the morning and you will live another day to tackle them all.

Michelle Kane (27:22):

That's right. You'll be less likely to freak out on someone, which is always a good thing, .

Karen Swim (27:26):

Yeah. On those days when you haven't slept well or you're just not feeling it, just make sure to protect others around you. It's like, yeah, I'm not peopling today, .

Michelle Kane (27:41):

Exactly. Exactly. Well, we hope we've provided some inspiration or some moments where you can just nod along and go, yeah, that's, that is what we're here for. Andif you're getting value out of us, please share us around tell people to come listen to That Solo Life. And until next time, thanks for listening.

 

On Trend with Chip Griffin

AI, business development, pricing, the future of PR - all the latest trends. Oh, the things we get to talk about when we’re joined by Chip Griffin of the Small Agency Growth Alliance. Listen to this episode to get the latest scoop.

Learn more about Chip and SAGA here.

 

Transcript

Michelle Kane (00:02):

Thank you for joining us for this episode of That Solo Life, the podcast for PR pros and marketers who work for themselves, people like me, Michelle Kane of VoiceMatters, my wonderful co-host, Karen Swim of Solo PR Pro. And today we have a guest. We are absolutely thrilled to be joined once again by Chip Griffin of the Small Agency Growth Alliance. Hello, Chip.

Chip Griffin (00:26):

It is great to be back here. I love being with the two of you.

Michelle Kane (00:29):

Ah, likewise, likewise.

Karen Swim, APR (00:31):

We are so excited. This totally makes our week. Thank you so much for hanging out with us, .

Chip Griffin (00:36):

Thank you for having me.

Michelle Kane (00:37):

So we're talking trends today and top of mind for most people in PR and beyond is of course AI. It's, you know, it's being thrown around in the news and people either are using it or are afraid of it, are just completely ignorant of it. But it's here. And, you know, Solo PR Pros, we like to think of ourselves as savvy smarties. We're just wondering what's, what's your take of what you're seeing out there right now?

Chip Griffin (01:12):

Well, my wise guy answer that I gave to an agency owner who asked me a couple of weeks ago about it, I said, “AI, what, what's that? I haven't really heard much about this.” And he had first thought I was serious.  In any case, I mean, look, AI is absolutely top of mind for just about everybody right now. It is something that, I don't think I've had a conversation with any agency owner who hasn't brought it up. It is something that all communicators are talking about. Some are afraid of it, some are excited about it. Very few are really squarely in the middle as far as I've seen. And I think that really it's just incumbent upon folks to learn as much as they can about what new opportunities exist out there and figure out how they can implement it within their own businesses. Whether you are a solo or in-house or whatever, there's a lot of things that you can do with AI to make you more effective, more efficient. And I would be focused on that rather than on the, the scary side of it that a lot of people like to dwell on from time to time.

Michelle Kane (02:09):

Right, right. Like the recent letter of doom from hundreds of tech leaders, .

Chip Griffin (02:17):

Right. Well, and you have to keep in mind that, that a lot of time, I mean, if you have the people who are already involved in AI saying, “Hey, we need to regulate it,” usually that's because they want to protect their own stake. And you see this in many industries. The large players often call for more regulation because it keeps out upstarts and it protects their position. So I would take that with a grain of salt, personally.

Michelle Kane (02:40):

Yeah. Nice big shaker of salt.

Karen Swim, APR (02:44):

Yeah. It reminds me of every technological invention that has ever happened, how there is this fear that it's going to disrupt our way of life. And I'm not saying that the concerns around AI are not well founded. They are. So, as communicators, I agree with you, we need to use it. We need to learn it. And we also do need to be aware of the risk and the concerns around it so that we can guard against that. So one big one for me is understanding how AI can be used to spread mis information, which is a growing problem, and it has been for many years, and it continues to be something that we really have to deal with. So you really have to understand it so that you can educate your clients and so you know how to monitor their brand reputation, because you don't want false statements attributed to clients. You know, if anybody's operating without crisis plans, you need to get on top of that immediately, because these are all things that can and do happen, particularly for high profile individuals where images are being used and manipulated and they're getting better. You know, AI technology is getting better, so it can be more difficult to spot the fakes than in the past.

Chip Griffin (04:09):

But this is, I mean, it really isn't something new. It does make it easier. It does make it more polished in some cases. You know, if you take a look at what Photoshop has done now with, with its ability to use generative AI, it's, it's really, frankly, amazing as a photographer. I love what it allows me to do for my clients in a good way, but it certainly does open up other risks. But, I think we've just, that's an extension of what we've seen for a long period of time. And so, we absolutely need to be attuned to it. But at the same time, we shouldn't shy away from it and say, geez, you know, we don't really want to touch this AI thing, which I've seen some communicators say, you know, we don't, we won't use any content that's AI-generated or AI influenced or anything like that.

I think that's bonkers. I think you need to, to be in a position where you're leveraging AI effectively. And the reality is AI is going to change PR and marketing. It absolutely is. There's no way that PR and marketing five years from now looks exactly the same way that it did last year, because AI will have changed it. But that doesn't mean that's a bad thing. It just means you need to adapt. If you're putting out schlock content, yeah, AI probably is going to replace you. So don't put out schlock content, but that would be my advice even before AI .

Michelle Kane:

Exactly. Exactly.

 

 

Karen Swim, APR (05:22):

But I would also say, you know, I have just tried to be an avid learner, and so I've used it right from the beginning. And as an example, yesterday I went in and so I use it for idea generation. I've experimented with things like I've said I'm pitching this, what are the best reporters? And it spit back a list that matched my list perfectly. But there was one reporter that I hadn't thought of that actually was perfect. And so why wouldn't I use a tool that's going to help me to do my job better? So yesterday I had it write a press release for me and I gave it very specific points, like, here's some bullet points here, here's what I'm doing, write a press release regarding this.

So I gave it the information. I vetted some key points and bullet points. The press release came back and I shot it to our shared drive and I shared it with my colleague and I was like, check out what AI did – not meaning like, okay, it's time for you to edit this. Because I had not gone in and done the personalization and the edits. It was so good that she went in, she goes, “Oh, I only had one change.” And I started laughing. I go, “Yeah, I hadn't worked on that.”

Michelle Kane (06:45):

Karen Swim, APR (06:46):

Obviously we did not send that version to the client, but it just goes to show that it was good. It was actually good, and it's because I've gotten better at asking it to do things. So I've noticed from my early efforts that the content that it generates has gotten much more refined because I've learned how to really work with it. Why wouldn't I as a PR pro spend my time using my brain for my clients and really adding value, spending more time on the strategic work, spending more time on the deep focus work. A press release is table stakes. I mean, I don't understand why people are fighting this so hard or making it seem like it's this horrible, terrible thing if AI assisted you. Yes. I use AI in my work. It streamlines a lot of tasks. It's capable of doing a lot of things and helping me to grab time back that can be used for higher value activities. So, I think people just, you know, there's like these camps setting up like you're less of a PR pro if you use it. And I think that's just wrong.

Michelle Kane (07:57):

I'm seeing it too. I'm seeing different articles and it makes perfect sense, you know, to stay sharp. Those of us who learn how to use AI well in our work are the ones who are going to keep up and or stay ahead of the curve. If you totally table it, what's the point? I was heartened, I belong to the Philadelphia PR Association and we had a session last week with three profs from Temple, and they are helping their students do that very thing, you know, learn how to use this. They aren't -- you know, sadly, I've seen some from the English departments going, “Oh my gosh, make a go away. Like, okay, I get that to a point. But it was really heartening to see them both embrace it and truly study what does this mean for our profession moving forward? So, it's exciting too because why not try and save time? And I don't know about both of you, but many times there is that deeper strategic thinking that you sometimes don't have the opportunity to get to because you're in okay, we need this, we need that, we need this mode. This could solve for that for sure.

Chip Griffin (09:18):

Well, and that's the thing. If I'm a solo or a small agency, I'm really excited about AI because it's a force multiplier for me. It is giving me resources that I would've had to pay a lot for and probably couldn't have afforded earlier. I describe AI in mid-2023 is basically like having an intern most of the time. It does a pretty decent job at what you ask it to do. Sometimes it really knocks your socks off and you're like, “Wow, that's great.” And occasionally it's just awful.  And, you've got to start over. But that's, I mean, that's what having an intern is. And you know, Karen, you described having to learn how to use it. It's the same thing if you have an intern, you have to figure out how to give them instructions correctly to get what you want.

Same thing with AI. You've got to learn how to give the instructions. The benefit is the AI doesn't go away after a few months. Right? And so you'll be able to continue to, and on top of that, the intern also continues to improve in that period of time. Someone said to me that, that right now AI is the worst it will ever be. Which is I think a great way of thinking about it. Despite all of the flaws that Chat GPT has and some of the image generators have, it's only going to get better. It's not going to get worse from here. So to me, that's incredibly exciting and you just have to figure out how can you take advantage of that for the work that you are doing on behalf of your clients.

Michelle Kane (10:33):

Exactly.

Karen Swim, APR (10:33):

I really agree. I mean, and also funny, it's always funny to me that people are up in arms. AI is not new . It's not just really, we've been using AI for quite a few years. I hate to break it to you, but we really have. It's just, I think, come to the mainstream's attention at this point that we have artificial intelligence and there are some uses that are now becoming more popularized, but it's not new like it's been around.

Chip Griffin (11:07):

Well, yeah. And part of it is that AI is one of those terms that gets thrown around loosely and has been for many years. I mean, the number of companies that in the last decade have claimed that they used AI for this or that, and I knew how they were doing things behind the scenes, I'd be like, yeah, that's not really AI. And frankly, a lot of what's being called AI today I think you can debate whether it is truly AI and it's certainly not general artificial intelligence, which is something that you know, is what people historically have thought of as AI. You know, someone that's completely a robot that's completely autonomous goes out and acts just like a human. We are, as far as I know, miles away from that still.  And so, but you're right, we have been using this, I mean, how long ago was it that Google Voice added automated transcription? That was a long time ago. That was at a decade ago that they started doing it, and it was pretty awful when it started. I mean, I remember laughing at some of the transcriptions. I would get a voicemail, so I'd be like, yeah, I don't think I have that kind of relationship with my brother. I'm pretty sure . So , I mean, it did had some really bizarre stuff. And, and even today, you know, if you look at Siri, some of the stuff that that happens that you, some of the responses you get, they're awful. They're just awful. But we've been using that for years. And so it's, it's just something that, that's going to continue to get better. We need to, to not overestimate what it can do for us today, because it can't just go out and write from scratch perfectly every time.

So if we're expecting that that's a mistake, and I see some communicators who are building that into their plans, like, “I don't have to hire a writer because I can just use AI to do this.” Well, yeah, that might work occasionally, but what's going to happen when you count on it and you didn't book enough time and you didn't book a resource to be able to do it, now you got into trouble. So you need to be thoughtful about how you use some of these technologies and tools that are still very much in their early stages. I mean, Chat GPT is often unavailable when you go to try to use it. And it's been getting better. I see that message a lot less often now than I did a couple of months ago, but still sometimes it's not right there. And so if you're leaning on it for something that is urgent, I would think twice about that.

Karen Swim, APR (13:14):

Right. Or you could just pay the 20 bucks a month and always have access.

Chip Griffin (13:19):

I still get the message even with the paid with the pro level.

Karen Swim, APR (13:22):

Oh, I haven't been seeing it at all since the paid, so, interesting.

Chip Griffin (13:26):

Yeah. It depends on the time of day in my experience. If it's peak east coast time, you know, late morning, that's when I tend to see it the most. But I tend to use it more in the evenings anyway, since I tend to be on calls almost all day, so

Karen Swim, APR (13:40):

Yeah. , well, we've, we've covered AI. What other trends are you seeing Chip?

Chip Griffin (13:47):

Well, I think, from a business development standpoint, anybody who is out there trying to work with clients, I think most people are seeing some degree of a slowdown in the pipeline. Not necessarily in the number of prospects are in the pipeline or even the types of projects that are there. But the, the, the length of time it takes to close a deal seems to be increasing for many agencies, many solos. That's not, it's not across the board. And I always warn people, you've got to be careful because a lot of these things are very sector specific. If you're doing work in the tech space, yeah. A lot of those folks have slowed down. Some of those have cut back on the business that they're doing with outside agencies and contractors because they're trying to be more careful. If they're laying off staff, chances are they're going to cut back on their agencies too. But that does create opportunities. And so you need to be looking for those as well, because if a company has laid off a lot of internal staff, they still have PR and marketing needs. Yeah. They might be able to turn to you on the outside to help them with that in the interim.

Karen Swim, APR (14:43):

I 100% agree. I mean, there has been this weird, because the economy has, you know, been so all over the place and companies were doing layoffs, but in reality, those layoffs were not cutting to the bone. They were cutting excess because they staffed up artificially for the pandemic. So yeah. It was really a correction. And so I didn't get too up in arms about that. But investors are also driving some of the reductions as they're requiring you know, the free money era is kind of over for now because of the, you know, the interest rates and inflation and all that's going on. That money's not falling like it was before. And so they are forcing companies that, you know, once they didn't care if you were in the red, but now it's all about, you know, being in the black, which means that they have to cut back.

Chip Griffin (15:46):

Yeah. And, and the reality is, a lot of these tech staff cuts right now have very little to do with the actual economic situation. Most of them are as, as you say, because they staffed up too quickly. Some of it is because they did the dumb things the tech companies like to do, like just hiring staff so that their competitors can't have them. And so, I mean, there have been numerous stories that I've seen of large tech companies having groups of people that sit around doing nothing. Yes. Because they were simply hired so that they wouldn't go work for the competition.

Karen Swim, APR (16:14):

100%.

Chip Griffin (16:16):

That's wildly stupid

Karen Swim, APR (16:18):

. It's, which is why, you know, tech workers often had three jobs going at the same time.

Chip Griffin (16:28):

Right. Why not ? I mean, yeah, yeah. I'm not being asked to do anything. I might as well double dip or triple dip. Yeah.

Karen Swim, APR (16:33):

Yeah. And then they were like, oh, got laid off from my second job. So now I only have two. I mean, how, and you know what? I 100% admire the hustle as long as they weren't breaking their employment contracts. Right. If you can do your job for three people and have added this. You know, most people these days have more than one gig anyway. You know, you have a gig and a side gig or a business and a side business. So I, maybe that's the way of the future.

Chip Griffin (17:04):

Yeah. I mean, and, and it's certainly something I'm a big believer in. I don't, I don't think I've ever had or haven't had a single source of income since I had hair with glasses . So that was, that was decades ago. .

Karen Swim, APR (17:17):

I would definitely, you know, it's, it's back to that older adage. Don't put all your eggs in one basket. I'm a big believer in that, to have multiple channels of income always. Because you can't rely on one source and if your job is your one source, as we know, you have very little control over what happens with that job.

Chip Griffin (17:37):

Well, I think also, creative ambitious people, variety is a good thing too. I mean, for me, that's a big piece of it. I mean, yes, it's, it's nice to have diversification, but a lot of it is just, it gives me different things to focus on at, at different points in the day or week. And so I enjoy that. And I know a lot of other people who are the same way. They just want something else to, to interest them and, and pursue and they don't have to worry about one thing 24 7.

Karen Swim, APR (18:00):

Yeah, that's very true. Yeah. I think a lot of PR people are like that too. Oh my God. I think we would go insane if it was just PR .

Chip Griffin (18:10):

Well, and I think that's the other trend that we probably can touch on here, which is that PR is becoming much less traditional. There are very few folks who practice PR today that can practice it the same way they did 15 or 20 years ago. You really need to have a much broader skillset set. And I think AI is certainly going to accelerate that need because there's going to be a demand from clients for you to do more than simply basic media relations. So, when I'm talking with an agency that does simply media relations, they've got to have a real strong differentiator to be able to make a solid go of that in 2023. It's just, you really need to have a much broader skillset in order to be able to work with clients effectively.

Karen Swim, APR (18:57):

Oh, I completely agree with you. That media landscape is not your friend right now. It is ugly out there. It doesn't mean that you can't get opportunities. But again, this is not new. I can remember saying this, you know, five years ago, like, do not lean on one lever in your public relations practice. Now that does not mean that there are people that cannot focus and specialize. You absolutely can do that. People have done that with great success where they are honed in on a specialty, and that's what they do. They don't do me media relations at all. They, they have a specialty. We have some pros that they only do media relations. That's all they do. They don't do anything else. Doesn't mean that they're doing it the same way that they were doing it 20 years ago, but that's their specialty. That's their area of expertise.

But for those that are a little more general and have a robust practice, you need to utilize all of the things that are in our tool bag. And I think for every single person, no matter what your area of specialty is, you really need to be a strategist. Yes. I'm very surprised how many people lean on the tactical and there's no strategy and they're not aligned with the business goals that is not going to fly. Right. Going forward. You may have been able to skate by on the tactical for a period of time. I truly believe those days are over. And that you are going to have to get very comfortable with speaking the language of the business. And you have to be very confident in presenting metrics and aligning with goals that matter, not yes, the goals that matter to you as a PR person, but the goals that matter to your clients, to their business. You have to be comfortable talking about how you're supporting the bottom line. If you're not comfortable with that, you're going to not be chosen or you're not going to keep jobs with those large enterprise companies because they care. They do care about their bottom line and they care about drawing the line from PR to revenue. And, and I know I, I've heard people say this, well, you can't. Yes, you can. You can measure your efforts.

Chip Griffin (21:09):

Well, yeah. But also, measure, report your results to clients. Don't report your efforts. Because that's, I mean, I see these reports that are being delivered to clients where it's like, “We pitched X number of reporters,” Who cares? I don't care how many people you pitched or how many emails you sent out. What did you generate from that? Right? Now I'm okay with you saying, we pitched 50 reporters and got no bites. If you're saying, look, we need to look in a different direction, I think that's helpful. But if you're doing it simply to say, Hey, we tried really hard. Yes. Okay. I mean, there's not a participation medal here in the kind of work that we do.

Michelle Kane (21:45):

No, no.

Karen Swim, APR (21:47):

I agree. I mean, recently we had to share with a client that a particular piece of news was just not interesting to the media. And so then in that case, you do need to summarize what the response was, what you were hearing. And then better than that, we suggested a new strategic plan because this was something that they had been doing. And we said, don't do that anymore. It doesn't work. No one cares.

Chip Griffin (22:12):

And you should do that because if you're just an order taker and are executing bad orders, it's going to be reflecting on you. They don't sit there and say, “Oh, I gave dumb instructions.” They say, “My agency, my solo was just awful.”

Michelle Kane (22:24):

Yes.

Chip Griffin (22:25):

Even though they were just following your instructions. So if you get bad instructions, bad guidance, bad requests, push back, tell them it's not a good idea.

Michelle Kane (22:32):

Yeah. and that speaks back to the need to focus on strategy. It's like, why are you doing this, this, why, what is your goal? I think those are the first questions you always need to be thinking of and always need to be asking.

Chip Griffin (22:52):

And AI helps you to do that to come full circle in our conversation.

Michelle Kane (22:56):

I was just going to say , what if we had some kind of online mechanism to help us ?

Karen Swim, APR (23:04):

So anything else that you're seeing out there, Chip, that we should be aware of? Because you deal with agencies and enterprise and you are the man in the know.

Chip Griffin (23:14):

I think the other thing, and, I'm not sure whether it's a trend that something that's been going on for a long period of time, but I think because of some of the economic conditions, particularly inflation is getting worse, is the inability of folks to correctly price their services. And that is something that I think is going to become an acute problem, given that costs are rising so substantially for most of us in the work that we're doing in the lives that we lead. And if you're not pricing correctly, that's a problem. What I hear people say is, “Well, geez, but this client will never pay more than this, or they've always paid this, or this is what we charge in our old agency.” None of that matters. It matters how much it costs you to deliver services today. And if you're not pricing based off of what it actually costs you to deliver the services, then you're going to have a problem. And it doesn't matter whether the client's willing or unwilling to pay that amount. It's, the reality is you got to charge more than it costs, otherwise you fail.

Karen Swim, APR (24:12):

I love that advice. And I would encourage our solos. I've said this before and I think we did, we added it in a recent blog post, but pricing is not just about the cost of the services or your cost per hour. Pricing is also a marketing strategy. And it plays into how prospective clients see you. We all know that, there's definitely science behind this, and it's science that's used by everyone that sets prices. Your prices are too high, way too high, then it's going to turn your market off. Your prices are too low, it's going to cause them to think of you as a budget option, and it's going to diminish the value that they see that they get from you. And so you really have to find that place where your prices are high enough that they communicate that you are offering a quality, thoughtful service and not solo, that they think of you as just a replaceable freelancer. You're just another cog. And unfortunately, I still do see so many solos price or services so low that they're, they're doing things for rates that I wouldn't, there's, I would not take a phone call for some of the rates that you charge a client per month. It's not enough money. So consider that and, and what happens, you end up having these clients that don't want to pay you the meager amounts of money that you're charging them. They require you to overservice them for that tiny amount of money. They're the worst clients in the world. You want to price yourself higher. And I will tell you that the more money that you earn in your career, it not only helps people to see you differently, it helps you to see yourself differently. It's hard to think of yourself as a value professional. If you're charging a client a thousand dollars a month and it really should be 10, it's very, you start to see yourself, you shrink your own value down to that thousand dollars level and not at that $10,000 level.

So do yourself a favor and start to get confident to raise your rates and you can raise them on new clients because as you get more new clients, you can then go and sift away the bottom feeders. But we, nobody needs that in their life. Don't do that. You know, don't price yourself so low that people don't see the talent that you have. And then you start to believe that in your head too, and you start to become what you're charging and that's not okay when the price is too low.

Michelle Kane (26:56):

Couldn't agree more.

Chip Griffin (26:58):

I'm so glad that you described pricing as a positioning tool because it absolutely is. And I think people underestimate that and the message that you send to the marketplace about the value of what you're delivering. I will say that I do what I preach is what I call floor to ceiling pricing. And I do think that before you start looking at how you're using pricing or positioning or how you get into value pricing or charge premiums, you need to know your floor. And I think that that too many solos and small agencies have no idea what it truly costs them to deliver and what that minimum price is that they need to charge in order to make what they're looking to make. And I do think you need to know that floor first, then absolutely. Go find that ceiling by trying these different things and, and trying different positioning and char try value pricing and those kinds of things. But don't come into those things until you know what it actually costs you to deliver. Otherwise, you may be putting yourself in an even worse position.

Karen Swim, APR (27:56):

Yeah. I mean, we have minimum budget amounts. We have minimum budgets for ongoing clients. We also do projects, we fit in projects every quarter. We have a certain amount and we have minimum project pricing, period. Because we know that anything below that, we can't really be effective. And there, it's written down. So it's not something that we have to guess at every single time. Like, oh, what should that be? No, we have a minimum. And if somebody comes in and they're below our minimum, then we can say that like, I'm sorry, this is below our minimum. If you have more budget, here's what we could do for you.

Michelle Kane (28:30):

Right, exactly. And keeping in mind, too, there's room for scaling within your floor to ceiling concept.

Chip Griffin (28:38):

Absolutely,

Michelle Kane (28:38):

You can still be effective, but just having that transparency with the prospect or the client, just so they know.

Karen Swim, APR (28:49):

Yeah. And I would say, hang out in circles, hang out with people that are where you want to be. There's something truly transformative in that. I can remember, for me, I was early on in my PR career and I was at a Solo PR Pro summit and they had people close their eyes and raise their hands at their rate per hour. Shiny new girl that I was, was blown away by how many people were raising their hand at charging $400 an hour. To me back then that was like, “Oh my God, really?” But it was eye opening. And so yeah, being in a space with people that were charging those amounts and had been doing it and were doing well helped me to elevate my thinking and understand what the possibilities were, because I honestly didn't know. Since then, I've been in rooms with people in different industries. You know, I was with somebody recently that had a 10 million project and it wasn't 10 million for 10 years . And all he did was strategy.

Michelle Kane (29:58):

Dreamy

Karen Swim, APR (29:58):

And I'm like, I’m a strategist too. I'm actually really good at strategy . So, again, being in rooms with people that are doing exactly what you're capable of, you have a brain, you know how to think, you know how to use it. And seeing what others are willing to pay for that really does help you to start to get outside of your own box. And it starts to erase the limitations that we sometimes place on ourselves. And so I would advise you to do that. Stop hanging out with people that are charging $50 an hour. And start going into those spaces where people are charging more, getting more learning what they're doing and hearing that and adopting that for yourself.

Chip Griffin (30:39):

And I know plenty of solos who charge less than $50 an hour, which is crazy in 2023. I mean, these are people with decades of experience. It makes no sense to me. You need to know how to understand your own worth. You need to be realistic about it because otherwise you will continue to sell yourself short and good clients are willing to pay more than you think they are. The bad clients are the ones who want to nickel and dime you

Michelle Kane (31:06):

And micromanage you, just to top it all off and I would say even practitioners who maybe it's at the tail end of their career and it's just for fun, or to keep them busy, but, please don't undercut your prices because that hurts the whole profession. So get that money that you deserve and it, you know, it lifts all of us to where we really should be.

Chip Griffin (31:32):

Amen.

Karen Swim, APR (31:33):

And that sounds like a good note to,

Michelle Kane (31:35):

It does

Karen Swim, APR (31:36):

end on that. We should use AI, charge higher prices, think better of yourself and you'll do better work for your clients. But before we go, and Michelle's going to take us out, I just want to remind everybody, we recently reached a huge milestone of recording over 200 episodes of this program.

Michelle Kane (31:59):

Whoo!

Karen Swim, APR (32:01):

We're working on ourselves, , and we want to reach more people because there aren't a lot of PR focused podcasts that have been around for as long as we have. And we've been really consistent and we feel like we're just getting started. We're having the time of our life. We get to talk with great smart thinkers like Chip. So please, please, please, before you exit with us today, hit the subscribe button, follow our channel, subscribe to us, follow us on your favorite podcast app. We always have the podcast also on our website at soloprpro.com. You just hit the back slash button for the podcast. You can listen there, but please subscribe and share, share, share, share. We want you to tell all of your other colleagues about it and even the people that aren't in PR Yeah. Can gain something from the episodes. Because we talk about a lot of business topics that apply outside of our industry. So do us that favor and thank you for staying with us, but please share, please, like stay tuned. More to come more chip to come .

Michelle Kane (33:07):

Yes, absolutely. And I'll even issue a challenge if you found one good nugget in today's episode, thanks to Chip in this great conversation, use that, share that, hashtag us #solopr. That would be wonderful. Be good for you, good for us, good for everybody. But we also want to thank Chip Griffin for spending all of this time with us. He is with these small Agency Growth Alliance. Please check them out. What's the best  URL for that, Chip?

 

Chip Griffin

smallagencygrowth.com.

 

Michelle Kane

Boom. We thank you so much for spending this time with us and until next time, thanks for joining us on That Solo Life.

Make it Make Sense: How to Level Up Your Client Service Game

Do you make it easy for clients to do business with you? Are your systems designed to communicate with ease? It all comes down to good customer service. There are times when that can be the thing that leads a prospect or client to choose you or the competition.

 

Transcript

Michelle Kane (00:17):

Thank you for joining us for this episode of That Solo Life, the podcast for PR pros and marketers who work for themselves like me, Michelle Kane, with VoiceMatters, and my wonderful co-host, Karen Swim of Solo PR Pro. Hi Karen, how are you today?

Karen Swim (00:33):

I'm doing fantastic, Michelle. How are you?

Michelle Kane (00:35):

I'm well, I am well, oddly perky. Must be the coffee kicking in .

Karen Swim (00:42):

I'm oddly perky too. And I think that that is, because sometimes chaos forces you to roll with the punches. Oh, true. And you just are like going to roll with it. It's fine. I'm fine.

Michelle Kane (00:52):

Keep swimming. We'll get through .

Karen Swim (00:56):

Absolutely.

Michelle Kane (00:57):

Well, I am, I'm excited about the topic today. We're going to talk about, how do I phrase it? The way we work, right? How do we communicate with each other? How do we communicate with vendors? And I'm, and we're talking about from the viewpoint of we are solos, but we are of course also small businesses and how that impacts, you know, how you accomplish your goals at work, how you get things done. You know, are you a project management person? Are you, you know, always on Slack, that kind of thing. Just our, just going to talk about some best practices. Oh, and maybe some pet peeves too. Who knows

Karen Swim (01:34):

. Yeah. Because small business is obviously quite important in the larger, you know Yeah. Ecosystem of getting things done and work and hiring people. But you have small businesses that truly look like small businesses because they lack a certain level. I don't even want to say sophistication, because that's the wrong word. Right. But they're missing components that you'll get from a bigger business. And as solos, we want to always make sure that we are, although small, that we're mighty. And that we are delivering service levels that are equivalent to our larger counterparts. And that we're not missing key, key things that we can be doing that can make us stand apart. Because you can be small and look totally small, and when you look totally small in the wrong ways, because you know, there's a difference between having a boutique or a micro agency where you get a higher level of personalized touch.

Things are not, you know, as templated where, you know, they're getting a level of quality and they're getting senior level help that they might not get. And then being small and looking small as in like you're an amateur. Right. And that, you know, and so I know that within our community, it's one of the reasons why our solo PR community in particular pushes back hard against the term freelance pr. Right. And I believe that it's because for so many freelance at one point in history did connotate someone who wasn't truly running a business, but was just kind of taking a gig here or there. And it felt like one level above hobbyist. I will say, and I, dear solos, I love you, but freelance no longer has that negative association. But I completely understand, you know, the distinction as well. And I never re refer to myself as a freelance PR person, but I'm also not offended if, if that's how somebody wants to categorize me, as long as they, you know, are treating me like an agency and paying me like, you know, they're supposed to and not pay me. Like, you know, I'm,

Michelle Kane (03:52):

Yeah. Just don't have this money

Karen Swim (03:53):

Experience and job. Yeah. Like, oh, I just need to buy a Starbucks today. Isn't that cute? And I don't really care. . Yeah.

Michelle Kane (04:00):

Yes. . Yeah. And,  I think a lot of it has to do with communication between yourself Yes. And vendors between yourself and your clients. Just, you know, how that happens, what the expectations are. And you know, a lot of us who have worked either in-house or, you know, been employed by someone first, it's like, yeah, I call it office bootcamp, right. Because I came up, I spent my summers working in the accounts payable department at one company. So, it's like osmosis. You take it all in. Not that you say, well, this is how I'm going to work forever. But, you know, and then eventually working for an agency, you just take in like, oh, when someone asks you to do something, you let them know, okay, this is a timetable. It's like, yes. Common courtesy. Yes. Or, you know, you get to observe different systems and just then really mold that into your, the way that you work. Especially as most of our clients are probably not fellow business owners like us, for the most part. They're, these are people who own or work in companies. So it really helps to have that and if you haven't, that's fine, but just be open to following their lead, really.

Karen Swim (05:22):

Yes, I agree. And you hit on something that I've noticed, and you and I have chatted about this of course, as solos, we also not only are small business owners, but we love supporting small business owners.  And that's a good feeling when you have more of a direct connection to the person that's producing the product or service. I find that very gratifying. And it makes me feel good that I'm contributing to the economy in a meaningful way, that you actually are supporting someone else's livelihood. And I love to do that. However, I've also, like all of you, had my share of frustrations with small businesses that are not matching even the basic service levels and communication is way high on the list for me. And so, as solos, we have to make sure that we are not making people feel like they're losing by having a smaller agency.

Just because you don't have five offices across the globe and, you know, 10,000 people does not mean that clients should be left in the dark about, you know, what you're doing, how you're doing it. If they ask you a question, you know, it shouldn't linger you. You need to, you need to establish on a regular basis, you know how you're communicating. And if a client asks you to report something in a way, or to respond to something in a way or on a channel that really is very different from your workflow, it doesn't mean that you have to do everything that they say the way that they say do it. But you need to have a conversation about that.

Michelle Kane (07:04):

Yeah. And it's, it's all part of the, the expectation management. Yeah. Especially at the outset and, you know, setting those parameters. And, you know, even in the day-to-day communications, I mean, to me, Slack is a wonderful thing because to me, you know, being a…

Karen Swim (07:22):

An email.

Michelle Kane (07:23):

Yes. And being a certain age, I like to have something documented. So, if a client prefers to do business completely via text, that's crazy making for me. Because I have to look down at something. Yes, I have a desktop text, you know, thing. But still I can't, not that I print out emails anymore, but when I did, it's like, I can't print this text out. This is crazy. Well now I don't, I can't go back to that anyway.

Karen Swim (07:51):

It's not in a threaded nice threaded conversation that you can find, please. And there are things that definitely be do not belong in email that don't, you know, do not need that level of documentation. Quick questions, you know, quick, Hey, correct.

Michelle Kane (08:03):

Right.

Karen Swim (08:04):

This published, I don't really need that in my email. Right. But you know, I think it also comes down to being a small business and doing your part to make it easy to engage with you.

Michelle Kane (08:17):

Oh, a hundred percent.

Karen Swim (08:19):

Here's some tensions. Payments is one. This is, this could be a source of tension,

Michelle Kane (08:26):

Maybe…

Karen Swim (08:27):

You need to make it easy for people to pay you. And I understand that sometimes clients have owner systems that are completely out of their control. If you have enterprise clients and you know that oftentimes there's, I'm going to say almost always there could be an onboarding process because they use somebody that manages their independent contractors. Just be aware that's their program. It's not going to change for you. Don't fight it. Don't make it hard for them to engage you because you don't understand their system. Sometimes there's going to be, you know, not only a contract, but there's going to be a master service agreement and then purchase orders. And sometimes those purchase orders have to be done monthly. Sometimes they can be for the extent of the agreement, it just depends on how their budgeting works. And so you need to be prepared that sometimes on the client end there are just things that you cannot rail against because they don't have any other alternative to offer you.

But you shouldn't take it as a personal affront that they're asking you to do these administrative things. And it's burdensome for a small business because again, yes, we are small businesses, but on some things we have to be able to play in the same way that larger companies do. There are other policies that definitely, like there are things in contracts that definitely you should challenge sometimes. And, and that again, yeah, these are conversations that we have. I've been onboarded by clients where I had to go through a whole onboarding system. I had to have a background check. Everybody on my team had to have a background check. We had to go through their security clearance system, we can only access through their system. So it did mean downloading another tool, logging into something else doing this. We had to have a company email.

We were fine to email from our emails, but we still had to have this company email to access other things. So you roll with it and you make it easy for your client to do business. You don't put up these barricades like, I'm small, you're asking me to do too much. Or no, you can't pay me digitally. And if you do, it's an extra charge or you're, you know, you have to think about these things as you're setting rates for your clients and ensure that you are including the full cost of doing business outside of those costs that are expenses. So we're not talking about expenses, but you do need to make sure that your contracts specify expenses such as press release distribution are a separate line item. They'll be pre-approved before they're billed back to you.

But yeah, those are not part of the retainer, so, some people, I mean, I just had this with a vendor that I'm working with. I do not write checks. I do not have cash. And half the time I'm not around when the service is performed, please give me a way to pay you digitally. And then I have a record of it, by the way, I do want a record because otherwise am I just giving you cash? And then I've got to keep a record of I paid you on this date in like a paper notebook. Like that's, that's not making it easy for me to do business. And by the way, there are competitors that will have better communication, give me the same exact service for the same exact price. And I can pay them digitally with no problems, no questions asked, and, you know, get a better level of personal service. So as solos, we have to be careful that we're not creating these unnecessary hurdles for our prospective clients.

Michelle Kane (12:09):

Right. I mean, I consider part of customer service is to make it easy for you to pay me - what a beautiful thing. But in other things too, and everything communicates - everything we do. Not to make us too paranoid, or looking over our shoulder, but you know, the tone in your emails, the way and how often you might communicate or not communicate. Everything we do communicates something. And that doesn't mean that the receiver of that communication realizes that at the time, but it builds. So, you know, as a business owner, my goal is always to provide the best experience possible knowing that we're all human. And my guess is if we have our own solo shop, we're probably pretty hard on ourselves. And I mean, I've had times where I've gone to clients and said, oh my goodness I cannot believe that. So sorry, you know, flogging myself. And thankfully I'd like to think probably because of building up that subconscious goodwill through good communication, they've been like, oh, what that? Oh no, it's fine. And I think, oh, ,

Karen Swim (13:14):

Yes.

Michelle Kane (13:15):

And then I wonder, yes. Oh, okay, good. So, it's just something to keep in mind as we operate, and I think it also does us all a good service as we do build our businesses. If we do carry out just our communications in a way that, that makes the profession look good, right? Because we, especially in PR, we are always fighting that battle on some level, you know, fighting against the flack connotation or the superficial, you just throw parties, we're always was fighting against that. So any way that you can elevate the way that you do business with other people, and that can be clients and vendors alike is a positive.

Karen Swim (13:59):

Absolutely. And I will tell you, a friend of mine, one of my best friends shared one of his businesses is real estate and he was sharing, I know his mortgage broker or the person that he was using as his mortgage broker. And now that person was great and was able to get deals done and understood like how to work with investors and creative financing and how to work with self-employed people and how to work with people that have multiple LLCs. Just amazing. So it's not that he was very smart, you know, very responsive, his team was great. The service was great. There was nothing wrong with it. But then he had to work with this other guy and this guy made it easier for him to do business. So rather than having to go to this other guy and have to check in before every offer was made, and then have him do a whole new approval letter. The new mortgage guy has a portal, and the minute you're approved, you and your client have access to the portal. You can go in and you can run the calculator based on the house what you are planning to offer. It includes taxes and all the fees so that you can see your mortgage payment and everything prior to even generating. And then you can generate offer letters for as long as you need to until you are under contract. All streamlined and automated. And so my friend loves that. He and the client are empowered to keep moving at his fast pace and not having to take that extra step. And so I say that because sometimes as a solo PR pro, you may be competing against someone who has the same level of skillset that you do. It's not that you are not smart enough to do the work.

It's not that you're not likable, it's not that they have something that's off-putting that makes them not want to do business with you. It may just be that that other candidate is making it easier for them to do business with them in some way. And so I think that, for me, when my friend said that it did make me stop and yeah, really kind of think through my whole process and my systems and make sure that I'm not making it harder to engage me or to work with me on a day-to-day basis. What ways can I streamline things for my clients? How can I automate things so that they don't have to ask for it? How can I empower them with information and be proactive about it instead of being reactionaries? Are there any, you know, are there points that I'm missing? And I think that for all of us, it's worth having that checkpoint because we don't want to lose out because we're smart enough to do the work, but we're just not efficient enough to close the deal.

Michelle Kane (16:57):

Right, right. And that is so true. And sometimes that is the only differentiator. So, we encourage you, just do a little gut check, take a look at the way you're doing work because honestly, look, we're so involved in doing our work and sometimes we don't pull back and say, huh, is that the best way to do that? Is there a way that I can streamline processes, not just for my clients, but hey, it helps yourself too. So it's

Karen Swim (17:23):

No kidding,

Michelle Kane (17:24):

It's a win-win. So we hope we've been an encourager to you today and until next time, thanks for listening to That Solo Life.

 

Media Madness

With media outlets shuttering and reporter beats expanding, getting our clients’ stories told continues to be a challenge. The good news is PR pros are resilient, creative, and smart. In this episode we talk about all the ways to navigate this wave of media madness with success!

 

Transcript:

Michelle Kane (00:02):

Thank you for joining us for an episode of That Solo Life, the podcast for PR pros and marketers who work for themselves like me. I'm Michelle Kane, my company is VoiceMatters, and I'm here as always with the wonderful Karen Swim of Solo PR Pro. How are you?

Karen Swim, APR (00:19):

I am doing great, Michelle. How are you?

Michelle Kane (00:21):

I'm well, I'm well, thanks. And I'm kind of excited about our topic today. Oh, what the heck. I love all our topics, but we're just going to focus on media madness. You know, it's been really kind of a bummer lately. All of these outlets shuttering, BuzzFeed, Vice, Fox, no, Vox is still happening.

Karen Swim, APR (00:40):

Vox is still there…

Michelle Kane (00:42):

Let's not put that out there. .

Karen Swim, APR (00:44):

But hey do rely on donations. They do great work by the way.

Michelle Kane (00:47):

They do, they do. I think it was Vulture and it's, I mean, not only is it sad when good outlets are just closing down due to finances, but it kind of makes our job as PR pros more of a challenge, especially if you are working in sectors that would pitch often to those outlets or just rely on them, and as news consumers for covering areas of our world that really need that kind of coverage. So we just want to chat today about “Hey, how's it going with your pitching?” And how can we best adapt to this in service of our clients? So fun .

Karen Swim, APR (01:37):

Yeah. And we don't want to trot out the same, like, don't only push the lever of earned media. It's really about the landscape is pretty ugly right now.  And in some sectors, it's slow. It's not that you're not going to get coverage, but things take a lot longer than they used to. And part of that is due to the changes that have happened in the media landscape. People not having always one assigned beat. They're covering multiple beats or publications using a lot of freelancers, and so they don't have people on staff. And then people just being bombarded, probably a little burned out, and a little scared also because they have many attacks against their income sources. You know, freelancers have had to go with the California fallout and that cut their income because they could only work so many stories before they were considered to be employees. I mean, there's just been a lot in media over the past several years. Now there's the AI thing, and I will say that it's not just about outlets and journalists. What I'm seeing, and I'm sure that you all are seeing this too, is that there are fewer and fewer quality stories.

Michelle Kane (03:03):

Mm-hmm. . Yes.

Karen Swim, APR (03:03):

So really to just general topics. I'm not talking about covering politics or the economy. Those reporters have a beat, and the publications that do that work still do it very well. And you get high quality stories. The long form reads are still great stories. You know, The Atlantic, they always do a nice job with their long form stories. I'm talking about those day-to-day news stories. I'm finding that the quality is so shallow and it's just, it's like, okay, why did you even bother to write this? It's almost like they're just filling, you know,

Michelle Kane (03:44):

Filling unsold ad space.

Karen Swim, APR (03:46):

Say it. Yeah. It's, it's not great. Yeah.

Michelle Kane (03:49):

And yeah.

Karen Swim, APR (03:51):

And so when it comes to clients, in terms of finding quality places to tell those stories it may have shifted. I think one thing is that we have to remember that even if your expertise is not in internal communications, that there is a place for the PR pro to ensure that those stories are not only being told externally. Think about the stories that you can help your clients to tell internally. Which is vitally important in these times as companies are dealing with reductions in force. They're dealing with talent recruitment. They're dealing with policies that may be shifting. They may have some employee discontent, the Great Resignation, all of the things that are happening at work, internal stories are part of how we can truly help to impact our clients' businesses. And them being able to leverage that and to strengthen their employer brand is, is as important as driving revenue to the bottom line with those external stories.

Michelle Kane (05:06):

Yeah, that's so true. And you know, I know many companies, especially larger corporations, are very good at their internal comms, and they know how to fold it, you know, to weave it throughout and, and they realize the importance of their internal audience and how they can both strengthen the external view of the company, but also to create that community within. I think that's incredibly important. And  of course then sometimes those communications can be used on both sides. We've talked about this a lot, right? Does your website have a newsroom? Do you tell your stories in other ways? There are all kinds of creative ways to tell a story about maybe an employee that also talks about you - operate all these things that can affect those deciding to do business with you or to raise your profile.

Karen Swim, APR (06:05):

I think one of the things that I'm actually enjoying a lot more of lately also is realizing that companies that have strong internal comms teams, because in big companies, you know, they slice and dice those roles very specifically. They are approaching it with a complete insider's view. We bring that external view again, you know, one of the values of solos. And so sometimes we bring things that are creative in different ways that they may not have thought of because they're seeing it from within the company viewpoint, and they're seeing it from that lens, and we see it from a broader lens. And so working with internal teams gets them in excited and energized about things too. So yeah, in our work, we've been working across more departments and bringing them into some of our external things and then supporting their internal things as well.

And it's really brought out a different element. And it's great to see the executives excited about having their team supported, but it's also great to see how excited people get to work with someone new and to do things a little bit differently because they're getting this different perspective. And of course, it's fun for us because we get to work with more people in a company and we get to go deeper in our value proposition. So, you know, don't forget that that's another way to tell the stories is to Right. Enroll more people to collaborate with you from the internal teams and think outside of the box. It doesn't always have to be PR and marketing. It can be the customer success team. It can be, you know, um, specific to a persona. For example, if one of the personas, targets, people work with it, someone to develop it and tell stories and think of different ways you can do it. Think about owned media, podcasts, you know, branded podcasts for companies that you can help them to staff guests. You can even, and I did not realize how easy this was. So I will raise my hand and say I learned something through a friend who created her own streaming show that's on Roku. So I subscribed. I did not know it was so easy to just do your own production.

Michelle Kane (08:33):

That’s so cool.

Karen Swim, APR (08:34):

You can set up a streaming show for your client. If you have a client that loves video and, and maybe is doing YouTube and they want to do more and they want to take them to a different level, level look into streaming.

Michelle Kane (08:47):

That's phenomenal. And I love what you said about working across departments because it's the best of all worlds, right? Because it's true. We come in and there are things we don't know. So, we can pick up on story ideas of topics that come up that they might just blow off or think, oh, well no one cares about that, but wait, certain audiences do. And then working across all these different departments, they're the ones that know the the depth of what they do and they will bring to light wonderful topics and things that, that can be expanded on and brought to light.

Karen Swim, APR (09:28):

Absolutely. Absolutely. It does. Again, working across departments gives you richer content to work with externally too, and it helps to keep you aligned and you do, you learn more about the company when you tap into more than one source of information, it really does help us to be much more effective at our jobs and we can pick up on things that are exciting externally that people take for granted. I love that there's always a surprise. There's always something. It could be a bit of information, it could be, you know, a personal story and you're like, wait, that the media would love this and Right. Really? .

Michelle Kane (10:12):

Exactly. And you're just like, yeah, . And then of course you hope the person's willing to share and all that good stuff. But yeah, it's, it's really exciting and energizing when that does happen. I know I'm in the discovery phase with the client now, and it's just been wonderful to hear their insights and things that, you know, even if I thought long and hard would never have come to my mind. Yeah. Just because I don't serve in their role. I don't know everything.

Karen Swim, APR (10:41):

I know it's one of the joys of our job, right? I think that when we're actually doing the work, we're all in our happy place. Like it's just, we get to do the coolest things. Being a communicator is one of the best jobs on the planet.

Michelle Kane (10:53):

It is. It is. You're part teacher, you're part psychologist, , part therapist, part town crier, part, grammar nerd ,

Karen Swim, APR (11:04):

Definitely all of the things

Michelle Kane (11:06):

Rolled into one ,

Karen Swim, APR (11:08):

All of the things .

Michelle Kane (11:10):

So, so yeah. You know, we - even though the landscape is ever-changing - we don't ever want you to feel frustrated or demoralized. If anything, and I think it's also part of the DNA of the role that we serve. It's like, okay, that's not going to get me down. How else can we do this?

Karen Swim, APR (11:33):

Because the media landscape is going to continue to shift. And one of the underlying themes to all of this is money. Media shifted away from subscription models with the internet and everything was free and accessible, and they switched to advertising models. And advertising dollars have kind of dried up. There's, everyone's not advertising anymore. And then a lot of people took the initiative to create their own media companies. So you had more and more outlets that were out there competing for attention, for eyeballs. And now people are trying to go back to subscription models. So you see things like sets where there's certain stories you can read for free, but then you have to subscribe to get everything right. You know,

That's a great source to also tap into for stories. But I just think that because the models are all over the place, like how many people are you really going to get to subscribe to just individual stories rather than an entire outlet that's filled with a variety of stories? Yeah. I, it could work for individual creators to have enough interest to sustain them, which is, I think is fabulous. And I'm always here for writers taking charge of their income and, and having ways to be directly paid by their audiences, because I think that's an important avenue. But as a media business model on its own, it's probably not for way to go.

Michelle Kane (13:11):

No, I don't think so. You probably think of something like a Substack, which many writers are setting up, but as far as trying to get our client stories out, it doesn't quite align. Doesn't quite line up. So yeah. I wish there was an easy answer to it.

Karen Swim, APR (13:32):

Yeah, there's not. There's digging and searching for reporters that are a fit regardless of where they write, you know? Searching for people that will best tell your client's story and tell a rich story. Trades are just the lifeblood, I think, for so many of us because they deliver. They may not all be tier one outlets, but they really deliver on the promise. You can find your audience with trades, and you can get quality stories, you can get byline opportunities. They're still doing the work.

Michelle Kane (14:08):

Yeah.

Karen Swim, APR (14:08):

And it's harder to get into tier one unless you have hard news. And so when you're dealing with clients, most clients don't have hard news all the time. They just don't. So you have to work with what you have to work with. Media relations is still very viable. It's not dead, folks. Right. It's still doable, but it is important to start to be creative and think outside of that box and expand a little bit, even if it's expanding in the types of opportunities that you seek and the type of outlets that you pitch. If you've never added podcast in, you might want to add podcast into the rotation. If you've never thought about your client putting their expertise into a book, um, or Oh yeah. They don't have any own media channels of their own, you know, start to think about those things as well.

Michelle Kane (15:00):

Yeah.

Karen Swim, APR (15:01):

That’s another one. Add different ways of thought leadership into the, into the mix.

Michelle Kane (15:06):

Agree, agree. And like with anything, manage those expectations. That's those teachable moments because we all still have those clients that are saying, get me on the Today Show. Yeah. . Yeah. Which we have to just, you know, calmly say, well now what exactly are you expecting to accomplish ?

Karen Swim, APR (15:28):

And I mean, sometimes success can also, you know, we have a client and we just did a campaign and we delivered way above and beyond what was

Michelle Kane (15:43):

Of course you did.

Karen Swim, APR (15:44):

And then we started freaking out, like, oh my God, we hope that they don't expect this every month. Because it's not going to happen every single month like this where it's just explosive coverage and, you know, so it's funny how we do that. We kill it and then we're like, oh my God, we killed it. Are they going to expect every month? Because I’d die if we have to do this every single month.

Michelle Kane (16:07):

It's just not feasible. You don't want to fire hose an audience either. So Yeah.

Karen Swim, APR (16:15):

Not pitch, don't anything. Way more stories than we were supposed to be. No more pitching. No pitching.

Michelle Kane (16:23):

I'm all pitched out. And, you know, honestly, that's where other items like a podcast or thought leadership articles, that's where it can fall nicely into that mix so that you are not,

Karen Swim, APR (16:38):

You have to mix in the, the longer term opportunities. Although these ways, everything seems to be a longer term opportunities, but

Michelle Kane (16:45):

Yeah. Right.

Karen Swim, APR (16:46):

You want to get the shorter term things, but you want to focus on the long game too, and things like podcasts, you pitch them, you're not always going to get immediate responses. You will not always be able to book guests within the week or the month. Some shows have seasons, and they may already be booked up for the season and be booking well into their next season, which could be later this year. It could be 2024. We all know the long lead publications and then just in general, you know, so it's good  to have a mix of opportunities that could hit at different times because agree, our goal is steady Eddie, rolling thunder. You know, we want to keep building, building, building.

Michelle Kane (17:29):

I love these names. Keep going. . No, it's true. It's true. And, uh, as I couch them, you know, these opportunities to talk about yourself, you know, as a business, you want them to be valid and, and to be in a variety of places, it's always going to serve you well.

Karen Swim, APR (17:50):

Yeah. And I mean, I'd love to hear from Solo PR Pros who are doing anything in the metaverse because it's been declared dead by many media outlets, but I have definitely seen some success stories from people who are doing really creative things there. So, I realize that even Mark Zuckerberg has now stopped talking about the metaverse, we're not hearing anything about it. I believe that they pulled jobs away from that sector. But if you're doing something there and you're doing it for your clients, we'd love to hear about it, because that's a topic that we've not addressed here.

Michelle Kane (18:28):

That is true. Yeah. We would love to hear your stories and honestly, we want to hear your experiences in general. How are you finding things? Please let us know. It's soloprpro.com because we would love to take all of your input and talk about this again. It's going to be an ever-changing topic that we can come back to from time to time. But if you found this time valuable, which we hope you did, we thank you for spending it with us, please do share this episode around. And until next time, thanks for listening to That Solo Life.