That Solo Life: The Solo PR Pro Podcast

Building a More Inclusive Future: Conversations with Bernadette Davis

There are many challenges faced by DE&I practitioners in today's landscape, including the backlash against DE&I efforts. In this episode, we are joined by an expert in the field of DE&I communications, Bernadette Davis of Bernadette Davis Communications. Listen to hear her valuable insights on how communicators can navigate these challenges, emphasizing the need for inclusivity to be woven into the company's culture.

Stay in touch with Bernadette on LinkedIn and at her website, bdaviscomm.com.

 

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 of course Karen Swim of Solo PR Pro. But we are most excited - we love when we have guests – today we have a guest!You're in for a treat today. We welcome Bernadette Davis. Bernadette is an accredited public relations professional and founder of Bernadette Davis Communications. She and her team use their depth of expertise in media relations, executive communications, internal employee communications, diversity, equity and inclusion, and corporate editorial to support clients. So that sounds marvelous and we are so happy, Bernadette, that you're with us today. We're lucky.

Bernadette Davis, APR (00:52):

Thank you for having me.

Michelle Kane (00:55):

No, this is phenomenal. So tell us about your work in DEI communications because it's very important work.

Bernadette Davis, APR (01:01):

Okay, so again, thank you both for having me on. Today I lead a small but mighty team. I started the company though as a solo in 2014 and have transitioned into a boutique agency. And one of our areas of expertise is in DE&I communications. So before I started this agency, the last job that I had, traditional role was at Walt Disney World Resort, which I loved. And I worked on a team, the public affairs team, and we had internal clients. Two of my internal clients at that time were the DE&I team and the supplier diversity team. And while I worked with a lot of clients while I was there, I did learn a lot from those two teams. Little did I realize when I was doing that work as an employee there that 2, 3, 4 years later, I would end up starting an agency and using that expertise to then serve clients.

So that's how that journey started with me, specifically with DE&I communications, bringing that knowledge together with my communications experience. And so my team operates very well as an extension of corporate comms teams because we do have design capabilities, communication strategy, content development. So we can really be almost like their in-house agency as an external partner. And we apply that to DE&I work as well. So for example, when we work with a chief diversity officer or with a communications team that wants some more DE&I experience, we might write for senior level executives who are giving speeches and presentations where they have an inclusive component. We would do design work for them DE&I reports, and even internal and external communication strategy. So how are you talking to your employees about the inclusive work that the company does? And we help to amplify those stories, figure out what are the right stories to, to reach their audiences and even developing that messaging.

Karen Swim, APR (03:11):

Thank you so much for that rich explanation because I think for people that may not be involved in DEI and B work that you may underestimate the amount of activities that get poured into helping companies to really have an inclusive culture because that is, that's a full breadth of public relations services dedicated to a very specific part of the company and then weaving that into the overall messaging as well. So that was really helpful. I'm really interested, some of the things that I'm seeing beyond, not with my own clients, but just when talking with people that do this work is that we've seen this year be a little bit tumultuous, a little bit economically challenged, and we're used to seeing things like marketing and PR being cut back. But it seems like some DEI programs are also being cut back or departments are being merged into other pieces of the company, which is disturbing because there's so much work to do. What trends are you seeing in your work with your clients or just in talking with other colleagues that are also in this space?

Bernadette Davis, APR (04:35):

So Karen, I think first of all, it's interesting, A little bit tumultuous. Yes, more than a little bit and more than a year. The trends that I see, and this is coming from other communicators as well as DE&I, practitioners that I know and some that we've worked with. The landscape around DE&I is very challenging right now. And some people really position it as DE&I work, diversity, equity and inclusion work is under attack. And anytime you have a team or content that's under attack in that way, there can be a concern around that. How do we continue to do this work? So you see things like repositioning the work, naming it differently, for instance, adding the concept of belonging or referring to it as belonging work that's been going on for a couple of years, that transition. So you'll see some teams that are DEI and belonging, bringing it back into HR teams if it was ever pulled out of HR, bringing it back into HR, talking about company culture, which I think is really positive because inclusion should be a part of your company culture.

So I think some of these transitions are helpful because inclusion should not sit off to the side of your business. Your people, leaders, financial leaders, your operations leaders, employees at every part of the company should be thinking about their work and how it can be more inclusive. We also see some companies and organizations that are truly becoming concerned enough that they're likely stopping the work or they want to stop talking about the work that they're doing because they don't want to draw fire over that work. So that's concerning. And I think our role as communicators is to work through that with them and to bring to bear what's messaging that does work, what are the questions we can ask that help us find the right story to tell and to explore what the work really is that we're not making assumptions based on external factors and that we are disusing people of those assumptions. So I think as communicators we do have a more integrated role to play rather than just being task takers to help the organization and help leaders think through the work that they're doing, are you really going to stop doing inclusive work? Because to me, I'm always challenged by that idea because companies don't want to include fewer employees. That's not a smart thing to do.

So those are the things that we're seeing,

Michelle Kane (07:23):

Right, and it just doesn't make sense because it should be at the forefront of how companies cast their vision and develop their values and their culture.

Bernadette Davis, APR (07:36):

Exactly. It's about taking care of the people in your company, taking care of the people you do business with and your customers. And it's also about reputation, risk and opportunity. So when you think about how people perceive DE&I and DE&I work, there was a PEW research study shared earlier this year that said most workers around 56% say focusing on increasing DE&I at work is mainly a good thing. That's more than half of your audience. So you have to be very cautious about not doing the work, not talking about the work. No one wants to lose half their audience.

Michelle Kane (08:21):

No, no, they do not.

Karen Swim, APR (08:24):

I believe it also, let's just call it out. It is good for your bottom line profitability. Often leaders, the language that they speak are dollars and there are so many studies that support that When you have an organization that is inclusive, it's good for the bottom line, inclusivity gives you varying points of view that are really important and makes your business more robust. It leads to greater innovation. There's just so many benefits to it. I'm not somebody who's in that space. I don't think that I could do that day in and day out. However, I do advocate with my clients that DEI is not something that is something that should be off to the side just like ethics. And I believe the DEI is part of ethics as well and I beat that drum all the time. This is something that needs to be woven into your culture and it needs to be not just something that you do as a checklist.

It really needs to be something that is lived period throughout the entire organization for every single human being that works there, full stop. It's sometimes hard to get people to see that. And it's interesting that you mentioned the backlash because it blows my mind that we live in a culture that is so firmly planted in their factions of life. Everything is for or against. It's like if you like the color blue, then there's a group of people that says that you're wrong. And purple is really the color. We fight about everything. And if you believe in inclusivity, which to me is believing in humanity, then somehow you are woke in the wrong way. And you're right, companies can then receive the backlash for being aware that all human beings are not the same, which is such a sad shame. So what are some tips that you can give to other communicators that are faced with this toxicity in our culture and the pressure on practitioners and trying to figure it out? What are some strategies that you've utilized to keep this at the forefront and to keep momentum going?

Bernadette Davis, APR (10:52):

So one of the key strategies and reminders for communicators and for our clients and for your partners is that, again, DE&I shouldn't be separate from your overall business. So are you communicating about policy changes that affect employees? You need to think through those policy changes and what are the inclusive aspects of those, just the policy itself and then how do you communicate that in a way? Does that policy affect your company's approach to accessibility? For example, you should be thinking about that. So it may be a policy that's done by a completely different part of the organization, not DE&I, but all of your employees are going to be impacted. So how do you think about inclusion when it comes to that? So that's the first thing. It should not be separate from the other parts of the business. And you can ask that question and that's a bottom line question because the rest of your business is operating, are you being inclusive?

I'll give an example of something that was released this week. Deloitte released a study with, I think it's associated with the NYU law school, about the concept of covering when people are working to hide parts of their known identity, parts of their identity that are disfavored or seen or perceived as unfavorable. About 60% of the people that they surveyed say that they do some covering at work. And so when you think about that in terms of DE&I and the company, that's a financial issue because if people aren't comfortable at work and they're in an environment where they feel like they need to cover, I would imagine that that plays into them moving around company to company. And we know there's a cost associated with that every time that you need to deal with that. As a business owner, a corporation, there's a cost associated with that.

But if you address that and create an environment where people do not feel like they have to cover as many people, fewer people feel like they have to cover and there's all kinds of covering. So there's covering mothers covering in the workplace, not talking about their children. If they perceive that to be a challenge, people covering based on their faith, based on their orientation, their LGBTQIA identity. And so that's affecting a lot of people. So that's another reminder that it affects a lot of people. So that's another thing to say to business leaders to keep the momentum going. If we aren't going to do this work, how do we address these very real concerns that our employees have brought up and are mentioning and that we need to ask them about? So another way to keep the momentum going is to look at your employee engagement and what your employees are saying in your surveys and making sure that you're asking questions that get to the heart of whether or not inclusion is an opportunity or what your inclusion opportunities are. There probably isn't an organization on the planet that's perfect from an inclusive standpoint. It's a question of whether or not your organization is making the effort, making progress and staying on top of what the people need, your consumers and the people who work there in order to adjust to meet their needs.

Michelle Kane (14:19):

That's so true. And much like Karen said that leaders speak in dollars, they also speak in metrics. Show me the goods, prove it to me. So what kind of metrics do your clients find most impactful to make sure that they stay on the right track with these initiatives,

Bernadette Davis, APR (14:38):

Those employee engagement scores, the surveys, and sometimes even doing internal focus groups to hear what employees are saying. Those are important metrics. So if you want to get data that's to do, and you can build this into your surveys, most companies do survey the employees, they even survey job candidates, build in the questions to find out what their thoughts are around inclusion. And then there are some other information that you can get from employee resource groups, which tend to be very active and vocal and have the pulse of what employees are thinking, who are members of different dimensions. So what do they have to say, how do they respond? And some companies will go to them directly to ask them to engage on that and then it can be a part of a company's overall reputation strategy. So when you look at reputation, however your company is measuring reputation or keeping tabs on that, how does your work on inclusion affect your reputation? How does it affect those measures?

Karen Swim, APR (15:47):

Do you find that companies, we work with some clients that in my agency that deal with neurodivergence and the statistics on that are pretty sad too that employers under count their employees who are neurodivergent because they haven't self-identified for fear of backlash. That's a huge problem because you're handicapping people from really being the best employee because you're not giving them an environment in which to succeed. So do you find that companies pigeonhole, DEI to a specific group or group of people and missed the global picture of what inclusivity really means?

Bernadette Davis, APR (16:34):

I think that's happening less now. I think one of the challenges there, whether they intend to do this or not, is that certain dimensions of diversity are tracked more easily. And so you mentioned self-identification. It's difficult for them to address challenges if everyone doesn't self-identify and you aren't required to self-identify. So they may not really know what their numbers are. But I do think there's an opportunity here. I like to think about things being designed for the best for everyone. So if you think about this, and this will be a very tactile, I guess example, when you think about restaurants and stores and even apartment buildings being designed, we often don't think, in my opinion about design for mobility challenges until we have that mobility challenge. However, many of the things that you can do to make a location more accessible would in fact be better for everyone.

And you don't know that you need it until you need it. But what if every place that you went into, every workplace, every store, every apartment building, every hotel was accessible Because we tend to do that design. There will be just a few hotel rooms in a hotel building that are accessible rooms,

But what if they were all accessible? And so I think that's the kind of thinking that we need. Even if your numbers don't indicate that you have whatever your percentages, you think threshold of employees who are neurodivergent or who have a mental till illness or any other disability, maybe your numbers are not that high, but if you built an environment where you were accessible to everyone, then when they apply for a job, there it is, it's ready for them. And I do notice different things. We dined at a location this weekend and I noticed it was very accessible. I also noticed that I saw different people there. People go where they have access and so if you design it for everyone, everyone will come. That's how I like to think about it.

Karen Swim, APR (19:02):

I love that.

Michelle Kane (19:03):

That's fantastic.

Karen Swim, APR (19:05):

Yeah,

Michelle Kane (19:06):

Yeah. It's such a no brainer too. It's like, well of course we should. My goodness. Why do we keep doing things the hard way? It's just so bizarre to me. So I know we touched on this a little bit as far as the state of DEI, but what do you think is ahead for DEI communications in 2024?

Bernadette Davis, APR (19:29):

I've been looking at that and I've actually been to at least one session talking about DE&I in the current landscape. And I would say the first thing is to stay the course

Michelle Kane (19:41):

Good.

Bernadette Davis, APR (19:42):

Turning it on and off like a faucet doesn't make sense and people see that, employees see that job candidates see that even the organizations you work with see that decide that you're going to do the work and do the work for communicators. I think it's an opportunity for us to continue to strengthen our collaboration with DE&I practitioners who are our colleagues and with the organizations that do this work. I think communications professionals have room to grow in terms of learning this work and it really has the opportunity to influence all of your communications content and tactics. So continue to build those relationships so that we can be partners and even advocates for this work. And then I think we are often making the case for things when we are telling a client or a partner, Hey, we really think this is the right strategy and here's why.

Just as we would pull research, look at existing coverage and trending topics when we're talking about other work, do the same for DE&I and bring those statistics to the table just so that whatever the decision makers decide, we can't control for that outcome, but at least we will know that we have presented what's available in terms of the research, the facts, what people's perspectives are. So if a client or an organization that you're working with decides, we see that Gen Z almost 30% identifies as a member of the L-G-B-T-Q-I-A community and another, I think it's 20 to 30% of their generation advocates for their friends and family in that community. So now we're looking at about 60% of the generation that cares about this topic and is very passionate about it. If that's not something your company or organization wants to engage in, that's fine, but do understand what you're talking about for today and for the future.

Michelle Kane (21:49):

So true. That is so true and so important too. Incredibly important.

Karen Swim, APR (21:56):

Completely agree. I know that you are an expert in not only doing the work but reporting on the work. So I want to hear about what you're doing in terms of reporting your efforts and what tips you might have as we all are starting our year in reports and sharing with clients those details.

Bernadette Davis, APR (22:19):

Thank you. This is exactly the time of year where people are either writing their DE&I reports or starting to pull that information together from all of the work they've done in the previous year. We've worked with multiple clients where we work with them either on the strategy and the outline for their report. Sometimes we write the entire report and do the design as well. So we've touched all facets of that process right now. I think it's considering your audiences spending more time thinking about the audiences. A lot of DE&I reports tend to be longer and I don't think I know, we know we see this, that people don't read those longer documents the way they might have in the past. So I think thinking through your audiences and how do you create a report document where you can pull out what you need for audiences and that it's a useful document for your team.

I think that's one of the best pieces of advice that we can provide. Thinking about what part of this is attractive to job candidates, what part of this do we need to share with external stakeholders? What part of this matters to employees? And using that as a guideline for how you develop the report and making it very concise. We look at about 40 different DE&I reports from companies every year for our edification and we pull that a report around the insights and trends that we get from that. And so that's a benchmarking study we've done two years now and share with clients and that really helps us see what's trending with reports and how they're changing. And that can be something very helpful as we do this work and we're able to share that with potential clients and clients and they've all found it very useful.

Karen Swim, APR (24:08):

That sounds like an amazing report. Are those insights something that you package up and offer to other colleagues as well or is that something that you're thinking about doing? Because that sounds amazing.

Michelle Kane (24:22):

Yeah,

Bernadette Davis, APR (24:23):

Every year we do share it out and we are getting ready to do our end of year newsletter, so we'll be sharing it out in that newsletter. And I think I've shared it in the past with solos in the member group, but definitely can do that this year. It's just a great way when you have to do a report like this, whether it's ACSR DE&I report, you know what we're going to do? We're going to go look at five in our industry, five more from another industry so that we have that as benchmarking and we've done a lot of that legwork.

Michelle Kane (24:52):

Oh, that's wonderful. So I know we all want to know where can we find you? How can solos look you up so they can make sure that that might hit their inbox?

Bernadette Davis, APR (25:02):

Thank you. The best way is our website baviscomm.com. So that's bdaviscomm.com. And I'm very available on LinkedIn and our company page - bdaviscomm.com - is very active there. We have a great team that keeps us in front of people.

Michelle Kane (25:19):

Fantastic. And there was one thing you said at the start of our conversation was that the work that you were doing at Disney prepared you for the work that you do as a solo. And I think that is such a commonality amongst us that we, many of us who are solos didn't really set out to be solos necessarily, but we can all look back and say, oh, I served in this specific role because that prepared me to be able to be a solo, right? I mean that

Bernadette Davis, APR (25:52):

Exactly. I started my career as a newspaper reporter, print newspaper. I ended up working on a website that was in support of an ABC affiliate in Orlando in the early two thousands. So web development, I worked PR for an ad agency, I did communications for an HBCU law school. So all of those pieces, and never along that path did I think, oh, this will be helpful when I start my own business. But it all worked out just fine. This is the beginning of our 10th year in operation.

Michelle Kane (26:26):

That's fantastic!

Karen Swim, APR (26:27):

Congratulations.

 

Bernadette Davis, APR

Yes, thank you.

Karen Swim, APR (26:30):

And I do want to remind our listeners that we will have Bernadette's information in the show notes and I encourage you to follow her because the content that you share publicly is so phenomenal. You're such a superstar. So for people like you who not only do the work but live it externally because you advocate for inclusion in everything you do, it's not just client work that you do, this is who you are. And I'm always inspired by that and I look to people like yourself to stay abreast of the things that I should know. But I applaud you. I mean, I can't say this enough. I believe that this work is so hard. It can be really hard. It can really drain you, particularly when you are a person of color and you're having to remove your biases and you're having to step into this role of educating people sometimes to the point of frustration. So thank you so much for hanging in there for doing the work and shining the light for the rest of us. I can't say enough good things about you. I'm just super thankful that you came here today and talked to us about this and I'm looking forward to seeing your report. That is just such a fantastic resource and we appreciate you, Bernadette.

Michelle Kane (27:53):

We do. We really do.

Bernadette Davis, APR (27:54):

It's thank you. I've been a long time member of Solo PR, many people, and it's been so helpful in building my business in the quiet times when it was just me and I didn't know what I was doing. So many things that I do, I'm like, yeah, someone in solo PR said, use this tool. I'm using it. So the feeling is absolutely mutual.

Michelle Kane (28:18):

Oh, that's wonderful. We are lucky to know you, Bernadette. We are. Thank you so much for spending this time with us today and we hope to do it again soon. To our listeners, again, please connect with Bernadette on LinkedIn if you found this episode of value, and of course you did, come on now. Please do share it around. And if you have any questions or comments, hit us up at solopro.com. And until next time, thanks for listening to That Solo Life.

 

 

Where Do We Go from Here? Social Media for 2024

The social media landscape has changed drastically over the course of this year. What does that mean for our clients as we plan for 2024?

 

Transcript

Michelle Kane (00:03):

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

Karen Swim, APR (00:21):

Hey, Michelle. I am very chilly, which is why I am wearing my comfy little coat during this broadcast because we're in the thirties here in Michigan, but other than that, good. How are you doing today?

Michelle Kane (00:37):

I am doing well. We are not quite that chilly here in the Philly burbs, but there's that beautiful fall crispness in the air that even though I'm not thrilled about the temperature plunges to come, I will take it. It adds a little snap to or step.

Karen Swim, APR (00:56):

We're just going to call this fall crisp with a little bit of rain. That's what we're going to call it. We're going to call it fall crisp because it's still technically fall, and I am determined to enjoy fall until the very last day. I refuse to accept that it's over because it's not technical.

Michelle Kane (01:18):

No, no. In fact, I saw a hysterical Instagram reel from Michelle Stafford. She's a soap actress, Nina General Hospital, everyone. But the whole point of the reel was that her young son was very disturbed that we were skipping Thanksgiving. We were hopping right from Halloween to Christmas, and you hear him in the backseat of her car going, “Where's Thanksgiving?” And so they go to Home Goods and they're shopping around and they found fall on a clearance table and the little boy says, “The boss here mustn't do Thanksgiving.”

Karen Swim, APR (01:59):

That is adorable and so sad. Help the children do not just push you all to the side. Do not push Thanksgiving away. I mean, listen, no matter what you feel about the pilgrims. Let's not rush it to Christmas.

Michelle Kane (02:15):

No, let's let our Thanksgiving meal digest properly. We don't want to get acid reflux as we hurl into the holidays. But she did end up buying some holiday items and she said, “I'm not proud.” And he goes, “I'm not proud either.” So check out Michelle Stafford's Instagram. It's very funny and not that we want to rush things, but speaking of social media and how fun it can be and how it can still be effective today, we're going to go on a little bit about social media planning for 2024. It's been a while since we stopped to sort of take stock and see what's going on out there. Where are our clients' audiences spending their time, what is still worth our time to use it as organizations and corporations? So we're going to talk about that a little bit.

Karen Swim, APR (03:09):

Yeah, honestly, Michelle, it's amazing to me that in this past 10 months how dramatically the social media landscape has changed, and maybe it's just me, but I feel like the changes have been as rapid as when social media really started to take off many, many years ago. I've not seen this dramatic of a shift in such a short period of time, all driven of course by the social media site formerly known as Twitter. It really just led to a deluge of changes and it's definitely well worth it to take a hard look at strategies and understand audit for your audiences again and make decisions about how you advise your clients or how you as a brand advise your company on what to do in the coming year.

Michelle Kane (04:07):

Yeah, that's so true, especially with regard to that channel. I know many have full on abandoned it for very good reasons because just of who has the hate speech and the things that have been allowed to take place. I mean, I still do find it a fair resource for journalists that are still hanging in there and trying to, it's for better or for worse, still a place where you might find up-to-date information. With yesterday being election day, it certainly wasn't like the good old days, but I thought, oh, okay, I can still get up to the moment information. But for the rest of it, if I were advising a client, a fresh new client today about using it, I would not, because it's almost like when you take your clients to lunch, do you want to take them to a nice place or a place with questionable actors?

Karen Swim, APR (05:01):

Yeah, it's really, I thought in all of the movement and all of the things that have happened on X this year, I was certain at some points that it would be gone by now. I really thought it would be gone or that it would have lost every shred of usefulness. Now, for some people, it really has. The interesting thing to me is that there were some media companies that made a wholesale decision that we refuse to be on this platform and support the ethics and the morals that are coming from the top, from the leadership and the tone and the environment and how it is has just become a bastion of not only hate speech but mis- and disinformation.

But I have found, as you said, that there are still many journalists who continue to use the platform. So for communicators, it is probably worthwhile depending on the reporters that you interact with, to at least keep your eye on your reporters there. It doesn't mean that you have to spend time on the platform. Definitely doesn't mean that you have to buy a blue check mark, none of those things, but as long as you have free access to the platform, there are journalists that very much engage there, which is helpful for our work, for my own clients across the board, many of them use it, but it's more of a broadcast channel. They just broadcast stuff out.

Some of them have, many people have penned posts that have a post, and then it talks about the other places that you can find them, but they just use it as a broadcast channel, not as an interactive channel. I think the other thing though, and Michelle, I'd love to hear your take on this, is that it feels like the tone of all of the channels has changed. So at one point where you had multiple channels for quote unquote business, I feel like there are some channels have become much more personalized. For me, Threads is not really a business channel. I see where it could be, but it really feels more of a take off your blazer, sit down and really connect with people around personal interest and your personal branding. Whereas LinkedIn has risen from the ashes in some ways to become the de facto business channel that all of my clients care about. That's where they're spending their money. Are you seeing the same thing?

Michelle Kane (07:43):

Yes. And I wonder if that's because Threads feels more like a, or is a derivative of Instagram or it's more aligned with Instagram. Now I have clients who use Instagram of course, being the retail facing the public facing. But even so there's a different vibe and a tone on Instagram. It's always been more casual. It feels unnatural if you're scrolling through your feed of Instagram and something very formal comes in. No, so that makes sense. And it is nice to see LinkedIn swaying away from what felt like a, I don't know, like a stilted Facebook light or something. I was like, no, no, no, I don't come here for this. I come here for business information to get to know colleagues better, of course. But to stay in that professional lane I think is a good thing that that is happening there.

Karen Swim, APR (08:42):

And algorithmic changes are also impacting the work that we do. So it has become more challenging because even if your audience is there, you're not guaranteed to reach them organically. So I think as we really evaluate how to advise clients in the coming year, we really want to make sure that we have a seat at the table to talk about those paid models as well. What's the budget for paid in the coming year? And make some recommendations about slices of the pie and how that should be allocated to some PR efforts as well. Don't leave yourself out of that paid discussion because there are things that as PR professionals, and I just had this discussion with a client yesterday where we want to use every slice, every piece of the pie, including paid. So we're making recommendations on that budget as well. So don't forget to do that because as you said, Instagram still remains as of today a channel where brands can engage, especially with consumer facing, brands can engage their audiences and get their attention, but you obviously can't be all buttoned up. It has to be visually appealing, you have to share information. So far it seems like people are still using influencers, although there's sort of a shift away from that word and the influencers, and then the Instagram algorithm has changed. It's made it harder to view people and they keep changing. So I mean these all factor into our decisions of where do we tell our clients to spend their time and research? If you're b2b, it's LinkedIn and you can pretty much close your eyes to everything else if you choose to.

Michelle Kane (10:35):

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, and even from the beginning of using social media for business, I've always advised clients to be discerning, you don't have to be everywhere. Just make sure that way you are, you're doing it as best you can with what you have. And that's different things to different people. And there are some clients where I can just say, again, thinking more of the consumer facing look, if your budget is X and you just have one special you want to put out on Facebook, then fine. We put a fair chunk of money that makes sense behind that and make sure the people that you want to see it, see it. Even though certainly Facebook ad buying has changed so much and it's definitely not as targeted as it used to be. You can still get there. But I think the bottom line too is if you want to be seen, you have to pay you

Karen Swim, APR (11:28):

So true. And so then drives into having those hard conversations with your clients about their ethical considerations as well. Because let's face it, a lot of people left Facebook in droves because there are concerns around privacy, their concerns about the company's ethics, the missile and disinformation, understandable. I am not going to slam anybody for making those decisions. Many people left X for the same exact reason, and Facebook, Instagram and threads are also meta. It's the same company. So again, we're left with view choices. I know that there are many other emerging apps like Blue Sky and Spill,

But again, what's happened is that this is so divided. Our publics, they're not en masse in one place anymore as it was in the past. And then you also as a company have to make these decisions about what really is right for your business. Where are the right places to show up and who do you really want to spend money with? For me, this brings home the point that we, communicators marketers have always said from day one, do not put all of your eggs into a basket that is owned by somebody else. This is why your websites, your email marketing strategies still need to be strong and you need to be driving place people to your home rather than always hosting at somebody else's house basically.

Michelle Kane (13:11):

I say that all the time, and I think even more so these days. Social media is certainly a capable tool for some things, but it's not as much in the forefront as it used to be. I encourage all of us to think about our clients and the way that we're helping them get known and get seen and get their stories told is to just rethink all of that. Because what is the main thing we're trying to do? We're trying to get their stories told. And that could be a literal story or it could be your oil change special of the month. Where can that be seen? And that's not always primarily social media. I think. I mean, I know my clients, a lot of companies do use their email marketing in a robust way, but I think there are also a fair amount of companies out there who are not using it in the way they used to. And I could venture to guess why is it because so many of us when we receive the emails, we're like, ah, delete, delete, delete, delete. But that's okay. I mean, again, I say this all the time to my clients. Your perfect ideal customer has to be ready for you to engage. So you may hit them with a message 20 times and the 21st time is the time that particular person is ready. The beautiful thing is there are so many people out there that you're talking to. It's,

Karen Swim, APR (14:52):

It's funny that you said that because for me, I'm one of those people who email is, it's just a constant annoyance as it is for everyone in the communication industry. And for many of us who lit our work is integrally tied to email as a communication channel. But I was having a conversation with somebody that I know the other day who was checking their email and he was like, oh, I have eight emails and just in the past, that's your 10 minute volume, right? It's like eight. And he was actually excited about getting an email from a brand that he had bought from and really liked the product and was excited to get the email about the sell. So again, I think you're right, Michelle, that we have to remember to that what we're sick of and what seems so commonplace to us, because it's our job from Inside View, we have to really put ourselves in the shoes of our public and understand maybe they're not overwhelmed with emails because that's not part of their day-to-day job, and they're not getting 22,000 emails in their inbox. Maybe they have five and maybe they're really happy to receive information from brands that they support, that they learn from. And so don't shy away from a toll just because in your mind you're over it, you're sick of it because not everybody is in that same space.

Michelle Kane (16:29):

We have to check ourselves and our jaded notions. And also too, I mean, hey, if check read industry blogs and make sure, because every once in a while, say maybe a couple times a year, I check and say, okay, is email still a very good tried and true way? And sure enough, it is.

Karen Swim, APR (16:55):

I think it's also important for brands to going into 2024 to be realistic not only in where you are on a social media platform, but what your goal is there. Because for so many years in the early days, we talked about community, community engagement, engagement, engagement. It's all about building a community. Can we be really honest? You're not going to build community around your toilet paper. You're just a topic that is really going to draw people that are so passionate about your brand of toilet paper that it's going to form a community. But is it to continue to keep your brand name in front of people as they're making buying decisions? Are there other things that you can expand into as a brand? Are there things that you support? So if you're a toilet paper brand, and can you remind people about prostate screenings? Are there things that are adjacent that you can share information about? I, so I think it's very important to re-look at your strategy, and sometimes PR professionals are not managing the day-to-Day social media, but we can at least educate and collaborate on the content that's going forward to help those teams to think about why are you really here and what are the goals and what are the expectations? Because the strategies really have changed. In my mind, they have, it's not because the tools have changed. And so I think it is important to take a fresh look at it as I'm sure that we're doing every year, but I feel like this year is more important than ever, and keeping in mind that we are entering election year, so that means a lot of noise. It means a lot of mis- and mal- and disinformation. Let's just face it. On top of the studies, there was a Pew study that just showed that people are turning away from the news in droves in that demographic, particularly of 30 to 49 years old. So if your publics factor into that, that's another thing that you need to weigh as a professional. Not that, oh my God, no one's paying attention, so we shouldn't do earned media. But what's the most effective way to leverage earned media to reach an audience that's become quite jaded about anything that comes out of a news organization?

Michelle Kane (19:26):

Yeah, and I love that you bring up the toilet paper idea of prostate cancer screenings. I mean, that really answers just the core. What's going to grab someone that they core or before they can outthink it of, oh, right, my health, how to make my day better, how to make my life better, how can I save money? Those kinds of narratives that really help someone in their day to day I think is a great place to focus on as we move into 2024. How can you be, not a partner, but just a key connection in someone's life, which is not quite the same as like you said at the outside of social. It's like, let's build a community. We thought that might happen, and then we realized what,

Karen Swim, APR (20:21):

Yeah, nobody's rallying it. I got an email today from Hiscock Insurance, shout out to Hiscock, which many of our solos utilize, and there was an article in their newsletter about reducing business expenses. And I clicked right through and I read that entire article. And again, this is somebody that provides insurance, but this was, they're in the business of supporting business owners. And everything in the newsletter was really helpful, but this was a topic that immediately caught my eye because we're all looking for ways to stretch our dollars as business people with everything going up so high. This was so timely, and it's smart. I don't get a ton of emails from them, but it was one that as I'm going through my 1700 emails, I actually did click through. I read this article, I remembered it, and now I'm talking about them on the podcast here. So don't diminish the value of showing up where people live on your, it's your list. No one can take that away from you using the things that you really do own and have a little bit more control of. And then maybe using social media as a way to amplify or to further drive people to your own properties.

Michelle Kane (21:41):

Exactly. I mean, I think that continues to be the name of the game, and I think sometimes we can move away from that. We can drift, but I think honing back on that and really telling what's your story, what do you need people to know and being helpful is still the way to go. So while we hope that we've been of help to you today with this bit of content that we are amplifying through our channels, and we hope that if it is helpful that you amplify it through your channels, please do share this around. We would really, really appreciate that. And if you have any suggestions or feedback, hit us up at solopro.com. And until next time, thank you for joining us on That Solo Life.

 

When Good Intentions Go Wrong

Don't let good intentions lead to unintended consequences in your PR efforts. In this episode, we discuss a recent well-meaning attempt by a CEO to address negative press that ended up creating more problems for the company. We highlight the dangers of speaking without consulting expert counsel and the need for CEOs to consider the impact of their words on both internal and external audiences.

Read the article in TechCrunch: Carta’s CEO reaches out to customers about bad press, alerting them to bad press.

 

Transcript

Michelle Kane (00:17):

Thank you for joining us on 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 as always, my wonderful co-host, Karen Swim of Solo PR Pro. Hi Karen, how are you on this fabulous Monday?

Karen Swim, APR (00:38):

Hey, Michelle. I'm doing great. In spite of the major temperature drop, it's freezing cold, but it's okay. I'm good. I'm so good having a great moment. How are you?

Michelle Kane (00:49):

I'm well, thanks. Yeah, the fall crisp is finally arriving. It's a little gloomy today, but that's okay. Our morning was actually brightened up by this news from Carta. It was just a little astonishing. I think the theme of today would be CEOs who think they're helping, but they're also not. They're just not. This is why you have us. You might think that we're just fluffy, but we're not. PR pros are essential to your business.

Karen Swim, APR (01:22):

There could not have been a better ringing endorsement of why you should hire professionals to do your communications. I mean, I really just want to take this story and make copies of it and send it to every company in America and say, if you wondered why and as you're looking at your 2024 budgets, you're good reason to keep PR people on your team.

Michelle Kane (01:54):

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. It's definitely a case of you may be the most well-meaning person in the world, however,

Karen Swim, APR (02:05):

So

Michelle Kane (02:06):

Set it up because you flagged this story for us. What's the lowdown of what exactly happened?

Karen Swim, APR (02:12):

So here's what happened. So Carta is a tech company in the Bay Area and the CEO Henry Ward, who seems like a lovely person, by the way, wrote a post about a piece of negative press that no one had seen. So of course no one had seen it. It was going to be a non-thing until he wrote a post about it and then went into great detail into all of their negative press in addition to just coming off really bad. So it's just a highlight of what happens when a CEO takes matters into his own hands. So he published a post of a long post that he had sent out to his employees, and again, keep in mind no one had seen the story, but then when the CEO comes out and puts something out, and his reason for putting this out is to help other CEOs who might be enduring the same thing.

All kinds of attention was created around the story that no one would've seen had he kept his mouth shut. So it went out there and I saw it in Mary Ann's TechCrunch newsletter, and then there was another story, and then it was a roundup, and then here we are on a Monday morning talking about it, not because we want to pile on this poor CEO who got it wrong, but because it's a great opportunity to share again what you really should not do and kind of work through what he was thinking and the many ways it all went bad for him.

Michelle Kane (03:46):

So step one is when you have the notion of writing a screed like this is to check with your comms team so they can weigh in on whether or not it's a good idea because we understand, I mean, who doesn't want to defend themselves? That's the first urge of, well, no, we didn't because in this litany of things, but as you said, this article that really no one had seen, it's got a whole new life now and now I'm sure most everyone in his realm has seen it, and it's just like that commercial where the liquid spills and you're going go

Karen Swim, APR (04:28):

Most definitely, and it's interesting. Here's the message that I would send to CEOs. We just had a similar situation in my real life work like this happend. It wasn't sexual abuse allegations or anything like that, but it was a potential crisis situation. Obviously, we were looped in immediately when we knew that this could be a situation. So we did what everybody does. We had a crisis plan around this particular thing. We work through create with the client, helping them to draft a statement that could be sent out to the media in the event that this news did become public, and we asked him to please share this with legal, to share it with the appropriate people so that it got blessed and it was ready to go in advance. The news did get out, a reporter did contact us. We were able to respond immediately. Not with no comment, not with, we can't talk about this, but with the natural statement. It turned out to be a great story. That was exactly how we would've wanted this to play out, and I think with CEOs, this man sounds like he was leading with his heart.

Michelle Kane (05:41):

Oh, sure.

Karen Swim, APR (05:41):

It's a terrible idea in business in general for lots of decisions because you've got to put on your professional hat. You have to think about your audience, and you have to understand that talking to the public is not talking to your best or talking to your family. There's so many ways that this can go wrong and did, and so he spoke from his heart, and it does sound like he's a decent human being, but he picked up a shovel and dug a grave that was deep enough for 20 bodies to fit into it. It just got worse and worse and worse and worse.

Michelle Kane (06:19):

Yeah. Yeah. That's not the way to start your week, let alone do at all. And looking at the flip side of this, we're not being disingenuous. I mean, you certainly don't want to hide things, but at the same time, my goodness, you can just reveal information that just really does not need to go public. And even if and when it does, like you say, we need to plan around that, plan for it. Consider all the audiences, all the ways that this will impact you, your company, your people. There's just so much that goes into it Now, he could very well have written this, gotten it all out of his system, and then looped in his team for good counsel and to just talk him through it, because I do understand, I mean, especially in that world, your team can feel like family and you can feel a bit of comfort, and you're just so wrapped up in the world of the day-to-day of your company. So I get it. I get how this could happen just from the other side of this. Yeah, just please involve your communications team members. Just do it. I don't care how much you think you don't need to or how much you think that this line item is a waste of money. We just have these people around telling us where to put dots and dashes. No, it's so much more than that. We're your champions.

Karen Swim, APR (07:52):

He vomited on his internal people as well. I mean, it really was. It was just like he vomited words all over everybody and he really, I don't know how his internal people reacted, but I would also say that in the same way that attorneys advise, you don't just, yes, we know the facts and we know that when you are in a situation where you're defending yourself, there's that human instinct to want to have your say, but you have to be strategic about it. You have to be smart about it. And as a CEO, I think that there are some things that you share and some things that you don't share, and not because you're lying to people, but there's a way that you frame things and you have to take a step back and not think of yourself and just wanting the information off of your chest, but you also have to protect your people. So in my mind, here's one of the downsides that I see. You brought attention to negative information. You shared that internally and externally, which then you also brought up all of the other negative things when people may not be adding it up as you do, because what happens is that sometimes something bad happens and people forget about it, it goes away, but you just right in front of your team too, reminded them of all of the negative press, and you said that and you apologized for it.

I'm so sorry. I know you didn't sign up for all of this negative press. Why would you paint that picture of pessimism to your team? It was unintentional. I know he was attempting to comfort them and to say, I'm so sorry. I know you didn't sign up for this, but they're not really bearing the weight of this either. You are bearing the weight of it, and now you dropped it at your team members’ feet. Because I've worked for companies where there has been negative press because that's just been the job. That's been the job that we're in. It didn't make me feel differently about the company. What I wanted to hear from them is not a rehashing of negative news, but I wanted to continue to see leadership, and I wanted to continue to see the integrity because what was important to me was being able to trust my leaders and be mentored by them and understand that they truly care for me. That didn't mean rehashing negative scenarios, and so I think he could use some help in that area. It sounds like they may not have internal comms people or any PR people on their team, because I know that professional communicators would've never allowed either of those scenarios to happen internally or externally.

Michelle Kane (10:32):

I agree. I agree. And doesn't it really point to a bit of a trend in that arena of, well, we don't need PR people like well, well, you do. You really do. I mean, trust us, we're not, I mean, we know our listeners know this, but for those outside of our industry, we're not just making up this job because it's fun to pretend. We realize, and as many of our clients realize, we provide an essential role of looking out for you and your best interests and helping you present yourself in the best way possible to your publics.

Karen Swim, APR (11:07):

I agree. I would say another big mistake that he made, and this is a myth that I believe many, many, many founders carry and many organizations carry in his public post. Essentially, it sounded like he was bashing the media and he painted them all with this broad brush of negativity and made everybody sound like they were an exposé reporter that could not be further from the truth. By and large journalists, and I'm talking real journalists. I'm not saying every Joe America with a blog of their own, that's not necessarily a journalist. Well, some journalists definitely have their own thing. Journalists care about reporting facts. We all have inherent biases, but some of us are trained to understand that we have those biases, and to learn how to communicate with an awareness of that and still be balanced. It was the most horrific statement, and it was really unfair because the one thing that PR people fight for and we all agree on is that we believe in a free press.

We need a free press. He even brought up John and the Theranos reporting and said that after he won this Pulitzer Prize for his work, that it ushered in an era of basically gotcha journalism in the tech world that also could not be further from the truth. What John did was a public service. He reported on a company that had lives at stake. These were people that were relying on laboratory testing for diagnoses. This was an important story. I believe that it won an award because it was great reporting. He took a deep dive. He hung in there. This was not to say gotcha to the tech industry and expose every little dirty secret, but let's be clear, the tech industry has been notoriously horrible culture. I've experienced it myself. I know that many people out there have had personal experiences, and so any reporting that's done that talks about a company culture and things that go wrong, it's not because reporters are trying to win awards or because they're out to get you. They're doing their jobs.

Michelle Kane (13:44):

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. They're just doing their due diligence, seeking the truth in a way that will benefit all of us. It's just, yeah, I mean, the press over the years has gotten a bad rap, and especially, it's been quite intense as we all know these past several years. And yeah, that's very disheartening, especially when that same company might like the press to pay attention to them for the positive things they do in the future, and how will this impact that? I'm not saying the press is vindictive, they're not, but it's just like, oh, well, I don't know how we're going to be portrayed if we cover you. So…

Karen Swim, APR (14:27):

100% agree. I mean, he really did get that wrong, and by trying to be his own press agent in this letter, he talked about some past allegations of racism, misogynism, and sexual harassment, and there were a couple of executives, I guess, that were fired, and he brought that up again, and he said that our mistake wasn't in firing them, it was in hiring them at all. Again, it doesn't paint your company in a positive light. And I mean, if Henry ever hears this podcast, please understand that we are not saying that you are a terrible person. We are saying that you made a mistake in the way that you handled it, and so in the same way that you found it instructed in your posts because you thought that it would help CEOs, we are hoping that CEOs will listen to this podcast, and companies will listen to this podcast and understand that good intention should not drive your PR or your leadership decisions. That was a huge misstep, and we're only talking about this because it is public. We would never be talking about this had it never been made public.

Michelle Kane (15:42):

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. We come at this from purely helpful motives because we want, Hey, we want everyone to do well. And if that was something that you needed to get out of your system, that's great, do it. But it's the old adage of write the letter, don't send it.

Karen Swim, APR (16:04):

I've done that a million times. It's great therapy. Writing for me just helps to get it out there, so I'll do my thing, I'll rant. I'll get it all out, but it'll never see the daylight because it's an exercise for me. And again, it's so important to draw that line, and I don't think that every human being, that's not a skillset that we all possess, and that's okay. It does not make you a less than worthy human being or leader. It just means that there are professionals that can help you see the potholes that you wouldn't even know to look for. And so again, here is who I believe. I think I've said this over and over, to be a really good man who had really good intentions, but in speaking without expert counsel, he really did himself and his company a disservice. And to be honest, I guess one thing is that I didn't really think I had heard of Carta. Maybe I heard of them, but wasn't real aware of them, but I probably won't forget their name again. So good job in amplifying your brand name.

Michelle Kane (17:15):

Oh my gosh. Well, we know now, and we hope you found value in this time together today. CEOs, hang in there, give us all a call. Make sure you have a comms pro at the ready, because honestly, it will do you a world of good. And until next time, thanks for listening to That Solo Life.

Communicating Clearly in Uncertainty

Atrocities against innocents in the Middle East. Another mass shooting in the U.S. Every day, something new to absorb and process. Now more than ever, PR pros need to lead the way in communicating clearly in all of this uncertainty.

 

Read Hope and the Hard Things on the Solo PR Pro blog.

 

Transcript

Michelle Kane (00:17):

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 ever wonderful co-host, Karen Swim of Solo PR Pro. Hi Karen. How are you doing today?

Karen Swim, APR (00:36):

Hi, apparently Michelle, I'm doing better than you. You are soldiering through in spite of a major allergy attack here.

Michelle Kane (00:46):

Yay. This is what I get for peopling. Yeah, it happens. It happens. You get around the wrong things. That just anger your sinuses. And here we are. So it's supremely annoying, but I'll put it up against, there are unfortunately real problems in the world, so I'll soldier on. There's no joy in Mudville. Our Phillies are out of it, but I thank them for a wonderful ride and go, Rangers.

Karen Swim, APR (01:16):                                                 

In the past three years, I think that we've all learned that because the world has continuously been on fire, literally, and it's just been one thing after another. So I think that we've learned how to both mourn and still have joy because you cannot live in despair. You just cannot. So there are real things happening in the world, but we do try to find some space for laughter, for joy, for friends and loved ones and having lighter moments. And today we have a pretty serious topic to talk about, but we hope to inflect it with a little bit of hope for all of you out there. So let's dig into it.

Michelle Kane (02:01):

Let's do it. Yes. I mean, certainly with the conflict between Israel and Hamas, and I know conflict is a mild word, there's been a lot of horrific scenes taking place in the name of power in just thousands of years of animosity. We know that. And as communicators, our eyes and ears are attuned to the messaging that's out there. There's a lot of propaganda. There is a lot of hurt feelings on both the Jewish and Muslim, I hate to say sides, but amongst people of, Hey, why aren't you standing up for us? Why aren't you standing up for us? And it's just, again, as with anything we've seen, I hate to say in recent years because I know we can go back hundreds of years and point out misinformation and propaganda, but it just seems, especially with the onset of our digital world, the waters are so incredibly muddy and murky. I mean, one thing we know is true outright murdering innocents is never right. Let's start there.

Karen Swim, APR (03:16):

Let's start there. And I always think about, there's this newsletter that I subscribed to and it's called 1440, and their tagline is “Facts Without Motives.” And they share just the facts. So all the headlines, all the news, unbiased reporting, and I love reading it because it is a good reminder as a communicator that is also my job. Facts without motives, whatever your personal feelings are about politics, what's going on in the world, the wars, who's right, who's wrong as communicators, we have to understand that we do serve diverse audiences and that our communication does need to be factual and we cannot inflict our personal opinions and biases upon our communications. And so we've seen a lot of missteps that have been hurtful, but I also am encouraged by the public relation pros who have stepped up and who have taken the rhetoric out of it all and said, we focus on human life, period does not matter because it's very troubling to me that there have been communications put out by organizations that have actually incited and incentivized hatred against any group, against Muslims, against the Jewish community.

This is horrific to me. It pains me. And it's so hard when you see that because number one, in the United States of America, there are so many different religions. You cannot, cannot paint everyone with the same brush. Every Muslim is not a terrorist. Have we not learned one single thing from 9/11? These are our neighbors, these are our colleagues, these are our friends. They're often our family members. Please value human beings and human life. Yes, there's a time and a place for political activism. Yes, there's a time and a place to debate how you feel about this, but it is not as a professional communicator. And I would encourage you to counsel your clients and the organizations that you serve that when putting out statements, if you put out a statement that supports one side or the other, you are eliminating a big swath of your audience. You have to hold space for everyone because I think that we can all agree that decapitating babies is not okay in anyone's book, holding people hostage and torturing them, murdering families who are just families. They're not part of a terrorist organization. I cannot personally stand behind that. But as a human being, I think that we can all agree on those facts, that none of this is okay, and that we have to be careful and inclusive in our messaging that we're not going too far to either side.

Michelle Kane (06:28):

And it's the old adage until you walk a mile in someone's shoes, because the way that that attack was done was I'm sure intentional to trigger the generations-old feeling in the bones. I forget the title, but there's an Irish history book called, I think it's called The Stories in Our Bones, and all of us, all of our people groups, we have those stories of, yeah. So there are certain things when they happen to other people groups, it does trigger something of, yeah, no, that's not right. And just to empathize, because it is sad. Our Jewish friends, our Muslim friends are going through this. We're going about our day. I'm thinking, am I going to have tuna fish for lunch? I'm not worried about stepping outside of my house today. And whether some listeners might think, oh, what's the big deal? Well, it is a big deal, and we just have to be cogniscent of that from a professional perspective. Hey, where's our audience sitting today? Especially if you're working in the social media sphere, if you're creating content, not that you have to be super, super intentive. I'm not saying that, oh, you need to create content about this. Don't take that the wrong way. Sorry, my allergy head is spinning.

But just be conscious of what's happening. And I think that's with anything that's if, let's say you're a small town and there's a big fire that's affected a lot of people, we're just reminding ourselves foremost and all of our fellow communicators to just keep this in mind. And if you are working with a client that feels compelled to issue some kind of statement, please know that most of our clients don't need to do that. But if you do feel compelled to do so, make sure you really, not only you factually check it, but you also do a good gut check.

Karen Swim, APR (08:29):

Yeah, I mean, that goes back for me, always, always in companies, in every single action should be aligning with their mission, vision, and values. And this is where living that daily from the basement to the boardroom becomes so important. It is a foundation for ethical practices and integrity. It should be important to organizations, and you should definitely allow that to guide you as you craft statements. And as you said, it is really important if you do not have to make a statement. But I understand that with this conflict, it really does impact your employees in the PR world. It affects the people that we work with, the companies, the media. This is on the hearts and minds of everyone. But we have to be careful too as we speak out about these things because there are many other conflicts globally that are impacting populations that are often ignored. It's interesting because I know that there are many people that use the word woke as a political weapon

And regular people. Americans seem to have fatigue with feeling like they have to watch what they say about every single thing. To some degree that's true because we've learned better, so we should do better. Good example, I saw someone today post about someone who was perhaps mentally ill, and in a post, they used the word, they described the situation that had happened and said, has anyone else saw this crazy person? And I was horrified. That is the most demeaning thing to say, and I know that, but people still use these words. I believe that this person was not being mean, did not intentionally want to be mean. It's just something that they have become accustomed to saying. And so to the audience, I would say our audience is professional communicators. So we've learned that there are certain terms that we no longer use, and we try to correct that.

It does often feel like a mine field of stuff that's out there as a vegan. There are things that bother me. There's a phrase that people say, killing two birds with one stone, and it's like, please don't kill the birds. That bothers me. I'm not going to go off on you if you use that expression. But everybody has their stuff, is what I'm saying. And we do the best that we can to ensure that we are not isolating human beings and that we're being kind, gentle, and respectful, and that as we see things that are out there that are incorrectly phrased, if we have the opportunity to educate and advocate for proper language, then we should all join in that people have such misunderstanding about so many things today.

Michelle Kane (11:31):

Yes, yes. And then when you do enter that arena, you also are treading carefully of, whoa, what am I stupid? No, no one says you're stupid. We're just trying to bring to light some information. It's like everyone, I think we're just societally, we're still in just defense mode of what? What'd you say? How'd you say it?

Karen Swim, APR (11:55):

We are, and we feel like we have to speak a certain way or use a certain bit of language, at least our audiences do, and that somehow aligns them with their political ideologies. That's especially true in the United States, less true I believe, in other parts of the world. And so it's a tough time for communicators. It's also, I think for us, it is an exciting time because I feel always that we can be light bearers, that we can be the people that are able to communicate with just that right touch of bringing people together. And we can show people how to speak to their audiences respectfully in ways that will engage them, in ways that will not create further division. But to be clear, there are times when division's going to happen and having a PR pro on your team, having a solo PR pro is where this is super important in this day and age because PR posts can help you to be prepared and to guard against that because there's no way that any of us can just 100% avoid conflict that just doesn't exist in today's world. I'm sorry to inform you that something that you do, even when it aligns with your mission, vision, values, even when you've done the right thing, is going to anger somebody. I promise you it will. And we also cannot live our lives or run our companies trying to be free from hatred. The hatred is going to come regardless of what you do.

Michelle Kane (13:26):

That is so correct. But I love that you are always looking for the brightness and everything, and I think there are always opportunities to do better. Like you said, there are always opportunities to know better and then to do better. And if I could point our listeners to the Solo PR Pro blog, Karen has written a wonderful blog recently about hope and that we need to keep hope in our lives. We really do. So I would encourage you to read that. I just encourage you every day, just know that whatever you are feeling, especially in light of these current events, please know that you're not alone. You are never ever alone. And as communicators, the Solo PR Pro community is here for you. We are here for you. Please reach out to us at soloprpro.com. We really cherish every one of you. And until next time, thanks for joining us for That Solo Life.

Unveiling the Warsaw Principles: Ethical AI in PR

We cover AI and PR in many of our episodes because we want our fellow PR pros to have the knowledge they need to stay on top of this technology. In today’s episode, we’ll discuss the new “Warsaw Principles” unveiled earlier this month on the ethical use of AI in public relations by the International Communications Consultancy Organization (ICCO) at its Global Summit.

Read the story courtesy of ProvokeMedia.com.

 

Transcript

 

Michelle Kane (00:03):

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 my company VoiceMatters, and my wonderful co-host, Karen Swim of the Mighty Solo PR Pro. How are you, Karen?

Karen Swim, APR (00:21):

Hi. I am doing good for Hump Day. Michelle, how are you?

Michelle Kane (00:25):

Exactly. Not bad, not bad. October's feeling a bit like a steamroller, but I am committed to staying just a few steps ahead of it. How does that sound?

Karen Swim, APR (00:36):

That sounds like all of us these days and 100% agree. I am feeling a little crushed right now.

Michelle Kane (00:49):

And the big picture is, it’s a great problem to have. So always spinning, always spinning the message. But yeah, so it's good. The air's getting crisper. That kind of perks things up a little. And I'll give a shout out now. I don't know what the story will be by the time this drops on Monday, but so far my Phillies are killing it. So life is good here in the Delaware Valley.

Karen Swim, APR (01:16):

Your Phillies are coming in and here in Michigan as we speak, the Lions are looking like a real football team. So go!

Michelle Kane (01:26):

And if the sports world is good, we are good, we're good.

Karen Swim, APR (01:30):

We need to celebrate and look forward to something.

Michelle Kane (01:34):

Amidst all the very serious strife going on. So today we're going to touch on, I know you're probably thinking, “they're talking AI again,” but we are, we're going to talk about AI because something really essential came out of the recent ICCO Global Summit and they are calling them the “Warsaw Principles” and they were ratified as principles for ethical use of AI and public relations. And I don't know about you, Karen, but as I was reading through them, I just kept nodding my head and then thinking, well, of course this is how an ethical communications person should use AI. But as we know, speaking of a steamroller, it is something that we really do need to keep up with before this technology might overrun our society and in a society where mis, mal, and disinformation is so horrifically prevalent.

Karen Swim, APR (02:37):

Yeah, I agree with one of the things for me is that we've talked a lot about the use of generative AI, and we've been keeping an eye on all of the ways that the use of AI, by others, by our audiences impacts our work. So I do think it is an important step. I know that PRSA has also addressed the ethics of AI and talked about this and voices for everyone has definitely put out resources about mis, mal, and disinformation, but I love that they tackled the problems as we move forward in this new world. And it is interesting that this came on the heels of other industries addressing AI and their work. So we saw this come up in the writer’s strike, in the ongoing actor’s strike in the ongoing auto workers strike. AI is playing a big role. And so the reason that we continue to talk about it is because it's developing so quickly and its use is becoming so widespread that we do also have to be very aware that it is a great tool when used properly, but we need to be aware of how it can be abused.

Michelle Kane (03:58):

Exactly. And in any good communication at the forefront should be the communicator's integrity, your credibility. Can you be trusted? Can you be trusted to give transparent and complete and factual information? And because without that, what are we doing?

Karen Swim, APR (04:22):

I agree. And one hope that I have, so one of the principles that, or something that the principals underscore the importance of is accuracy and fact checking. And I have to tell you, this is one of those things that just on a daily basis just causes me a lot of anxiety because even in our own just casual reading, you find that you really do have to check everything. And even with trusted sources. And I am hoping that as we continue to create and utilize AI and it becomes more and more ingrained into our daily lives in the work that we do, that there are also companies that can come up with ways to bulletproof the content that we produce. Because people can take something that you honestly said and repurpose it into something that sends a completely different message. That's a whole different level of monitoring for communications professionals. And it adds a whole new layer of complexity into protecting the reputations of our clients. And that's a scary area, and we've seen it happen. And unfortunately AI learns so it keeps getting better and better.

Michelle Kane (05:50):

So true, so true. And it does point to the need. It's not that we're not going to need our human touch anymore. We are still going to be necessary to do the actual thinking and to have the discernments on how to use these tools. I think especially with context, because I know nuance and context have really suffered in the last at least 30 years, maybe going back a little farther.

The public is less and less inclined to be used to thinking in those ways. And I don't want to sound elitist, but it's like, guys don't take everything at face value. What was the context? Or as communicators, we need to, as best we can, knowing that we are still trying to grab the, what's the current attention span, three to four seconds, maybe five. That's our challenge to present our information in the soundbite without losing the context. So I love that they included that in these principles with AI. And even thinking about intellectual property, I have to think of recently with Drake using Halle Berry's image without her permission. Now that wasn't AI. He made a conscious choice, but that kind of thing might not have happened five years ago. So there's this devolution of what's up for grabs for your use versus what is just either stolen or done without permission.

Karen Swim, APR (07:34):

Yeah. And ensuring that if you're using AI to create images, that you're not violating someone else's protected property. That's really important. And I could see that being a really tricky area as well. So we do need some checks and balances. One of the other things that stood out to me was bias, which is, it's interesting, even though we've started talking about generative AI more this year, at the end of last year, it just exploded into the public conversation. These are conversations that clients and I had a couple of years ago, specifically in FinTech industries where we did data and we saw bias in the data. And this has happened in the housing market where you're using AI tools, you're using data to make decisions that are very biased. And so I think we have to recognize that too, even in our use of tools like ChatGPT and generative AI, ensuring that they are not biased and that we are correcting for that because the tool does learn from us as well. So these are all weighty, complex issues that we can't solve on our own, but we do need to be aware of it. And the way in which we conduct our work needs to adhere to some ethical principles.

Michelle Kane (09:04):

Yes, yes. And even as you were saying that, I was thinking, yes, it's a problem we need to solve for, but I'm glad that it is out. I say out in the open,

Karen Swim, APR (09:17):

Right?

Michelle Kane (09:17):

It's like, oh, yes, there are biases in data sometimes. So we can no longer just turn a blind eye and say, oh no, it's data, it's fine. So now that we have this extra element to consider, I think that's helping us to directly confront some of these larger issues that affect lives.

Karen Swim, APR (09:41):

Well, it's related to this. It's interesting. I just saw something that someone wrote that really made me take a step back and think, because they talked about the whole idea of surveys being inherently biased towards certain abilities. So do surveys, you have surveys about people that have special needs or disabilities, but then you don't make those surveys accessible to that population of people. So who are you really surveying? And even in general surveys where you're asking questions and you're surveying an audience, you're missing a big section of the population maybe by either the way that you offer the surveys and not making them accessible to, for instance, people that don't have site or people who have other issues using computers or online tools or, so we're not solving for those issues. And it just opened up a whole other discussion for me and AVAs being aware of that as well, that as we seek to be inclusive in our communications, we also have to seek to be inclusive in our information gathering and making our content and our ask accessible to larger audiences.

Michelle Kane (11:11):

I love that you said that because imagine sending a survey to someone who, because of their abilities, can't respond to. It's like, that's a little shortsighted. Why would you do that? And I'm sure if you're putting the time in to create a survey, you want actual data because let's get real How many times, just looking at the event world, how many times do you present an event and you say, let's survey all the attendees, and you get maybe 3% return and you think, oh, okay. It's a little disheartening. So think of all those things when you put that together.

Karen Swim, APR (11:53):

And again, this is all, I don't think that any of us can claim to be perfect at this. I certainly count myself among that. I'm definitely not perfect at it. And I see lots of ways that I can improve, and it's particularly harder for small businesses because there's a lot of things to figure out. But I think that having these conversations and being willing to learn and to change and to adapt so that we can be inclusive is really important. And that includes in our use of AI, and then being open and understanding that we need to check for those things as we see not only in how we use AI, but how clients make AI as well.

Michelle Kane (12:40):

And I do love that they cover transparency. Again, that's also important with being upfront with, okay, this was developed with ai. And again, we've said this before. We're not saying every paragraph that you present to your client, you need to let them know what tool you use because that's ridiculous. That falls under spellcheck and all those things. But in the larger picture, especially things I would think like video and audio where things can be so easily manipulated and even to the trained eye, it's getting very, very good at fooling us. And that can be dangerous.

Karen Swim, APR (13:21):

I mean, listen, we are pretty upfront with our clients that we use generative AI as a tool in our work, and they know that just kind of as a blanket overall thing. So there are some things that there are ways that we use it, and we're happy to share that with clients. We're happy to guide the way and show them how they can streamline their processes with some uses of AI as well. So I do think that transparency is important, but I agree with you. We forget that we've used tools like Grammarly and we've used lots of other AI tools in our work for years without even thinking about it. And you don't tell clients, I got this name and information out of this database that uses AI to find reporters that match this thing because that is not really impacting them. So we're going to get normalized about this and we're going to feel less weird about it. But I think some communicators still feel in some way, like they're somehow cheating. They're cheating the system if they're using AI in their work as a tool. Now, if you're just straight up producing content from AI and you are not having any human interaction with it at all, and it's not at all your creation, yeah, that's probably something you need to mess up to for that particular piece. So also probably not the best idea to do that because it is a toll, it is not a replacement for you.

Michelle Kane (14:49):

Correct, correct. And I think what it all comes down to is be a good person, operate within your profession ethically and with consideration. And if you do those things, you'll be okay. If we all do it, we'll all be okay. And the world will be a better place

Karen Swim, APR (15:11):

For all my PRSA members out there. You all know that as a member, you agree to abide by the code of ethics, but even for non-members, it's great thing to go and look at that code of ethics and to refresh yourself on the standard that we should be holding ourselves to whether or not you're a PRSA member, because it really does. Everything that's in the worse off principles that's directed toward AI really flow right into the code of ethics that PRSA has. So if you're abiding by that code, you will find this not onerous at all. You will look at specific things to address in terms of ai, but I just think it's a good idea. September is ethics month at PRSA. So there's tons of resources there too that just happened in September with webinars and all kinds of information and resources. So that's another good place to go if you're looking to really ensure that you are operating ethically.

Michelle Kane (16:18):

That's great. That's great. And yeah, I think PRSAs is a great guiding light for our entire profession, whether or not you are a member. And we hope as you're listening, we hope this is actually energizing you and making you realize that we are going to have so many great new ways to serve our clients. My dogs agree. And just use this as a springboard for making us more efficient, bringing new ways to shine a light on all the good things our clients are doing. And we want to hear from you. Are you using ai? How are you using it? Have you come up against any conundrums? Let us know. It's solo pr pro.com. And if you're getting value from this today, please do share it around. Follow us, all the good things, tag us. We love it. And until next time, thanks for listening to That Solo Life.

 

Balancing the Pitch: Navigating Mental Wellness as a PR Pro

PR pros, communicators, we work in a unique environment. In an industry where we feel compelled to always be “on” and available, it’s challenging to make the time to work on our mental health. Know that you are not alone and know that taking that time is not only worth it, it’s essential.

Mental health is a topic we’ve addressed in a previous episode and in this Solo PR Pro blog post.

 

Transcript

Michelle Kane (00:02):

Thank you for joining us for this episode of That Solo Life, the podcast for PR Pros who work for themselves like me, Michelle Cain, and my company VoiceMatters, and my wonderful co-host, Karen Swim of Solo PR Pro. Hi Karen, how's your day today?

Karen Swim, APR (00:19):

Oh, I'm so good, Michelle. How are you?

Michelle Kane (00:22):

I’m good. I'm good. I'm a little bit toast. Had some major client events happen this weekend, and towards the end of the week, it seems like everything is decided to happen in the same two week period, which in this business is often beyond our control, so we tend to roll with it and get through as best we can. So yeah. How about you?

Karen Swim, APR (00:51):

Same. It feels like October has been, we know that, well, for us, the fall is usually busy, but I agree with you. It feels like there's all of a sudden 10 things happening on every day. There's meetings. There have been so many more meetings to go to so many more events, some of them all happening within the same set of days. And I think that that's probably a good segue into our topic today too.

Michelle Kane (01:22):

Yes, yes, it is. We're going to talk about which something we touch on often, and we're pretty sure there's reasons for that mental health, especially for those of us who work in the PR industry, the personality type that it takes to do this job. You're someone who's conscientious, always concerned about getting the details correct, and usually the one balancing all of the plates in the air and the many moving parts of things, not just for yourself and your business, but on behalf of your clients. So after a while, that tends to take a toll and we need to be cognizant of that.

I speak more from more of a viewpoint of hopefulness about this, but try and plan for that as part of the planning process that we do for our work.

Karen Swim, APR (02:25):

I think it's so helpful to also have people that can help to pull you out of a spiral sometimes just saying things out loud to another human being who truly gets the work that you do in the same way that we talk to our friends, but many of us have friends that are not in our business, and so they can empathize on one level, but it really does help. So even if it means just hopping on a Zoom meeting with a fellow colleague and just having a virtual coffee and just chatting about stuff, just voicing it out loud, it can make you feel like you're not the only one struggling. It reaffirms us and it has a way of energizing us. And I know I recently just came to a whole new understanding that I am a big overthinker. I overthink everything, and in my head I'm always writing scenarios, and I have been like that since I was a kid, which makes me great for pr, but it's not so great when you are trying to have a peaceful stress-free life. It means that I have to work at that and I have to sometimes tell myself to stop overthinking everything and stop running scenarios and just enjoy life. Same. Take somebody else to say, don't overthink it because I'll overthink everything. And I'm always like, okay, but what if this happens? And what if this happens and I want to plan for all of it, all of us do because that's who we are.

Michelle Kane (04:01):

Oh, totally, totally. Always thinking through, okay, well if this happens, then what all the “if thens” and to be ready for as much of anything as you can. And yeah, and that totally bleeds into my personal life too. I like to have a plan because I like the rest in knowing how a day is going to unfold. Not that I don't enjoy being spontaneous, so it can be loose. It can just be, oh, we're going to go to Philly, hang out and have dinner. Then I know, okay, that's enough of a plan for me at the moment.

Karen Swim, APR (04:38):

I read the stat, and it's from a study last year, and they were saying that, or maybe it was 2021, they were saying that PR people feel guilty about taking time off from work for mental health reasons. And that breaks my heart because as business owners, as communication professionals, we should never treat mental health like it's separate from our overall health. And I know that many of us are also guilty of powering through everything. Looking at my wonderful co-host over here who recently worked through illness, we will power through it all, covid, pneumonia, broken bones, I mean seriously. And we have to stop doing that. It brings to mind Simone Biles, who at the top of her game, the GOAT, and she had to walk away from her job to take care of her mind, and she did. She lived her life. She walked away. No one even knew if she was coming back and I that maybe some of you are thinking, well, she had the financial resources to be able to do that, but it still is a matter of being strong enough to choose yourself and to prioritize your own health and not continue to risk it day after day by showing up with just fragments of yourself. And so maybe you don't take, what did she do, take like a year or two off?

Michelle Kane (06:24):

Yeah, she got married…

Karen Swim, APR (06:27):

She came back and she blew through every record and became even greater. And I think that we need to keep that story in mind that it's okay to walk away. What does that look like for us who are solos? It means maybe it means sharing work with another person. Maybe it means teaming up with a colleague. And even if you're not teaming up to work on every single account together, maybe it means teaming up as backup. Maybe you backup each other up. Maybe you form an agreement where it's like, Hey, can you take the lead for me for a week and make sure that you keep the communications going? And I mean, it will take some work for you guys to develop a system, but take some pressure off. If you have a junior person that's working with you, let them handle communications. Tell them, train them how to do things in your absence. A lot of times it's not about, because you don't have to set strategy every single day. There's a lot of tactical things that can keep trains running and on the tracks while you take some downtime. Do not be afraid to walk away because I promise you it's better to pull back and to care for yourself than to show up broken.

Michelle Kane (07:47):

Yeah, it's so true. And it was funny, I was speaking with someone last week. We both recently had Covid. They got over theirs much more quickly. And I said, well, you took off. I didn't. And I know that. I know that, and I think it's one of the reasons I do that is because you think, ah, what's my work? I'm sitting at a keyboard that's kind of restful.

Karen Swim, APR (08:12):

It's not.

Michelle Kane (08:13):

No, no,

Karen Swim, APR (08:14):

It's not.

Michelle Kane (08:15):

So as I say, not as I do,

Karen Swim, APR (08:20):

I'll share in full transparency that the past couple of years are really hard for me. I lost a brother and I spiraled, I was having panic attacks, and then I went through a really bad depression. I just wasn't myself. And I made a decision with my colleague Carolyn, because she also had back to back. She lost both of her parents back to back. We were just at the end of ourselves. And so we made the decision not to do any business development and we didn't took care of the clients that we had. We backed each other up. We do have other team members that we can tap into, but we just took care of ourselves. I needed every single second of that. And I share this because I'm not only a solo, I'm single and I am my only source of income. So it's kind of a big deal to pull the brakes and to let the chips fall as they may. During that time, we did have clients that fell off. We had projects that ended. We had clients that had to pull back because of budgets. And rather than operating in a place of fear and lack, I just trusted that it would all work out because I knew that I wasn't there yet. I wasn't ready.

Michelle Kane (09:40):

Well, and I think you knew deep down you were doing the right thing. And it does come to a point, and I'll hold myself accountable to that too. It's like at some point you can be doing a disservice by pushing yourself too hard, also being single, it's scary to make that choice because it's like, Hey, it's just me pulling  this wagon up the hill. But you can take breaks.

Karen Swim, APR (10:09):

And I shared that because I want people to know that that thing that you are so afraid of is really not that scary. Was my bank account exactly where I wanted it to be? Not exactly, but I also didn't end up homeless. I was able to still pay all of my bills. Life kept moving on and it was fine. And Mike, many of you where I had that fear where I thought, oh, and a lot of times we push ourselves for those reasons I can't take off. I got a kid in college or kids in college or Oh my God, what am I going to do? It's just me. I need to do. Sometimes you don't. You really don't. And you need to just take the time. And I took an extended time and I let a lot of things fall to the ground, unfortunately. And you have to let go of the guilt too, because it is what it is. I'm a human being. I'm not perfect. I didn't have it all together. I wasn't ready. I was not okay at all. I really was not okay.

Michelle Kane (11:13):

I think that was the wisest thing that you could have done for yourself. And we do talk about this a lot too, the difference in the generations. I think us being X and silent, we still have that workhorse mentality of you got to do the things to get things done. And also speaking for myself, growing up in the faith community I grew up in, there was a lot of talk of grace and rest, but a whole lot of, well, we got to do all the things and we got to do 'em today and don't slack and blah, blah, blah. And I am still actively unlearning that aspect because I know it. That is not correct. You shouldn't be grinding yourself into the ground for others. That's not the whole point of this life.

Karen Swim, APR (12:12):

Something desperately wrong. And I came to say this to myself, if you're nicer to other people than you are to yourself, there's something wrong. Because even the way that sometimes we speak to ourselves, we're not very nice and we're not very good bosses to ourself. And if you think of yourself as would I tell another person to work wounded? Would I tell someone, I don't care that you don't feel good today, I need you to just show up anyway. You would never say that to another human being. So why do we treat ourselves? I'm so horrifically, it's not okay. We should be kind to ourselves. And again, it's like some of us won't even take two days off to just breathe. The world will not fall apart if you take two days off. It just will not. Maybe something will get a little messy. Maybe you'll miss something. Maybe you'll have to shift something around, but I promise you'll survive it. It won't all die. You didn't build a business that is on sand. Hopefully you didn't. Is it that fragile that if you take two days off, the world is going to fall apart? It really isn't. That's just in your own head.

Michelle Kane (13:24):

No, no. And if you tell yourself, oh, but it'll be so inconvenient on the other side, trust. I've said that to myself. That's out of proportion too. It really is. We are not air traffic controllers. It may feel like we are sometimes, but we are not heart surgeons. We are not ER physicians. And guess what? Even they have someone on call for them after hours.

Karen Swim, APR (13:52):

They do.

Michelle Kane (13:53):

They will say, okay, I see you are not going to die in 36 hours. We will operate on you on Monday. And it's so true that recording in your head that you play for yourself is so important. And the way that you motivate yourself is so important because I used to do that too. I used to negatively motivate myself if I don't then. And that would give me what I needed to get through. And one day I just said, oh God, that's so stupid. Why am I doing this? This is ridiculous. And like you said, I would never dream of treating anyone else like that. I would quit. I'd be like, oh, sorry. Okay. You won't see me tomorrow. See me? Never.

Karen Swim, APR (14:47):

And I mean, sometimes I went through pretty serious things. Maybe it's not that serious. Maybe you're just feeling burnt out. By the way, I went through that too. So after I got through all of the other hearts, then got a full on whatever stage of life I'm in, crisis full on. It was not pretty. And I was feeling super burnt out from my job, and I thought that I just wanted to walk away. It just didn't even care. I'm like, I hate this. I cannot wait to be done with this.

So there's a trick for that too. And I think one of the common things is listening to that voice, listening to yourself, listening to your body, and taking some time to get to the root cause in dealing with it. So for me, the burnout was because there were just things that I didn't like doing anymore. I didn't hate my whole job. I just didn't like certain tasks. And I could then look at them clearly and say, okay, well, I think I want a new plan and there's a new direction that I want to take. And so then understanding what really energized me and paying attention to the things that I could just put my head down and do and time would just disappear because I was enjoying it. And I listened to what other people were telling me when they were saying, oh my God, you're so good at this.

So I found that light, and then I started walking towards the things that gave me that light. And so if that's you, I encourage you to pay attention to what other people are saying, how you're feeling throughout your day as you're doing your day-to-day job. Are there things that you're just avoiding and you're just like, Ugh, God, I hate this. But then are there things that you're like, I love this. I love when I get to do this because lean into the things that make you passionate and it's okay. We talked about this last week. Michelle said it perfectly that when you're in traditional jobs, you change jobs every couple of years. Some people every year. You don't do the same job year after year after year in the same exact way. It's okay to change it up. It really is lean into things that really make you happy. And that is going to be different in different years of your life, in different parts of your life, there are things that you're going to love and then maybe you don't love them anymore and it's okay to change. It's fine. You'll be fine.

Michelle Kane (17:14):

Yeah. I mean, we all change. You were a different person when you started your business, and I'm sure there were different reasons that we started our businesses. So we're going to change and give yourself that space. And even if you do need to hunker down and just get her done for a time, that doesn't have to be become your standard mode of operation. It's that huge adage, we train people how to treat us and just surmounting that is so big.

Karen Swim, APR (17:52):

So big.

Michelle Kane (17:52):

Especially in a business where you feel like you must be available and always at the ready.

Karen Swim, APR (18:02):

Not always.

Michelle Kane (18:03):

No, not everything's a crisis. It's not horrible to establish those boundaries and to just give yourself the space that you need.

Karen Swim, APR (18:16):

I completely agree. And listen to other people who have been through this that are outside of this profession. If you want to Google Clarence Bethea, he is a former client and a friend and has been such an inspiration because he is an entrepreneur who really went through a period of depression. And he is so open about what he went through as a founder, the pressure of building a company and everything that was on the line. And he's one of the most inspirational people that you will ever meet. He's fantastic. So even people that are not in the communication industry, they get it. Draw strength from what others have been through. Somebody else has walked a mile in your shoes already and can provide that guiding light. But we don't want people to just be out there alone and hurting. I would also say that one of the big reasons that we created Solo PR Pro in the first place is that so that you had community.

So you really are not alone. You do not have to be a paying member of our community to reach out to us and get support. We're still colleagues. We get it. And again, just sometimes sitting down with somebody or reaching out to somebody to say, Ugh, I just feel over it. What can I do? How do I get past this? Really helps to get past it. And Michelle, you talked about hunkering down. I feel like hunkering down to do the things that are necessary becomes a lot easier when you're planning to lean more into that thing that makes you happy. Because you can always flip that switch right away, but you can make the mental switch where you're like, oh my God, I found it. I found the thing that is making me so happy right now. And as you're working on that thing and working on the pivot, the other thing sort of then become less important. And I think it's because in our mind, we know that we're not with it. Like, okay, I'm not stuck doing this forever, so I can get that.

Michelle Kane (20:20):

Yeah. And it all comes down to just a basic notion of always have something to look forward to. How often don't we do that? How often don't we just make those little plans of, even if it's one thing a week, and again, I'm not saying it because I'm an expert at it, I'm saying it because I need to do it too.

Karen Swim, APR (20:40):

There's a proverb that says, okay, now I forget where it is. But it's basically that the absence of hope makes the heart sick. So what you just said is 100% true. Without hope, we can become super depressed and burned out, and we lack hope when we allow ourselves to get down and tired, and then we spiral, and then that's all that we see, and we just keep circling the drain, and that's not good. So we want you to be recharged, re-energized, and excited about your professional life and your personal life.

Michelle Kane (21:16):

Absolutely. We so do well. We hope this has helped you. If you're nodding your head through it all, just please keep on keeping on and really carve out time for yourself. Just sit back and think. You don't have to spend a whole day on it, even 15, 20 minutes. Just have a little mental reset and reprioritize to get you through the day and then the week and on and on, and know that we are always here for you and Solo PR Pro is here for you. And until next time, thanks for listening to That Solo Life.

 

 

Maintaining Momentum in the Final Stretch

We just entered Q4 of 2023. How did we get here so quickly? If your energy and creativity are lagging, you need to listen to this episode.

 

Here’s the link to the blog referenced in today’s episode, “How PR Pros Can Find Their Secret Sauce” 

 

Transcript

Michelle Kane (00:02):

Thank you for joining us for another episode of That Solo Life, the podcast for PR pros and marketers working for themselves. Like me, Michelle Kane, with VoiceMatters and my ever steady co-host, Karen Swim of Solo PR Pro. Hi Karen, we are back again.

Karen Swim, APR (00:21):

We are here!

Michelle Kane (00:25):

Oh my goodness. Speaking of, we thought today would be a great day. We're looking at the end of the calendar pages and we thought it would be a perfect time to talk about keeping ourselves motivated. How do we keep our motivation momentum as we enter into this fourth quarter? And I don't know, I think for so many of us, we're just tired. We're just weather subconsciously or consciously tired from these past several years now of stuff.

Karen Swim, APR (01:06):

And as we record this, it's a particularly interesting time in that we continue to say post pandemic because it's not that far behind us. And now Covid also is popping its head up quite fiercely again. And so we're seeing more cases come back and I felt like we were still finding our footing after the pandemic and still trying to fill out what normal really was, and the ground is shifting under our feet once again. So it is an interesting time, and I don't know about everyone else, but I feel I'm tired, but I also have maybe excited energy. So there's that combination of being excited about the last quarter of 2023 and the things that are happening and the things that are in place that will set me up for 2024, but also just tired, fatigued. If we could end the year today, I would really be okay with that.

Michelle Kane (02:14):

I am with you. No, it's interesting. I mean, there's so much that goes into keeping you motivated, right? I mean, some of us may have client work that is samey-same, and there's nothing wrong with that, but sometimes you just get that multi-year itch about it, which you could flip that into saying, well, can we change things up to be more beneficial? How can we just reinvigorate ourselves about it? But from the broader spectrum, it's also keeping ourselves invigorated about our day to day

(02:53):

Just staying excited about the job or thinking, well, why am I feeling this way? Aside from the general global malaise and freakout that's been hampering us for all this time, I think of myself. For me, I do big crises really well. If something big happens in life, I'm like, okay, let's handle it. Let's get through it. Let's get through it. And then if I drop a pen, then I just lose it. So I have to wonder if as a society, if that's kind of where we're at, we all got through the big massive thing pretty much, and now we're just, now we have the crash. So I think we just need to keep that in mind as we go about our businesses and our work days and our personal things, and just remember to be kind to ourselves, be patient with ourselves and realize that as much as we might like to go back to autopilot for a lot of things, we're not there yet.

 

Karen Swim, APR (03:54):

I also think at this time of year, we've gone through nine months. We're in this final stretch for a lot of people. Fall is very busy. It's event season. It's just a lot going on, a lot of moving parts. And so you can start to feel your energy levels flagging at this point of the year. So some things that you can do to make sure that you continue that momentum of the year and keep things on track is one is that you could revisit your schedule. This is a great time to start looking at pulling things off and be more effective, be more efficient. Sometimes we're just go, go, go. And we've added all of these things. So what can you remove from your schedule? How can you be more efficient and spend less time doing things if you need help? There's some great books out there like Essentialism, which I loved because it really forces you to look at how you prioritize your time and blocking things out worked for me, really love it.

(04:55):

I need to read it again. Then there's a book that I've been hearing a lot of good things about the 12 Day Year. So take a look at your time management and think about, okay, as I go into this last quarter, what can I do to be efficient? And maybe it means eliminating some things and tabling some things for next year because this is already a busy time of year. I think you can also sustain momentum by ensuring that you're refueling your creativity. So in this fourth quarter, what can you tweak to make things a little bit different? How can you approach these Q four campaigns just a little bit differently? Sometimes we deal with clients so much, I want to say this in a super kind way, but clients have a way of sometimes just no matter what we do, they will slip back into the corporate persona hole and it can whittle away at your creative energy sometimes because we can be wildly creative and then they dial us back.

(06:06):

So spend a few days or a few hours each day or just take some time out and start to think about unleash your wild creative side again, because within that you know that they're going to probably have you dial it back, but it energizes you to just pick off all the boundaries. Forget about what they said, no to forget about who they are, because sometimes we kind of get into this mindset of thinking, okay, they'll never do that. And so then we don't go there in our head because we feel like it's a waste of time. But again, this is about refreshing you, and a lot of times when you do that, just take off all boundaries. If I could do anything that I wanted for this client, anything, and they would totally go for it, how would I approach this in there somewhere is something new that you probably could get past them and that will make you excited again. And that excitement means everything.

Michelle Kane (07:07):

That's so true, so true. And it also communicates that you're invested in their success. I would say a partner activity to that would be to make sure you're fueling yourself creatively. I know it's so easy for all of us and hello, I'm the worst culprit. You're just getting things done. You skip. You think going to a movie's too frivolous, I don't have time for a walk. Those are the things that refill your cup and you have to keep your cup full so that you're able to, I mean, I'm sure we've all worked ourselves to the bone where we're just dry. It's like I got nothing

Karen Swim, APR (07:47):

For sure. Totally been there, but it is possible to regroup. It's interesting on the solo blog this week, if you haven't visited our blog, we tackled a topic lightly on your secret sauce. And as we go on in business, we all hit a point, and sometimes it's seasonal, but sometimes it's just a point in our business where we just were bored, we're restless, or you're just not feeling it for whatever reason. Maybe you can't even put your finger on it. Dialing down some levels and really finding that secret sauce could mean a little bit of a tweak to the services that you deliver to how you deliver them. And so some of the things right now that you can pay attention to as you set yourself up for 2024 is what is that thing that when you're doing it, when your head's down, you are just in your zone and you don't even notice time passing?

(08:51):

Do more of that because that's a telltale sign that that's your secret sauce. That's something that you really love. What's the thing that you want to continue to learn about? If there's something that you keep wanting to just, you want to take classes, you want to do workshops, you want to investigate, you want to learn more, you want to get better at it, do more of that. Lean into the things that are really calling you, because sometimes we have gone along and we've offered our services as just a regular roster, PR services, and you might be missing that secret sauce that could really be uniquely yours in your business. A few examples, I met someone, a colleague in the UK, and she was doing these thought leadership programs where she brought together global thought leaders via a YouTube channel. So she would go out and they would record them and do the whole thing, but she was doing full on PR.

(09:51):

Well, she loved it, and she ended up pivoting into that and she was living her best life winning awards, growing her team, scaling her business because she leaned into something that she was really passionate about. If there's something that when you talk about a particular area PR and people go, wow, they lean in and they listen as you're talking about and they want to learn more, or people have commented, I said this to my colleague Carolyn recently, I'm like, you light up when you talk about this. What's the thing that you light up about when you talk about it? This is a good time of year to say, huh, maybe I'm feeling tired or burned out or restless because I'm not doing enough of this thing That really is my unique calling, my secret sauce, the thing that really jazzes me up for me these days, media relations and me are having a moment and I am not feeling the joy all the time just to be transparent, not feeling the joy. But there are other things that have me super excited and I am leaning into those areas more and really trying to pivot pretty precisely to that area over the next year. So maybe maintaining momentum may mean that you make a little bit of a shift or that you a plan to make the shift because we know you can't always turn the boat around on a dime, but if you start moving in that direction, that alone will energize you for the rest of this year.

Michelle Kane (11:32):

And it really is all about the energy that you bring to anything that you're doing. And I love that you've framed it that way because sometimes our lack of excitement, our lack of initiative, I mean that in and of itself is a sign. That's a message that we should be receiving. As long as you can disregard, okay, do I just need a big nap or is this something more, is there something more to this? So dig in, investigate that, and I think that's the wonderful thing about the work that we do. There are so many possibilities that I know when we've got those blinders on and we're doing the thing that we've always done, and we just do our thing. Hey, we also have bills to pay. So you are looking to hit your numbers for the month, but I really encourage you and I'm encouraging myself.

(12:27):

Take a couple of hours and just sit and go, huh, okay, how's this going? What do I really like? What don't I, what kind of clients do I want to go after? What kind of work am I really doing? I mean, look, we're going to change. What do they say? I don't know. I'm not going to point to anything specific, but isn't it like every seven years? Sometimes it's a seven year itch, but I think there's more to it. You just naturally become predisposed. I mean, I always say I worked in the nonprofit world for 15 years, but I always say if that role had not changed every several years, I would not have been there that long because I would've been like, I continued to be challenged. I continued to be fed by it, by the different roles that I was asked to fill.

(13:22):

And that helps too. So I think it just comes down to sitting with yourself, which I know is uncomfortable sometimes, and just say, Hey, what do I like today? Why do I, and it could be even as simple as also how is your day structured? Is it time to shake that up? It could be just as simple as don't right away sit down with your email and your coffee. Maybe it's work on a passion project for an hour before you start answering to everyone else, whatever that is for you. We really encourage you to spend some time on that because I just know that that will spark something good for you.

Karen Swim, APR (14:09):

Yeah. I love what you just said too about being in nonprofit that your job changed. It reminded me that when we were all in, excuse me, in jobs, we didn't stay in one job our entire career, we changed jobs, but when you own your own business, you really are the CEO and your job doesn't change. There's nowhere else to go except for out. You either sell your company or you retire when you shutter your agency. So you're right, Michelle, we need to remember that, that we, humans do crave a little bit of variety. And even if you are so passionate still, and this is your life's work, there's still some variety that you can infuse to keep your energy levels high and to keep you excited about what you do. Because doing the same job year after year after year after year can get pretty stale.

Michelle Kane (15:10):

And even if your clients are okay with that on one level, I always like to think, but we can always be better, even if they're comfy, get out of your comfort zone clients.

Karen Swim, APR (15:26):

I mean, push them out their comfort zone. You will be surprised. I mean, we just had this happen twice, one in a smaller way and one in a big way where we went full on unleash the creative juices and let it fly and said, we don't care if they think we're insane. And you know what? Our client was like, this is why I love you guys. I love you. They were so excited because they know we're creative. They hired us because we're creative and smart. So don't dull your shine even for your clients. Just keep that going and force them to come to the light. Don't go to the dark side. Force them into the light,

Michelle Kane (16:13):

And I get it. Sometimes you think, ugh, but you don't understand. They never want to do anything fun, and I get it. That can be really energy zapping over time. So sometimes you just got to say, who caress? I'm still going to say the crazy thing. Okay,

Karen Swim, APR (16:36):

100%. Because they need to remember why they engage with you in the first place. So don't lose that special thing that they hired you for just because they're too buddy duddy to really appreciate it.

Michelle Kane (16:49):

Exactly. They're probably secretly jealous, so that's okay too.

Karen Swim, APR (16:56):

They know that they're going to have problems getting it through the corporate channels, and so they're afraid to let themselves dream.

Michelle Kane (17:02):

That's true. That's very true, and that's a great point too. So often it has nothing to do with you or your ideas. There are so many other factors that can get in the way. But well, we hope we've inspired you a bit. I think we've inspired ourselves a little bit, which is always a nice byproduct. But if you did get value from this, please do share it around with your friends. Check out the blog post that Karen just mentioned on solo pr pro.com. Hit us up with feedback there as well. We will put that blog post link in the show notes this week. And until next time, thanks for listening to That Solo Life.

 

 

WGA AI Deal and Its Implications for PR Pros

The Writer’s Guild of America strike has come to an end with the approval of a deal effective September 25, 2023 through May 1, 2026. The writers secured significant gains in one of the major areas of concern, use of AI in their work. In this episode we talk about the implications of this deal for creatives and PR pros.

 

Transcript

Michelle Kane (00:03):

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 are you doing today?

Karen Swim, APR (00:19):

Hey, Michelle. I'm doing great. How are you?

Michelle Kane (00:22):

Good. Rolling along. Rolling along. It's all we can do these days.

Karen Swim, APR (00:27):

It's rolling pretty quickly. I cannot believe, even though we have been so focused on calendars and all of the things, I swear it feels like we weren't from July to here we are end of September in a day. That's what it feels like.

Michelle Kane (00:44):

Yes, yes. It feels like as I near the close of every month, I say, what a ride.

Karen Swim, APR (00:51):

Yeah.

Michelle Kane (00:53):

So yes, definitely. We are in interesting times as ever. It just seems like the items of interest are the things that change, which leads us to our topic today when this podcast has hit, I believe in fact, well, I believe they have voted, but the WGA, the writer’s strike is over after, gosh, what was it, over 140 days. It was since May of this year they have been on strike.

Karen Swim, APR (01:28):

Yeah, it was 146 days. Very long strike.

Michelle Kane (01:33):

Yes. But in their holding on, they reached what you could call historic gains regarding the use of AI in writing, which is something we've touched on a lot here and we enjoy the many good things about using AI. But as this writer strike has definitely brought to light, there are of course some concerns about how is this going to affect how they do their work, how they are fairly compensated for their work. So we’re going to dive in a little bit about that today and just AI and tech in general. So let's do it. So the big takeaway that the writers gained was that they can choose to use AI when performing writing services with consent from their production partners, but they can't be forced to do so, which I thought was a pretty big gain. It's not like they can just say “Here, just AI this script for the next sitcom.”

Karen Swim, APR (02:39):

Yeah, I think it's historic in that we are in this time where automation technology is really taking front and center in many industries. Surprisingly, technology is also a big negotiation point in the UAW strike, which living here in Michigan that looms very large and is very much front page news. And as with, I think, back to other times when there were big technological leaps like the internet, when that became accessible and we started to be able to read news and gain information on the internet. When you have these big shifts in the way that you do work, unfortunately laws rights are not keeping pace with the speed of innovation. And so there's always this tension point between moving from the past and moving toward the future. What I think is really interesting about this is that we're learning and the writers’ strike. They're not saying that AI is terrible, don't use it, don't ever use it.

(03:58):

Let's go backwards. They're embracing the future and grappling with, okay, yes, we want to use this tool. We think that it has some efficiencies, it has some greatness, but they're fighting to keep the humanity and their talent and their skillset. And as sophisticated as AI is becoming right before our very eyes, I do not think that we should ever be so lax to believe that a technological device, no matter how well trained it is, can replace the creativity of the human mind, period. Whether that's working visually, strategic planning. I mean, there are things that AI can and cannot do. And so I think that this strike the spillover to every industry has really put workers' rights front and center, but also front and center, that we need to value what people really bring to the table.

Michelle Kane (05:04):

That is so, so true. I mean, not that we want to think back to the pandemic, but what got us through it was the art that these creators created to at a time when we could not be together as we were used to being, we at least got to still think and have emotions thanks to binging Netflix for weeks on it. So I am very glad that they got this deal because not that I have any say, but I think it is a good deal because it's like you say, AI is not the devil. It can be a great tool and as we've been saying all along, rather than just closing off to it and thinking, Ugh, this tech is going to take my job, it's going to be terrible. We need to embrace it because those of us who do it learn how to use it well, learn how to incorporate it into our everyday are going to be the ones that can still see a living and success and don't be afraid of it. It's certainly not perfect. And like you say, anything, regulations and laws lagging far behind. I mean, my goodness, we still, social media is still this ever evolving thing that our Congress and the US is still talking about. Maybe we should regulate this. I'm like you think maybe a little bit.

Karen Swim, APR (06:39):

I mean, I completely agree. There have been some disturbing ethical things that have come up. So for PR practitioners, I think it's really important. And here's the alarm that I absolutely will sound, and I may say this so much that you all will get sick of hearing that, but the alarm that I will sound is not to be afraid to use ai, not to be afraid to incorporate it into your work. I would say the alarm is really digging deep and being able to clearly articulate and demonstrate what your value is to clients. Because let's all be honest about this in the short term, AI is going to shift some budgets. It just will. This is what happens when innovation comes into play. Have already heard anecdotes from people where their budgets have either been cut or they have been eliminated because clients believe that AI could be a replacement.

(07:41):

And with the shifting media landscape and the shifting social media landscape as well, there are actually a lot of threats that I don't think that we can ignore. So if you're in the PR camp of everything's fine, everything's fine, we'll all be fine. Don't worry about it. All of the stuff has happened before true, but we should not be asleep on this one. We really shouldn't. We have to really dig down, really spend some time saying, okay, what is it that I really offer clients? We know this, but I feel like we really do struggle to both articulate it and demonstrate it. That means coming up with custom measurement dashboards, being able to put numbers and metrics to what you do and showing it to clients and making sure that it's the things that matter most to them. Putting together custom dashboards is not that hard. We've talked about this in the past for so many years at Solo PR Pro. We've had example custom dashboards. There's lots of examples out there. If you want us to do some type of a workshop on this, we're happy to bring in other experts and to do that. But I think that we should be taking this seriously and understanding that what our understanding and our perspective may not necessarily mirror those that are hiring us,

Michelle Kane (09:09):

Right? Especially if they are not of the creative mind or they're not communicators. So even though it's a punch in the gut to us perhaps, or wounds our ego, we've also been through this before with the rise of creative tools of well, everyone can design and everyone can write, and we can all do social. Yeah, maybe they can get by with it. Maybe they can get by with badly written copy that doesn't really communicate, but one day they will write something that could be damaging to them.

Karen Swim, APR (09:49):

I love that example that you brought up about designers because let's be honest, how many of us embrace Canva, like our life depended on it and stopped paying designers to do social media graphics or to do simple designs because we had a tool. And so I think that it would be irresponsible of us to rest on our laurels and say, but we're different. We're protected. That's not necessarily true. And so again, I do think that we're in this weird part right here between old and new and shifting over where it's going to be more important than ever that we become better about communicating what we do. And if you think that you're doing this, I would challenge you to think a little more deeply because I spend a lot of time in PR forums and groups, and I see what people are saying, and I see the questions that they're asking, and I hear the client struggles that people are having, and we're not that good at it.

(10:55):

We really are not. And please know that as I encourage you all to do that, that I am doing the same exact thing, doing that deep work and really going levels deeper and saying, okay, am I doing the best job of really articulating what I do? And I'm also rethinking what I actually sell to clients. There are some things that maybe are going to go away for me, and that's okay, but I think that we all should be doing that work right now. And right now our clients are budgeting, so you want to think about this quickly and make sure that you're ready for the next year because this is real. And unfortunately, unlike the writers and the actors and the UAW where technology is also factored into their negotiations, we don't have a union. It's just you. Our union is, hey, so we'll support one another, but we don't have that collective bargaining power. So we've got to get it together for ourselves and be ready to advocate for ourselves.

Michelle Kane (12:06):

Right? And also, I think it comes back a lot to checking in with your clients and saying, “Hey, here's what we've been doing so far this year. How's that tracking with you? Have your needs changed?” And that may help you get an inkling of where they are and what they're thinking without, if you're not comfortable with calling it right out, which might not be a comfortable conversation, but just checking in and saying, “What are your goals? Have your corporate goals shifted?” Because a lot of times, hey, some companies, depending on their size, they don't even have kind of like a solo shop. You don't often have the opportunity to even evaluate that you're just keeping going, but others are, and it depends to what degree they are paying attention to what's going on, but I assure you they are and how to properly incorporate it into what they're doing to make sure that you can still be an asset for them. Because I know this, we all can still be assets. It's just making sure they realize that

Karen Swim, APR (13:07):

For sure. And thank you so much for calling that point out because I do want our communicators to walk away knowing that we truly are valuable and that we do have a valuable skillset, but we have to take the personal out of it when we're talking about clients and what they think and what they see. Because we all know that there are so many things that we do that clients do not even understand why that's valuable. All of the moving parts that we manage, the things that we prevent from going wrong, they don't always get that or don't appreciate how that takes skill to do, and they never will because no one's ever going to fully understand anyone else's job unless they've done it. We can kind of understand it in a way, but all of the nuances are impossible to know. The other thing that I think the Rider Strike brought out, which is a good point for us to all consider, is not only protecting our jobs, but having the conversations about how you're using ai.

(14:17):

I don't think that you should shy away from AI conversations with your clients, ask them how they're incorporating it, and also you want to think about protecting your work. Is that important to you? So if you write a blog post for a client, are you okay with that blog post then being repurposed by ai? This was something that came up in the rider strike. So if you're writing materials, do you want those materials to be used indefinitely without you for no pay? In our world, it works a little bit different, but again, you need to be thinking along the lines of what AI can do and how comfortable you are. And if necessary, have conversations with your legal counsel and ask, what things should I be putting into my contracts to address ai? Do you need to disclose that you use AI as a tool? I am iffy on that one because I do not believe that we should just take AI and whatever they produce and then use it as is without any of our input and then hand it over. Because then that's not really, it's a tool, it's a work.

 (15:36):

Do you disclose to the clients that you use MuckRack for reporting? I mean, I do, but not in my contracts. I'm pretty transparent with clients like, oh, we use this to gather this. Here's what we can gather. But I think that we have to come to a place where we're comfortable. Is AI just another technological tool like your email system because it should just be another tech tool that you use?

Michelle Kane (16:03):

Agree, agree.

Karen Swim, APR (16:04):

I need this coming up a lot about do I put this in my contracts that I use AI? And I'm not sure why we would do that. Why? Because they're listing absolutely everything you list all of the technological tools that you're using in order to produce your work. But again, these are the kinds of things that I do think it's important to think about it and think about how we're using things and what needs to be disclosed and in what way, and what needs to be protected and what those protections should be. Because we are in a new era and I don't want any of us to be taken advantage of or to be devalued in this transitional time.

Michelle Kane (16:48):

And actually, I think that's an opportunity to bring it up to help frame it for the client, because I certainly wouldn't spell out to a client. Well, I wrote this in Word, so I use spellcheck for sure, and then I ran it through Grammarly just to check for plagiarism, even though I didn't plagiarize, but I just wanted to be sure. I mean, it could be exhaustive, but since AI is such a new, big, hairy thing, it's worth a conversation to say, Hey, I consider this a tool, which honestly makes me more efficient for you. But also, even though as AI is getting smarter, I mean the tool that I use, I've noticed some blips, the quality's taken a little hit. There's a lot of flowery pros in there that I'm like, Ugh, depending what I feed it. So all these things factor in to the conversations. And I think it's about having those conversations with your client, because again, being a PR practitioner, we're communicators, but we're also sometimes therapists and we're educators. We're all the things, whether they realize it or not.

Karen Swim, APR (17:58):

And here's a little AI hack for that, by the way, Michelle. And for our listening audience, when you are using ChatGPT to generate content and you're not happy with the style first, you can prompt it differently with the style, but then you can ask it to rewrite it in several different styles. So you can tell it specifically. You can say, rewrite this in conversational style or rewrite this. Give me three different styles, and it'll tell you what style it's using and rewrite things. And so sometimes you'll find that there's a mix of styles that kind of works for you and gets you thinking and able to pull it together. So yeah, you can get away from the AI-ness of it all,

Michelle Kane (18:44):

Lose the flowery prose.

Karen Swim, APR (18:47):

Yeah,

Michelle Kane (18:48):

That was junk. Try again.

Karen Swim, APR (18:51):

Although I have to tell you that sometimes it's really fun to give AI a little bit of license and give it some fun prompts and tell it to do something weird, because what you get back can be surprisingly just so creative.

Michelle Kane (19:08):

That's true. Yeah. So as we've been saying, we can have fun with it, but it is a serious development in all of our worlds and who knows what's to come. But as always, we want you to be as ready as possible, and we know that our solos are savvy smarties to begin with. So that already puts you steps ahead. So don't be afraid of it. But if you found value in this time together, please pass it around. Please share the Solo PR Pro love. And until next time, thanks for joining us for That Solo Life.

 

PR Pro Pop Culture Check-in

It’s time to check in on the latest in pop culture and PR. From recent missteps from the rock and roll world to shows trying to return to air during the WGA and SAG/AFTRA strikes, we talk about it.

 

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 Karen Swim of Solo PR Pro. Hello, Karen. It's another week and here we are.

Karen Swim, APR (00:20):

Hi Michelle. We made it. We made it. It's been a week.

Michelle Kane (00:25):

Oh, it's been a week. And it hasn't even been a week already.

Karen Swim, APR (00:30):

So true.

Michelle Kane (00:31):

But our week is nothing like the weeks of some people out there in pop culture land. So we're just going to touch on that a little bit. I'm sure if any of you are following any of the hot topics right now with the Writers’ Strike, the Actors’ Strike. We know Drew Barrymore had some issues with that. We've got some stuff out of Florida, and Jan Winter stepped in it too with Rolling, rolling Stone in the Rock and Roll Hall. And not that we're saying this to just disown people, but there are some very instructive PR moments that some of these aforementioned people received well and acted upon and others have not. But that's okay. It's just like us and clients. Sometimes they listen, sometimes they don't.

Karen Swim, APR (01:21):

100%. And I actually, I love our pop culture PR segments because they're always fun and they're a nice break from a lot of the other things that all of us have to deal within our day-to-day. So yes.

Michelle Kane (01:35):

Yeah. Yes. Let's get into it. So Drew, I love Drew. I know she means, well, I think she most certainly was thinking of those members of her crew and those people affected by the strike and being off the job and what that is starting to mean financially for so many people that she announced. She made the decision to come back to work that was met with pretty significant backlash, which in turn, she then rescinded and is not going back. And I know we were talking off air about, I had seen Rosie O'Donnell posted something that was very instructive for Drew. In fact, Rosie, if you're looking to make a foray into pr, you nailed it. She just laid out three things, a apologize, B, change your mind and see, just state it like this and you'll be fine.

Karen Swim, APR (02:36):

I love Drew Barrymore as well. And I think that her misstep, of course, the first thing that was asked is who's advising her? People automatically assume that there was some failure on the part of advisors, but then other smart people asked. The question was, did she listen to counsel? My guess is that obviously she does have really good PR people that are on her team. My guess is that they truly did advise her, but that she led with her will and her heart. And I do believe that she was well intentioned, but very misinformed. So here's a thing that stood out to me. Number one, here's somebody who is an industry veteran. She grew up in this industry. That, however, is not always apparently an indication that you really understand the industry that you've been in for a long time. So she's been in it for a long time.

She's made a lot of money in the industry. She definitely is one of the privileged that is not feeling the strike in the same way, however, because she has a good heart. She wanted to do something good, but she missed the mark on this one and she forgot her audience. I don't want to spend people's money. But there's all kinds of ways that you can help people that work for you without affecting the wider industry and the issues and thinking about how this is going to play to the average American, many of whom are in her audience are also in labor unions, have family members in labor unions or are being impacted by workplace issues. So it was a great misstep. And so the lesson to leaders is just because you think something is right, and just because you're operating off of good intentions, it's really smart to have strategic counsel that will tell you the truth and to look beyond yourself and your perceptions and truly understand the impact on the audience.

(04:50):

And when you're a brand of that size, your impact on the larger marketplace. I have friends that have been on the picket lines. I have friends that are not multimillionaires who are being affected by these strikes. I have friends that are actors and friends that are writers. It is disheartening to see somebody show up for a smaller group of people because you want to feel good about it and you want to put a statement out saying, I own this choice. Okay, are you owning the big mistake that this is too? It was a slap in the case to all of those people that don't have Drew Barrymore as their boss, which is the majority of people.

Michelle Kane (05:30):

Right. So true. So true. And it definitely went against the whole purpose of a strike. And to your point, you're asking audience members to cross a picket line. And so there was a subset snafu with all of this where there were two audience members who the picketers gave them pins. They wore the pins, they were kicked out of the audience. So it's also a message to someone in her, or maybe you're not a talk show host. Maybe you're a c e O of a company. Yeah, you keep the 30,000 foot view, but you better keep your ear to the ground too so that your staff knows not to do that because Hello Drew, you're in the SAG after union.

Karen Swim, APR (06:16):

That's unfortunate, but has she been out on the picket line routinely? Has she been talking to people who are losing their livelihood, who cannot pay their rent, who cannot make their mortgage payments? Apparently not.

Because you can't hear these stories, you can't know these people. You can't walk in their shoes and make the decision that was made. And we've also seen the ripple effect, and this happens with companies that we work with too. One company does something and everybody follows suit bad or good.

We're seeing it right now in this whole return to office. One company finally pulls the plug and says, you've got to come back. And then we see a ripple where other companies follow suit because no one often wants to be first. And we know in business that it's all copycat. That's why they all talk in this stupid business jargon language, which is another part of our segment today. So now that she has pulled back and they are not taping the show, then other talk shows also announce that they also will be delaying their seasons. Correct. Is this painful? Yes, but that's a whole point of a strike, whether you're pro-union or not. I think that we're all people earning a decent living,

(07:42):

And that's all that these, they're not fighting to become billionaires. That's not what the fight is about. They want to have health insurance. They want to be able to have entry level positions. When it comes to actors, they want extras. Extra is often, it's almost like an internship into the business. They don't get paid a lot, but they get to learn on the job, they get to network, they get to be around, they learn the language of a set and how production goes. And one of the things that the studios wanted to do is to take extras in that background stuff and be able to AI it into 50,000 different other scenes movies. So imagine this, you go, you get paid a hundred bucks for your full day of work, and now somebody wants you to sign over the rights to that day of work for eternity so they can just drop you into other things. Yes, technology is here, but I am not a fan personally of technology, completely erasing humanity. I believe that the best use of technology helps us to do our jobs better. It works for us. It's not competing with us.

Michelle Kane (09:02):

I mean, that's just wholly unethical.

Karen Swim, APR (09:06):

I believe it is too. And so I've heard a lot of people just, they don't understand. They don't know what's going on with these strikes. And they really have this viewpoint that people in Hollywood all make so much money. And when I shared with people some of the residual checks that people make or some of the money that they make given year, they were shocked that it was less than they make at their, what they consider to be a regular job. We're not talking about tech executives. We're not talking about C-suite people. We're talking about people that just go to work every day. They have a job, they make a decent living. They were shocked to learn that people in this industry often make far less than they do. And it's because in every industry, you always have somebody on the bottom, somebody in the middle, and somebody at the top. Every industry that doesn't go away just because of the type of industry.

Michelle Kane (10:03):

And I think it speaks to a wider mentality, and I'm going to presume it's probably mostly an American thing. You always hear the pushback of, oh, they want this kind of raise. Why should they get that? It's like, do you understand? If they do that, it will eventually benefit you? This is not a competition. You are not meant to be jealous. Oh, so you want to be paid less, is that what you're saying? Pay me less. It's not a contest. We only have, look unions a lot of good, a lot of not so great, but we have weekends because of unions. We have, well, in most states right now, some states are bringing back child labor. We don't have child labor because of union. So them asking for what the value of their work is bringing these companies don't act like just because it's not an opportunity for you today. Oh, they're being greedy. Just shut up and go to work. It's like, really? Do you really want to be a surf? I don't.

Karen Swim, APR (11:09):

And it is a little shortsighted to actually be a member of a union that's on strike and make the decision that Drew Barrymore made. That's a more telling issue because people that don't agree with the unions and would love to see them go away, they don't like the collective bargaining. They want every individual to bargain for themselves. Nothing wrong with that point of view. It really isn't. So we're not here to say pro or anti-union or whatever. We're here to say that when you are running a business, you really need to take into account who you're speaking to and the impact of your decisions. And you have to rely on more than your own perception or your intentions. It just gets you into trouble every time. And this time it really got her into trouble. I think that she'll recover from it.

Michelle Kane (12:05):

Yes. I believe that

Karen Swim, APR (12:07):

She, over time has actually built a lot of goodwill. So I do think that she will recover, but it was just unfortunate that it had to take this turn. And we know that on a smaller basis, we probably have seen this with clients as well.

Michelle Kane (12:23):

Oh, definitely, definitely. And to be fair, same thing has happened with Bill Maher. He decided to come back Now, of course said no. And I think it was also what the talk and the Jennifer Hudson show, they were making similar decisions into which even if you're a talk show, it's like, well, who do you think is going to be your guest? But speaking of shortsightedness and not really having much of a clue, let's move on to the new president of the University of Florida, former Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse.

Karen Swim, APR (13:06):

We're looking at this purely from a PR lens. So, University of Florida, which is one of the top schools in the nation, and their model has been fantastic, has a new president, and his name is Ben Sasse, and he's a business guy. Nothing wrong with I get it. You bring somebody into a different industry because they have a different way of solving problems, a different perspective. I have no issues with that choice from a PR perspective. One thing that jumped out at us is that Ben Sasse has done some interviews and he is a businessperson, and he makes the mistake that so many PR professionals will instantly recognize. How many of you have clients that you have set up interviews with and you're trying, you have media trained them for thought leadership, and they cannot get out of their own way and speak like a human being. They just cannot speak like a person.

(14:10):

We have to tell you, we were working with a client and we had a partner, and the partner was a very large, very well-known household name company. And so the interview included our client, a smaller client and this household name company. And the reporter came back to us after the interview and applauded our client and their interview and their input and said basically that the household name company was trash because they could not speak like a human being. They just gave them a bunch of standard company jargon. So if you want to do thought leadership, this is the worst way to do it. It's the worst way, honestly, to communicate with anyone that phrase that you should communicate to be understood, not heard. And unfortunately, some executives, some business people, some regular people feel like they need to sound smart. They need to use all of the inside words.

(15:26):

When you are talking inside of your own companies, you do not need to do this. You do not need to prove that you have the glossary of terms that are used. Sometimes if you're a medical doctor, obviously you need to use technical language in certain positions. You have to use technical language within your job. But it would serve everyone well to learn how to speak a human being. And I want to read you an example of one of his answers. It is so completely, it's like, what does he even saying right now? I don't even know. I'll have to find the quote.

Michelle Kane (16:12):

I believe co-location was one of the words. It was just, I'm like, really? And I wonder because he was previously, he's the former senator from Nebraska. And you have to wonder, is he just not used to speaking things that weren't carefully crafted for him or is now that he's out of that world, he's just again refusing counsel and saying, nah, I'm good. I'll wing it.

Karen Swim, APR (16:42):

He was asked about his perceived invisibility on campus because there's been a lot of stuff on the campus about how he's not seen the previous president. The students don't see him. He's just not visible. And so part of his answer, and this is in quotes, and this is from New York Times magazine, and he says, and that requires us to unbundle cohorting community and synchronicity from co localities. And then he added, what will today's generic term professor mean when you disaggregate syllabus designer, sage on the stage, lecturer, seminar leader, instructional technologist, greater assessor, et cetera. So cohorting community and synchronicity from localities even mean, and what it

Michelle Kane (17:33):

Sounds like it hurts.

Karen Swim, APR (17:35):

Yes. What does that have to do with students saying they never see you on campus? Please do not do this at home, folks.

Michelle Kane (17:48):

Yeah, I mean, my university wasn't anywhere near as large as the University of Florida, but we knew who our president was. We would see him, we would see the provost, we would see them out and about saying, hello. It's a little strange, and maybe I'll give him a little benefit of the doubt. Maybe he's transitioning from being in the hyperbaric chamber of DC or maybe he just isn't, isn't really for…

Karen Swim, APR (18:22):

And I feel like this, feeling like they're so accustomed to speaking in this inside baseball language and it's a language of the privileged they feel as if they have to speak this language so that people know how incredibly brilliant they are. But the people who have an impact and are memorable, are people who know how to speak to you like a person. They don't need to use the big words. And we PR people, we love the dictionary. We love grammar, we love words. We love to bring out old words and use them in different places. But when you are communicating with people, it's so much more important to just be plain spoken and to be memorable. People will remember words that they can hold onto. They're not going to remember that you said unbundle cohort team. I want to even know what does that even mean?

Michelle Kane (19:32):

And honestly, as soon as you said synchronicity, I was already playing songs from the police album in my mind. So you lost me, Ben. But speaking of the police and rock and roll, our number three person who he has literally taken PR in vain is Jan Wener, who has come out with this book called The Masters. And he has truly and purely stepped in it or revealed to anyone who had any wonder of how he really is when he claims, well, I don't know if he was approached as to why are there only white men in your book? And he made some ridiculous claims that, well, I guess I could have interviewed one black person and one woman to be for PR purposes. Okay, that's not PR Jan, but whatever. But they couldn't be articulate. I'm like, I'm sorry, say what? I have three words for you.

(20:28):

Sister Rosetta invented the electric guitar rock and roll riff. If, and I kind of feel for the people that he did interview, I really would love to hear from them as if to say, yeah, I'm in that book, but that's not how I roll. Just incredibly tone deaf. And it really tarnishes the musical journalism reputation of Rolling Stone, even though he was just the editor and the publisher. He wasn't the writer, but all the coverage over the years, you're like, huh, why didn't so-and-so get featured as much? Oh, really? Oh, you don't think Stevie Wonder could talk about his music? Really? Oh, so yeah, he's in our, I don't even like to say doghouse because I love dogs. He's in our PR bad house right now. He

Karen Swim, APR (21:19):

Has been removed from the rock and roll board. Yes, he has from his position. And I think that those were great decisions. And Michelle, I mean, I completely respect you, particularly on so many topics, but you're a music nerd.

Michelle Kane (21:36):

I am.

Karen Swim, APR (21:37):

You are a music nerd. You love music. You know music. You can talk music. And it just hurt my heart to read words that you have one human being who has power, who communicated that there's only a certain subset of people that make music that can actually talk about it in an intelligent manner. This from someone who is not a musician, by the way, he's not a musician.

(22:12):

No. Here again, this goes to me. I mean, this is not a diversity, equity, inclusivity, and belonging issue because he is clearly biased, period. No amount of de I and B training would've helped this man. He really needs a mindset shift. But it is a good example of us understanding companies, organizations, strategic advisors, PR council, understanding the people that we connect to, our brands and our companies, understanding what their perspectives are, not just their intelligence on a particular topic. So I am sure that he achieved his status and position because he developed talents and he had some knowledge about this industry. But did anyone ever look beyond that over the years? Did anyone question why certain people weren't interviewed and why he held certain opinions or wrote certain things? So I think that as communicators, it's important for us to ensure that our clients are not attached to people that could damage their reputations because this rubs off on them. And Michelle, you nailed it. You started to look back and say, now I'm questioning decisions that were made under his leadership, knowing now what I know about this human being. Absolutely. So it can turnage great work.

Michelle Kane (24:00):

And

Karen Swim, APR (24:02):

Not because your organization sucks. I mean, no has had some problematic.

Michelle Kane (24:11):

Problematic, yes. And there's been an undercurrent of thoughts about this person's perspectives, but this just you. I'm like, okay, well thank you for confirming what so many of people have said. I won't repeat what one of my friends posted.

Karen Swim, APR (24:32):

I dunno this man at all. But his comments come across like a hateful, misogynistic, racist. Can I just be honest about it? Exactly.

Michelle Kane (24:40):

Yeah.

Karen Swim, APR (24:41):

So, basically you hate women and any other race.

Michelle Kane (24:44):

Yeah. They're not on the same par as your white male counterparts. And I'm like, yeah, I'm pretty sure that's the textbook definition. And I'm fairly certain of half the names you dropped that they would highly disagree with you. I don't dunno if David Bowie saying

Karen Swim, APR (25:04):

This out loud.

Michelle Kane (25:06):

Yeah, you're saying the quiet part out loud, which happens oh so often these days. And yeah, along that topic, if anyone's interested, there's that brilliant clip of David Bowie being interviewed on MTV in the early eighties addressing just that and calling them out to their faces. And it's just a beautiful for us nerds who love to see a good interview and how they can go, but

Karen Swim, APR (25:29):

We love it.

Michelle Kane (25:30):

Well, we hope you've enjoyed this time with us. We enjoy just looking at the PR perspective of these things as we dish a little bit. And if you've found this valuable to you, we would love it if you would share it around with your friends and colleagues. Check us out@soloprpro.com. And until next time, thanks for listening to That Solo Life.

 

From Barriers to Bridges with Mary Ellen Miller

In this episode, Karen and Michelle welcome Mary Ellen “Mel” Miller, APR, MBA. Mel is the founder and CEO of MarketingMel, a solo PR firm that strengthens relationships between organizations and the publics they serve. Mel draws on the breadth of her lifelong career as a professional communicator in her new book, “Fill the Dam Thing Up! Building Connections: Communicating throughout the Lifecycle of Infrastructure Projects.” It’s a discussion you won’t want to miss.

 

Buy the Book:

“Fill the Dam Thing Up! Building Connections: Communicating throughout the Lifecycle of Infrastructure Projects” is available on Amazon.

 

Connect with Mel:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/marketingmel/

@MarketingMel

 

Transcript

 

Michelle Kane (00:03):

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 our fearless leader over at Solo PR Pro, Karen Swim, and we are thrilled to welcome a guest today. Today we are joined by Mary Ellen, or as she likes to be called, Mel, Miller. Mel holds a special place in our hearts because she is an original Solo PR plankholder. Mel is an accredited public relations professional and the founder and CEO of Marketing Mel, a solo PR firm that strengthens relationships between organizations and the publics they serve. She and I are also fellow Rotarians, so shout out to the Rotarians out there. Mel draws on the breadth of her lifelong career as a professional communicator in her new book, soon to be a bestseller we called it now. That is called “Fill the Dam Thing Up! Building Connections: Communicating throughout the Lifecycle of Infrastructure Projects.” Welcome, Mel. Thank you for joining us today.

Mary Ellen "Mel" Miller, APR (01:12):

Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure to be here.

Karen Swim, APR (01:15):

Yeah, we're so excited to talk to you and love the title of the book and I won't spoil it, but readers you are going to love it from the introduction and you'll love the little story behind the book title and just in reading the note about how the title came about, it just was such a feeling of comradery and just good. And the book is packed, packed with lots of good insights and information. So good you're here to talk about it.

Mary Ellen "Mel" Miller, APR (01:52):

Thank you. Thank you. Karen,

Michelle Kane (01:55):

What brought about you to write this book?

Mary Ellen "Mel" Miller, APR (01:59):

Well, I realized that it was a really unique project in that it was just a 25 minute drive from my home here in northeast Tennessee, but yet it evolved experts from across the world coming in here to keep a dam safe and to keep people downstream safe because ultimately that's what this project was all about, was safety of the downstream public. What the issue was in a nutshell was what's called internal erosion, which is the number two cause of dam failure in the world, and a muddy seep was discovered at the base of the dam in October of 2014, and also a sinkhole was discovered in the parking lot adjacent to that. And the experts quickly realized that the lake on the opposite side, which was really the majority of people I dealt with very well-to-do lake homeowners, who naturally were rather upset when their lake had to be drawn down approximately an additional 10 feet below the winter pool level.

(03:00):

So it became a rather low lake then for the duration of the project, but we always had the support of top management. The CEO came in and said, this project's going to be done, it's going to be done safely and right, it's going to take five to seven years. Of course, the people were very upset to hear it would take that long of a timeline, but there was a tremendous amount of community outreach as you can imagine. That's really what this book is about and it really does appeal directly to your audience folks like us. I was brought in as a contractor on the project, so I full-time had the experience in the community and in broadcasting and in pr, all those kinds of things that helped with the outreach. And I would say if I was to sum it up in just two words, it was relationship building.

(03:45):

As I mentioned in the book, you start out with people, the presidents of the local lake associations with their arms crossed in front of you, just nod at all thrilled that you're there to actually help them clean up the lake on their annual cleanup lake and bringing crews and really showing them that we're here to support showing them that we're here to support. In terms of charity outreach, that was huge. We had a committee of workers on the project. There were about 200 workers on the project, 24 hours a day for several years actually, and they voted to support both the local food bank and also Marine Corps choice for Tots. So every holiday season we were there and we were the largest givers in the whole region While we were there, we knew it was very uncomfortable for the people. We were causing them major discomfort in that the lake had gone down significantly.

(04:38):

But the flip side of that was we wanted to do all we could in the community and in terms of community outreach to help folks while we were here. So it was a fascinating story and the international aspect, to answer your question, Karen and Michelle, it's not every day that you're in northeast Tennessee and you're hearing accents from Britain and France and Italy and Australia. It was just so fun to, and we all came around together at the conference room table every single morning. All the leaders were together and making the plans for the day. So

Karen Swim, APR (05:13):

There was a phrase early on, and you used this in the book that jumped out at me and it's “angry neighbors” and this, when you interrupt people's idea of comfort, there's anger. But when I read it, I realized that this is not limited to infrastructure projects today. We really are surrounded by angry neighbors. There's such anger and a lack of patience in our culture. So talk about how you dealt with that and what lessons you drew upon to deal with a constituency that you needed and you wanted them to become advocates and somebody that you actually needed to communicate with that you started out from a platform of them being just angry

Mary Ellen "Mel" Miller, APR (06:04):

And understandably so justifiably so if you had paid the kind of money they had to have, the lovely homes they have up there, I certainly get how they felt that they didn't want their lake to go down. They still had some water and they still had, we made sure they had access to the water, but it was quite different from the way they were used to. And I think it was twofold. One was the relationship building that I mentioned by showing up month after month in the Lake Association meetings, they started to realize I was for real. I wasn't just flying in and flying out and I lived here to add to that. So I was really here to help them and listen to them. And through that listening, that active listening, that really amounted to environmental scanning. And that's where I picked up on the issue of vegetation management.

(06:49):

As a lake comes down, vegetation comes up if you think about it. And so that was the next thing that they were very concerned about and we were able to address that head on. We enabled crews, we brought crews into mulch and helped to eliminate where the neighbors wanted. It eliminated, as I mentioned in the book, there was actually one fishermen who didn't want his yard cut. He wanted it safe for future fish habitat. So we did what they wanted and what they asked. That was one. The second thing that I think is really important is to engage the people who start out so adversarial. And the one example that I used, I call 'em the three amigos in the book, and the fun thing is that they actually came around in the end and we were very helpful to one another, but in the beginning they started out adversarial and what we did was give them a job, so to speak, and by that I mean a volunteer role in that very vegetation management role that I just mentioned.

(07:48):

They were the ones that knew the neighbors, they lived there. So they went out ahead of our crews and talked to the neighbors and helped us with the knocking on doors and said, “Hey, these crews are going to be coming through on boats in the coves. Is that okay?” They'll be coming through on Monday or whatever. And that helped tremendously. It might sound funny to say give 'em a job, but it really worked. And another tip for a PR pro would be frequently asked questions. So often you start to hear the same thing over and over or in a case like that, because they were noisy, the amigos might've thought that they would have special insights into the project. What you do instead in our project manager was really clear on this and it was a great point. You don't give them special insights. You take their questions and you put them out on the website as FAQs and then everybody gets those answers at once. No one gets special treatment.

Karen Swim, APR (08:39):

I love that.

Michelle Kane (08:40):

I love that. And it's so true. Those that are most invested usually are the squeakiest wheels. So why not have them join the team and become invested in the outcomes? That's phenomenal.

Mary Ellen "Mel" Miller, APR (08:55):

Well, thank you. It worked out terrific. We actually started having meetings with him every two weeks and it was funny to watch a turnaround like that and it was definitely, I always said this project was turning around an aircraft carrier. You weren't turning on a dime. This was a seven year project, so it took a while, but it worked.

Michelle Kane (09:13):

Wow. Certainly a huge aspect of the relationship building for sure. How has this differed from other projects you have worked on?

Mary Ellen "Mel" Miller, APR (09:22):

Well, I think the size and scope was what was just so huge. And you asked why I wrote the book. I guess that that's another aspect that I realized just how big it was. And also I realized that infrastructure is a major issue in this country. As I was starting to write the book, that bus, many of you remember, it actually was dangling off a bridge in Pittsburgh. You're from Pennsylvania, Michelle, you remember that? I do. And it was like, oh my gosh, this timing of the situation of our infrastructure in our country. Thankfully no one was killed there, but it showed you that we are going to have other major, major projects in this country that are going to need the same kind of outreach. And that's why I wrote the book as well,

Karen Swim, APR (10:03):

Which is a great point. And you're right, that is a significant issue that I think many of us are aware of, myself included. I think about that, I talk about that, but I never thought about the opportunity for PR pros. And so it's good that you brought up that point that our help will be needed and that there will be lots of these projects in the future. So as we're all looking to future-proof our careers and we're thinking about how we're integrating AI and some of the technological advances, that's a good point. And you brought that up in the book about environmental scanning and be aware of what's around you and start to look at those things and proactively address them in a way of offering your help. That's a great tip.

Mary Ellen "Mel" Miller, APR (10:54):

And it's funny that you say that because when I first heard about the project, another APR who became my boss, I just think the world of her, she's the one that encouraged me to get the APR actually, she put out a notice to our local public relations society that she was looking for a person that basically it was an exact fit of my job description, could work with the community, be comfortable on camera, whatever, all that kind of stuff, and be a PR pro. And so I had two college students with me that day. I told you I'd like to surround myself with sharp young people. And we were coming back from the meeting and I said, man, what a great opportunity. And I think that's the way we see it, but so many people see it the opposite. And so I tell in the book about how I am sitting at the dentist and my mouth is open and he is like, “You're going to do what?!” - that other professional people that I think have very stressful jobs are thinking that I'm nuts to take on a job like this with community outreach with a bunch of already angry neighbors.

(11:50):

But I thought it was a fun challenge, as you mentioned. And I think that's the way solo PRs fly. We take on the challenges and we're ready to do it. And the other thing that was really big in the book to me was to realize it's a long game. You really have to have resilience and you have to be willing to just keep chugging along and plugging along. And I actually had this vision towards the end of the project after so many years of seeing massive drills on top of the dam and huge construction equipment up there to, I put this picture from July of 2014 as my screensaver, and it was kids frolicking at the beach because there's an actual beach area there at the base of the dam where the public loves to swim, but it had to be closed throughout the project.

(12:39):

And I just kept looking at that picture from, let's see, I posted it in the fall of 21 and the project officially, we had our celebration in ribbon cutting, May 25th, 2022. So I was staring at it for that long and I just kept seeing that as the long game, we are going to get to this again. And I share in the book on that final day, first we had the ribbon cutting with all the stakeholders and it was great, beautiful day in May. And then we had the public come in and we had our subject matter experts all available to talk to the public. And that was really fun. And the partners in the community, including the three Amigos, the local fishing groups, various groups like that, and I was sitting on, I was waiting for my family. They were coming in because they wanted to see it of course. And this family comes up to me and they said, is it okay? They were very timid, can we go swimming? And I said, sure, absolutely. And it was like there they, they jumped in the water and I snapped pictures and I was like, there it is. That's the vision. So I think we have to cast a vision as solo PR pros that there's something good to come in the long run, even though there may be challenges and hills along the way.

Karen Swim, APR (13:49):

And I'm glad that you said that because I was going to ask with a seven year project, and that's different from a lot of our assignments. While we may have clients that long, there are a series of projects along the way. It's not one long assignment. So I know that along the way there was probably moments where it seemed like there was not a lot of activity sometimes where it was more challenging. How did you keep yourself fueled and refreshed during this very long project?

Mary Ellen "Mel" Miller, APR (14:22):

Very long project? That is a great question because it was hard, and I really appreciate the things you do when you talk about the challenges we have with the difficulties of what we do. We're dealing with crises a lot. But I did things like honestly taking my lunch break at the picnic table and being outside and going for a little walk at lunchtime, that sounds really simple, but I think you just have to give yourself that little mental break in the day. That was a big one. I made sure that I was up, see, I was actually physically removed from the main project group. I would go up there every morning and meet with the main project group, but I was in an area where the public could get to me and I could get to the public. And I had two armed guards with me because speaking of stress, someone had threatened to blow up the dam just before I arrived, but this is what we deal with.

(15:17):

So we had to have armed guards protect the site itself. And then indirectly me, because I was in the same trailer with them, it was a very large trailer that we had maps and cartoon type drawings of the project itself. We had a model dam that was very useful in teaching the public and in teaching school groups as well that we showcased there. And then as I mentioned, so much community outreach. There was an eagle's nest that we supported and it was like a live eagle. People love those things. They turn their computer on and they watch 'em for hours. And so we supported that with the local power company at the time. And we got, I remember having a picture of the eagle out there. He had, or she, well, both they're paired, had nested on private property right along the lake. So that was a fun thing to do. But in terms of those kind of mental breaks that you take like a walk or making sure you're around a lot of people when you get the opportunity to, I didn't even usually take regular lunch breaks, but occasionally I would with a couple of friends. And that was a big treat for me just to get out and talk to people about something different.

Michelle Kane (16:24):

I think that's a really good point.

Karen Swim, APR (16:25):

It's so simple things that we take for granted that we do need and we have to build those in. And I know for many PR pros like you, I normally don't take lunch, but the days that I get out of the office and go meet somebody for lunch, it is, it's different and it refreshes you and you feel so energized after that.

Michelle Kane (16:47):

So true. Especially in such a long slog like that, it's important to remember that part of what we do is to keep ourselves replenished. It's not irresponsible to step away for 15, even 15 minutes or oh, goodness,  an hour.

Mary Ellen "Mel" Miller, APR (17:03):

Right? That's a big treat for us. But sometimes you need it.

Michelle Kane (17:07):

Yeah, definitely

Karen Swim, APR (17:09):

You talked a little bit about planning and for those of us who have gone through the accreditation process, we are well familiar with RPI, but you talked about 10 step plan, share with us how that plan worked for you, because I sometimes feel like everybody doesn't get it like a plan. You've got to have a plan, and we may be speaking with people that are outside of the PR profession that listen. So talk about that a little bit and talk about the process you used.

Mary Ellen "Mel" Miller, APR (17:45):

Oh, well, I'm really glad you mentioned that. The planning. Planning. There's a quote that I used from General Eisenhower in the book, and of course I'm not finding it this very second because I'm looking for it, but it's basically that once you get into battle, basically for him you have to have the plan, but then it's kind of like the plan may go by the wayside, but you had that initial plan. I'm paraphrasing him greatly here, but it's so important. And he's exactly right. So you have that initial plan. I had an overarching communications plan that I would update annually and give to the project manager and then kind of subsets of that as various projects within that communications plan would come up throughout the year. I use Fern bon's 10 step PR plan. There's actually a link to that URL in the book because I use that plan all the time, Karen.

(18:37):

And we learned about that in our APR process. But it's just some basic steps to follow and how you start with your strategies and objectives, what your first goals are, and then you drill down more into your tactical work of how you're going to execute that PR plan. So yes, that's important. And then the other thing, this is really simple, it's just a basic spreadsheet, but every week or then I think it went to every other week when I would meet with the managers, and that's another really important thing, be sure you get a seat at the table with the top management. That's very important for the PR pro. But when I would meet with them, I would give them that updated spreadsheet on what's going on in the community to date, what we've just finished this week or last week and what we have coming up. So that was a really good way to keep track and it's so basic, just a little Excel spreadsheet and where you are.

Karen Swim, APR (19:29):

So true. I love it. So true. And I love, we do have to, I always say that you hold everything with an open hand, so you plan, but you realize, and you talked about this, you talked about the project leaders that you started with were not the project leaders that you finished with. And it's a good point because we see that a lot with just in our day-to-day client engagements where leadership changes or there's staffing changes. And so you may start out with a CEO, but that CEO may not go the journey with you. So how did you manage those transitions on top of this massive project? Talk a little bit about the strategies that you used to keep things moving and to keep the momentum and then having to develop new relationships along the way because things were changing and your team sometimes changed.

Mary Ellen "Mel" Miller, APR (20:20):

Well, the team was fantastic, and the reason they changed was they were so good. They got promoted into other positions. They were really on a showcase project. And so when they did so well there, they got promoted up, most of them. Well, the project manager lasted through most of it, and then he got promoted onto a much bigger project towards maybe the last year or six months. So he and I worked very closely together. And then I just adapted the new project manager who came in. She was awesome. She was kind of his handpick. She did not like to go out into public events as much as he did. He was really great with the public speaking events. She liked to be a little bit more behind the scenes. But then we accommodated that with actually a project moves in phases. I cover that in the book as well. And so the project technical director actually ended up really stepping up at that point. And actually his group was called the Asset Owner at that point because they were under the DAM safety heading. And he was terrific at going out and doing those public things. So they filled in the gap. Well, and I guess I was just so fortunate to work with such fantastic professionals that it was a pretty smooth transition when it came to working with different leadership. They made it easy.

Michelle Kane (21:35):

That's so important as well. And even what you touched on is having that seat at the table. I don't know that our equal professionals out there that we often work with realize how important that is. I always say I don't have to know everything, but I have to know everything.

Mary Ellen "Mel" Miller, APR (21:55):

That is well said. And the vegetation management I mentioned is a great example. And I've recently started some public speaking at Rotary Clubs. Michelle and a couple of engineers trailed me out of one because they wanted to buy my book. It was really sweet. And I'd already ran out of books. That was really fun. I'd sold three and I had two more in the car. So they followed me out and they said, you know what? We would've been thinking about the caisson, but you saw the vegetation management. And I said, well, that's where I operate at 30,000 feet. But all three of us do here. And our listeners as well, we're paid to operate at 30,000 feet. They're paid to worry about the caisson because that's really important.

(22:37):

And by the way, that was the solution. They built an underground cutoff wall that was kind of the showpiece of what they called the composite seepage barrier. So it was literally a barrier built within the earth and embankment that cut off pretty easy to explain, cut off the seepage. And then they also had some berms they built around it and they did some drilling and grouting as well. So it was kind of a three phased effort to repair the dam. And they did, and they did it safely. And that's the good news on time and under budget,

Karen Swim, APR (23:13):

That's music to everyone's ears, isn't it? Seriously able to achieve that. We could talk to you about any of these topics that you cover in the book for an entire hour, but as we near the end of our time, I want to personally make sure that people know where to get this great book because there, it's fun. It's a fun read and you write with such warmth and it's so relatable. I've never worked on infrastructure projects like this, but I completely relate it to the way that you laid out the story in the book. And it's a good read. And I do believe that this will become a bestseller. And I believe that there's probably more books in you, Mel Miller, so talk where they can pick up this book.

Mary Ellen "Mel" Miller, APR (23:59):

Well, thank you so much. I really appreciate your support, both of you. I appreciate you having me on this podcast. They can pick up the book on Amazon right now, just Google it, “Fill the Dam Thing Up.” The book will show up right away. And then I've just caught the book on audio, and Isaac, the sound engineer is sitting right here and he is editing away. So it will show up on Audible in the very near future. And then I ultimately plan to do an e-book as well. But you learn on this author journey, and one of the things I've learned is there's some different formatting you have to do for e-book. So I'll come back with that, but I plan to have it on all three channels available to people that like to read in different formats.

Michelle Kane (24:37):

Fantastic, fantastic. So we thank you so much. And where else can we find you online? LinkedIn, I assume, or

Mary Ellen "Mel" Miller, APR (24:45):

Oh yes. I love LinkedIn and I think that's the perfect social media platform for what I do because it's not just the PR pros, but it's also the project managers who work with the PR pros who are out on LinkedIn. So that's a great one. I'm Marketing Mel everywhere, “Marketing” and then M-e-l, so my nickname as was mentioned earlier. So just feel free to connect with me. Twitter, you name it, I'm out there. So look forward to connecting.

Michelle Kane (25:10):

We are so grateful that you took your time to spend with us today, and we hope everyone out there pre-orders the book and please do hook up with Mel on LinkedIn, make sure you follow her successes with this wonderful book that we can all learn so much from. That's what I love about this profession. We learn from each other and we thank you for listening today to our audience. If you enjoyed this episode, we invite you to share it around and I mean what's not to enjoy with this episode. And until next time, thanks for listening to That Solo Life.