904 Holly Conti and Caitlin Copple:

Melinda Wittstock:

Coming up on Wings of Inspired Business:

Holly Conti:

A good pitch that is stronger than your relationship. We do have a lot of strong relationships with reporters, we really rely on having good, strong pitches, and that’s what gets you further.

Caitlin Copple:

One of the first things we do is pull a media hot list of all of the journalists who are covering their industry and offer a soft pitch where we just say, hey, you know, love your coverage on this. This saw that you have been writing about XYZ topic. We have a new client whose expertise is also XYZ they can speak about.

Melinda Wittstock:

When it comes to getting the word out about your business and the solutions it offers, there’s nothing that beats earned media for its validation and help driving awareness. Holly Conti and Caitlin Copple are the co-owners of Full Swing PR, where they’ve mastered the art of “soft pitching” journalists. Today we talk about the PR secrets you can master to help grow your business.

Melinda Wittstock:

Hi, I’m Melinda Wittstock and welcome to Wings of Inspired Business, where we share the inspiring entrepreneurial journeys, epiphanies, and practical advice from successful female founders … so you have everything you need at your fingertips to build the business and life of your dreams. I’m all about paying it forward as a five-time serial entrepreneur, so I started this podcast to catalyze an ecosystem where women entrepreneurs mentor, promote, buy from, and invest in each other. Because together we’re stronger, and we all soar higher when we fly together and lift as we climb.

Melinda Wittstock:

Today we meet two inspiring entrepreneurs from the world of public relations who share their secrets about how to land coveted earned media to grow your brand and business. Holly Conti and Caitlin Copple have built Full Swing PR into a fast-growing 7-figure agency helping underrecognized leaders positively impact the world as entrepreneurs, authors, speakers and political candidates. Caitlin founded Full Swing and brought Holly in as Head of Digital Marketing, and together they’ve got their clients featured in Fast Company, Inc. Forbes, New York Times, Washington Post, Cosmopolitan, PopSugar, CNN, and many others. They’ve also helped clients launch multi-six-figure courses and memberships, earn six-figure book deals, 10x their email lists, and 100x their social following. So, we’re going to learn all their secrets today.

Melinda Wittstock:

Holly and Caitlin will be here in a moment, and first: Are you on BlueSky yet? If you’ve been under the covers and haven’t heard of it, I’m inviting you to join me on this newish social media app where you build your own algorithm… that’s right, no Tech Bro DOGE overlord force feeding you content, no toxicity, no trolls. For the first time in a long time, I can say I’m making genuine connections and having enjoyable informative conversations.  You can catch me there @melindawittstock.bsky.social. On BlueSky, I’m building a feed of female founders and investors and I’d love to include you!

Melinda Wittstock:

It can be hard to find signal in all the noisy cacophony of our attention economy. People are overwhelmed and exhausted by the infobesity, that’s right, all those empty information calories. So, it can be even more challenging for your brand or business to stand out.

Melinda Wittstock:

Being authentic, listening to your customers, interacting genuinely to solve real problems for real people is the obvious way forward, so how can you leverage PR to build awareness and validated credibility? Today Holly Conti and Caitlin Copple share their PR secrets to help you drive coveted earned media – from how to build relationships with relevant journalists to the art of the “soft pitch”. We also get into how best to leverage AI, plus what it takes to balance entrepreneurship with motherhood and to grow your business while staying true to your values.

Melinda Wittstock:

Let’s put on our wings with the inspiring Holly Conti and Caitlin Copple of Full Swing PR and be sure to download the podcast app Podopolo so we can keep the conversation going after the episode.

[INTERVIEW]

Melinda Wittstock:

Caitlin and Holly, welcome to Wings.

Caitlin Copple:

Thanks so much for having us.

Holly Conti:

Yeah, we’re excited to be here.

Melinda Wittstock:

Well, Caitlin, I’m going to start with you because you founded Full Swing Public Relations, and in a few short years, you’ve grown it. What was the entrepreneurial spark that made you say, you know what, I’m going to go do this and build my own business.

Caitlin Copple:

I think part of it was really about being not the youngest person in the room anymore. I was 35. I had a 2-year-old. I had had experience working for men, and I was just kind of over it. I was like, I think I know what I’m doing at this point. I’ve worked as a journalist, I worked in communications, and I think I want to just try doing this on my own so that I can be in charge of my time and spend more time with my kid. And if I could just make my old salary, things will be good to go.

Caitlin Copple:

I really started it out thinking that I would be a solopreneur and not necessarily scale a business. But that started to change after making my old salary back in about five months.

Melinda Wittstock:

Ah, so you make your own salary back in five months, and then you realize, oh, my goodness, I can’t do all this on my own. And you brought in Holly at that point, right?

Caitlin Copple:

Yeah. Holly had been involved as my friend from the beginning. She’d had a lot more traditional agency experience than I had had. I had worked on the communication side of political consulting as well as in foundations and nonprofits. I’d really only worked with Holly. We met at an agency that was actually a B corporation and served a lot of social impact businesses in the past. But Holly had just done so much on the account side. Her experience was really helpful in terms of positioning my own brand and picking out the log and photos and getting the website ready and all of those things. So, she was a tremendous resource and friend from the beginning.

Caitlin Copple:

And she became the first employee in February 2020, right before the world totally changed. We were actually at a conference in Palm Springs, speaking at ALTS Summit, and we flew back, and the lockdowns began. It was a pretty scary time to be, you know, just starting to think about scaling a business. But thanks to PPP and I think, you know, the relationship that we have with each, we were able to just kind of keep our heads down and keep going. And I think one blessing of it all was that, you know, no one cared anymore if their publicist was in New York or LA. And so, the fact that we lived in Boise, Idaho didn’t matter, especially as we started to get those top tier results for our clients. I remember at one point in, during the height of the pandemic, we got clients in Fast company, Forbes and TechCrunch in the span of two weeks.

Caitlin Copple:

And that was kind of a mic drop moment where it’s like, we’ve got this, we’re going to do it.

Melinda Wittstock:

Amazing. And so, Holly, what made you think, okay, I’m just going to put all my eggs into the startup basket here?

Holly Conti:

Yeah, well, it wasn’t that easy of a jump for me. She had a two-year-old at the time and I had just given birth to my daughter. My daughter was a couple months old, I think, actually when Caitlin founded Full Swing, I was still pregnant. And it was around, I think that was in February of 2019. And then in September, I was ready to leave the agency that I was at. I had had my daughter; I had been working with her and I just wanted a more aligned working environment. And Caitlin was on the side, like, come here, come here, we can do this.

Holly Conti:

But I, you know, I had my young family to consider and there was at the time, no benefits at Full Swing. It was still a very young company. Caitlin was doing an amazing job. It was still so new and uncertain and unknown. And so, I said no to her and went and worked for a different company. That experience was the most toxic career I’ve ever. The most toxic experience I’d ever had.

Holly Conti:

And at that point, I was fed up enough with places that were unaligned that I was ready to kind of jump off the cliff, if you will, and trust. Bet on Caitlyn, bet on myself. I always knew that we had a really great working relationship because in our agency previously, we just worked really well together. We had really complementary strengths. And so, I said, okay, let’s do this. And so it was that big jump off the cliff moment in February and then another jump off the cliff moment when we kept going in March of 2020. And it’s really, I think, a huge exercise in trusting yourself and uncertainty being not bad. Like, just because you’re uncertain, just because it’s unknown, there’s really a lot of magic in that.

Melinda Wittstock:

So, there you are, you’re both new moms and with a new business. And there’s a lot of flexibility that comes from having your own business in terms of setting your own schedule and all of that. You had the lockdown going, so you didn’t really have to travel or anything like that, right?

Melinda Wittstock:

There’s a lot of advantages. A lot of women, including myself, launch businesses with like an infant. Like in my case, my daughter was six weeks old during the launch of my first company. So, like, I know a little bit about that and what that’s like. Was entrepreneurship really the right thing to be doing? Like, how do you feel about that now? I mean, had you both been in a corporate environment, would it been, would it have been harder, do you think, than it was bouncing. The craziness of entrepreneurship in the early stage with having kids.

Caitlin Copple:

This is Caitlin. I’m happy to start with this one. I think that it depends on the corporate environment. Certainly, the friends that I have had kids in that environment, it really depends. It depends on the boss; it depends on the parental leave policy. The Gates foundation has like a year of parental leave because they’re trying to attract international talent. But most places, you know, six to eight weeks is kind of the norm.

Caitlin Copple:

And I think it really depends on the family, the kid and the pregnancy and you know, how people are feeling. For me personally it was a great choice. I think as the mom of a, of a boy, I think it’s pretty awesome that he gets to watch me grow this company. He was so excited when we hit that million-dollar mark less than four years into the business because he’d heard us talk so much about how only 2% of women owned businesses ever hit that 7-figure revenue mark. So, I think it’s a good example to set for a young little white boy in Idaho that his mom can do big things. And I think for Holly’s daughter too, it’s just been cool to hear them talk. Even Tali, my son, asked me the other day if he could be our intern someday.

Melinda Wittstock:

You raise a really good point. I mean, that was my experience with my kids. My kids are much older now, you know, 21 and 17. They’ve seen what it’s like through five businesses now.

Caitlin Copple:

Amazing.

Melinda Wittstock:

I remember when my daughter was 10 years old, and she had me come speak at her Montessori class, and she took me aside, like, before I talked, and she said, mom, you’ve got to make sure that you tell them the truth. And I said, Sydney, what do you mean? And she did this arm movement, like, like the hockey stick, you know, for, like, tech founders raising money and their numbers, and their projections are like, wildly, you know, high. Because we all believe that, we can do, like, amazing things. She said, I want you to tell the truth. And she did this kind of wavy movement with her arm, like, indicating kind of all the ups and downs, you know, along the way. But the thing is, your kids see you doing hard things and resilience and the confidence to just go do this, and it’s an amazing lesson for them. So, the kids of entrepreneurs just have a totally different take on the world.

Holly Conti:

This is Holly here. Was it the right thing for us to do? I think the right thing is when you’re lit up. And Caitlin and I were both so lit up in the first couple of years of our business. We still are, of course, but now we. We know, like, this is our business, and we know that we’re doing it. In the beginning, we were so lit up of problem solving and trying to build this thing, and what can’t be good about that? Watching your parent be really actively engaged in building something. And it made.

Holly Conti:

I think it made me a better parent because I was really intentional with how I was choosing my time, and I was either going to be with my daughter or I was going to be building something with my part that I really believed in.

Melinda Wittstock:

Amazing. So, you’ve hit that, seven figure…

Holly Conti:

Yeah, five years and three years having the annual seven figure annually.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, that’s got to feel good. So, tell me a little bit about your business and your clients. Who are. Who are most of your clients? Who do you do this for?

Caitlin Copple:

Sure. This is Caitlin. I’m happy to start with this one. We mostly work with businesses that are serving other businesses. So professional services companies that are about 2 to 3 million annually, trying to scale to 10 million and don’t really necessarily like marketing or know a lot about marketing. We provide done for you PR and content marketing services so that we really can help small business owners get into their full sales funnel. So, while PR can’t solve your sales problem, I think between Holly and me and the experiences that we’ve had, we really understand like if you have an awareness problem, you might also have an engagement and conversion problem. And how can we make sure that we are getting as many eyeballs on your brand as possible and then helping you navigate that customer journey so that you can nurture those relationships and ultimately sell to the folks that you’re getting in front of through a press article or a podcast, that sort of thing.

Caitlin Copple:

It’s been really fun to figure out like who is our person or our ideal business that we serve. We started out serving women owned businesses. We’ve since broadened that to include really all under recognized leaders. So BIPOC, LGBTQ plus and women-owned businesses tend to be who comes to find us for PR help.

Melinda Wittstock:

So, take me back to that week where you got TechCrunch…

Caitlin Copple:

…Forbes and Fast Company.

Holly Conti:

Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:

So that’s like a big deal. So how did you pull that off?

Caitlin Copple:

Well, part of it was, I think, helping companies figure out how to be the news and not just beg for coverage. So much of what I see when, you know, we’re in a discovery call with a potential client or you know, even just in circles of friends who are entrepreneurs talking about, well, we can’t figure out why this journalist doesn’t want to cover us. I think so often business owners pitch themselves as though they’re asking for a favor as opposed to really getting obsessed with what is the problem that this journalist or this editor needs to solve and how can I position my expertise or my business as the solution to that problem so that really I’m delivering great content for this audience and it really becomes less about you, less personal, and more about, you know, similar to how you might think about your customer or your client base. How can you help solve the awareness problem of like a TechCrunch audience or a fast company audience? How can you put a fresh spin on something or offer some unique expertise or just comment on what’s happening in the news anyway? Like, so often the news cycle is happening regardless, and if you’re just paying attention to that, you can find ways to insert yourself into the conversation in a really meaningful way.

Melinda Wittstock:

So, what were the companies that you were representing? How. Take me through specifically how they address the news.

Caitlin Copple:

So, in this case, the client was a company called My Village that helped women start in-home childcare programs and during Covid you’ll recall, a lot of childcare centers were closing. And so this was really an opportunity for this venture-backed, women-led, parent-led company to scale and help folks make this, you know, this national kind of pivot from the daycare center to having more of those home-based options that allowed people to form that Covid bubble or to, you know, be with a podcast of like-minded parents and families so that they could continue to have childcare during those, that worst kind of year of the pandemic.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, so there’s a bit of luck in that timing.

Caitlin Copple:

Totally.

Melinda Wittstock:

You know, because every now and again there’s just some sort of opportunistic thing, right?

Caitlin Copple:

There is and there isn’t because I think a lot of folks in that, in, during that time were almost paralyzed with fear because no one wants to lean into something kind of horrendous that might be happening, such as a global pandemic. But I think in this case I was able to work with the CEO and the C Suite team to help them see that, hey, this is actually a tremendous opportunity because we could already start to see that the national news cycle was moving to talk about childcare was already bad in this country and now we have this pandemic. What are parents doing? What are businesses doing? And now we have My Village as a great solution to all of that.

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Melinda Wittstock:

And we’re back with Holly Conti and Caitlin Copple of Full Swing PR.

[INTERVIEW CONTINUES]

Holly Conti:

I think that also speaks to how important it is to have a long-standing relationship with a partner. If you’re interested in doing pr, you can’t just hire someone. Right. When you see a news opportunity, you have to have an established relationship with a publicist who you really trust, who’s monitoring the news for you, who can, who can set you up properly when those opportunities come into play. Because had the pandemic hit and for example, for this example, my village had like wanted to get PR help then Caitlyn would have had to do a bunch of time of like getting to know that brand and onboarding onto that client. At this point she was already teed up with them, knew all of the ins and outs of their business and how to insert them into the news in a way that was meaningful to their business and also meaningful to the reporter.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right. So, what is the ramp time like? Say a new client comes to you and it’s a good fit and how long does it take for you to really do that deep dive and onboarding process to the point where you’re really ready to start putting them out there?

Holly Conti:

Well, we always Say that we build the plane while we fly it. So, when we sign a client, we’ll start looking for opportunities for them right away. So, and, and sometimes it’ll happen, sometimes we’ll get a client, a press clip in the first couple of weeks of work together. Because we’re always, you know, part of having someone like us on board is that we’re constantly monitoring the news and finding opportunities for our clients. And even for people who aren’t our clients, Caitlin often sends people opportunities that she sees out there who aren’t paying us yet. And, but in that first month of work together, what we do is we spend a lot of time getting to know not only our client, but who our client is trying to reach with their press. Who are they trying to influence, who is their target audience and where are they spending their time? And we really did dig into that. We build an earned media plan that guides our work with our clients.

Holly Conti:

Usually takes us about four weeks to build that plan. And in that, usually our clients are already seeing some press clips. And then at the end of our first four weeks of work together, then we have a 12-month plan that’s guiding us for the rest of our work because we work with most of our clients on an annual basis. But what we really like to do with our clients in the first couple of weeks of working with them is identify the universe in which they want to show shine. We have big press wins under our belt. You know, all the top tier media our clients have been on. And yet what we have found to be even stronger sometimes is those really niche publications. We have a client who knows that when they get in a really niche, when they get on a really niche podcast that’s full of listeners of their target audience, their pipeline is filled for 12 months versus when they get, you know, a press clip in a top tier media outlet that more that doesn’t necessarily fill their pipeline, but what that does is build their credibility.

Holly Conti:

Because now they can say, I’ve been on, you know, Forbes or Fast Company, and so those big press clips we see as building credibility, and then we really spend our time getting into the niche, where is it, where is the universe that our clients want to shine in? What’s going to be most impactful to their business’s bottom line and we’re going to try to find and try to get them in those places.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right? So, this is interesting because this gets into the difference between PR and marketing. And how do you feel about that? How do you navigate that difference? Because if you think of PR as sort of like that awareness and credibility and you think of marketing as okay, a really much more data driven, how is this converting right into customer? So how do you both, both walk that path? Start with you first, Caitlin.

Caitlin Copple:

Yeah, I think, you know, one of the reasons that folks can sometimes feel burned by a PR agency is because they don’t necessarily work with a publicist who understands that full relationship to every aspect of the sales funnel. You can’t just, you know, get on even a major, you know, outlet like Good Morning America or something and expect that to solve any fundamental sales problem that you might have. Like say that directs a lot of traffic to your website. Can your website even handle that traffic? If you’re a small business, is it going to end up crashing because of that business? Is it clear who you’re selling to and what problem you solve and how to actually buy from you or get a discovery call in the books? When you go to a website there, are you doing anything, you know, after that clip airs on Good Morning America to make sure that you are nurturing the relationship with all those people who heard about you once but are probably going to forget about you in a week. Just the nature of the, the world that we live in and how fast paced it is. Unless there’s a clear way to get them to follow you on social and that you’re communicating with them by email and that you’re really figuring out a way to create an echo chamber around your target client so that they can actually buy from you.

Melinda Wittstock:

It’s interesting because it’s the awareness that you have as a company going into this space. If you don’t really know the space very well, you can have misplaced expectations, right? And so how do you manage the expectations of your clients? Because in your sort of business you can have a great client, or you can have a really difficult client.

Caitlin Copple:

Yes. And how you kick off that relationship is key. Holly, I don’t know if you want to jump in here, but I think part of what we do is set KPIs and goals and we also measure the success of all of the clients that we’ve had up until this point. 80% of our clients being multiyear clients. So, we have a lot of really rich data that I think can help give folks a sense of what to expect.

Holly Conti:

Yeah, we set the expectation that our clients generally see one to two press clips per month. But we also tell our clients that earned media is earned for a reason. And we are never going to guarantee placements, or we can never say for sure, sure that they’re going to get a specific win. And we do that for ethical reasons. Like, we have worked with agencies in the past who do guarantee placements. And what we found is that when that happens, because they’re working to fill their guarantee, they’re going after any placement that they can get versus those quality placements that might be fewer and far between, but are going to be again, more impactful to the businesses, bottom line, because that’s ultimately our goal. So, we always set that expectation that we’re going to work, work really hard on your behalf to earn the media that’s going to make a difference in your business because that’s ultimately why you’re doing this tactic. But also, press is a long game.

Holly Conti:

Just in marketing in general is a long game. I think that can be hard for entrepreneurs to hear that because our resources and our time are limited and when we are spending money on something, we want a return on investment. But Caitlin and I have many case studies of our clients who have invested in the long term. And it’s really the long term that brings the most results. For example, we have a client who’s been working with us for 29, since 2019, so five years now. And we have gotten a lot of clips for them throughout the year. We’ve grown with them. They were a small company.

Holly Conti:

We’ve grown alongside of them, and it’s been a great relationship. They had a regional and local strategy for the first couple of years that we worked together, meaning that they were only doing business in a certain number of areas. And so, they wanted press in those areas, not national. Now that they’re further into their business and growing into other areas, they started to want national attention. And what’s interesting is that because of all of the local and regional work that we had done for the couple of years previously, they actually like they have national press coming to them now because when national press are looking for a new source in their area, they’re looking at the local and regional media clips and finding the thought leaders that are showing up in those spaces, spaces and inviting them onto their national platforms. And so really that the long term, the long-term study is so important, that long term approach is so important. We try to talk to our clients about that. Even the beginning right now, wait, hold on a minute.

Melinda Wittstock:

So, okay, so Caitlin, you mentioned that you started life as a journalist. Is that right? What was your focus as a journalist? Where did you work?

Caitlin Copple:

Yes, yeah, Holly did as well, actually. So, I think that’s something that we. We both bring to the table. I hold a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Montana. Prior to that, I had worked as a freelancer, worked for the state newspaper covering the legislature here in my hometown of Boise, Idaho, and had worked for a number of just alt weeklies, as well as magazines like Sun Valley Magazine, Idaho Magazine, that sort of thing. I also did a fellowship in weekly journalism of under recognized communities, mostly writing about the queer community out of Chicago with Northwestern University. So, around the time I was working as a journalist, I also came out as a queer person.

Caitlin Copple:

And I think that kind of made me more political than I had been up to that point. And I really struggled with notions of kind of objectivity and was more interested in how I might use journalism and my writing skills to change the world for the better and to make it a more equitable place for folks like me and other communities that have been marginalized.

Melinda Wittstock:

So, I speak as a recovering journalist myself. I was the London Times media correspondent for a few years, a business correspondent before that, and a columnist on the paper. And I’m curious how the impact of being a journalist, what impact that had on not just your expertise in PR and whatnot, but, like, as an entrepreneur, where did it help your entrepreneurship and where did it maybe hinder it?

Caitlin Copple:

Yeah. So, Caitlin, again here. I think part of what I love about journalists is that most of them have deeply held beliefs about the promise of this country and of democracy. And I think that’s so needed, especially right now, as we’re looking, you know, down the barrel at a potential another Trump administration. But I think journalists, they have good hearts, and they really are trying to make the world better. They’re certainly doing it through the conventions and the ethics of the profession, which is so important. But I think, you know, some publicists that maybe have not had the experience of actually working in the field are quick to almost. I think they sometimes struggle to play devil’s advocate for their clients in a way that ultimately benefits the client.

Caitlin Copple:

And they don’t understand those conventions of the profession. They don’t understand how stories get assigned or, you know, what are news values and what are folks looking for. So, I think having a deep understanding of how journalists work, how reporters make decisions how editors make decisions, even on, you know, the editorial pages as well. Just all of that is really important. And having a sense of it can only benefit clients that come to us for PR.

Melinda Wittstock:

Well said. I remember back in my journalist days when, you know, when you encountered bad PR people, like the sort of people who call you on deadline to invite you to a press conference three weeks from now. Like I literally have a thousand words to write for the front page of the Times in like 20 minutes. It’s like, why are you calling me right now?

Melinda Wittstock:

And then there are others, PR people that were just really helpful, like just hugely helpful. And. And because they actually understood the context of what you were up against as a journalist.

Holly Conti:

And so that’s how you get what you want as a publicist, is by being helpful and being the partners to the journalists.

Melinda Wittstock:

Exactly. And so, tell me about all your relationships. You must spend a lot of time, both of you, cultivating relationships with, you know, journalists, producers, you know, all the folks. Tell me about that process. How much of your day is that?

Holly Conti:

Holly here, that it’s actually a good pitch that is stronger than your relationship. So, though we do have a lot of strong relationships with reporters, we really rely on having good, strong pitches, and we actually think that that’s what gets you further. That being said, we with our clients identify the top reporters that we think that are kind of their dream outlets or their dream reporters who they want to do a story on them. And what we do is we monitor those reporters, we monitor those outlets, and then we, like, we’ll follow them on Twitter or LinkedIn, we’ll read their articles, and maybe we’ll chime in with a comment. We will send them, you know, an A follow up, maybe. Caitlin, you want to talk about the soft pitch strategy that we do to kind of nurture those relationships?

Caitlin Copple:

Yeah. So often if you just are, you know, have a new client, for example, one of the first things we do is pull kind of a, what we call a media hot list of all of the journalists who are covering their industry or folks like them or, you know, the typical topics that this new client has expertise in and is ready to speak about. And what we’ll do in those scenarios is just kind of offer a soft pitch where we just say, hey, you know, love your coverage on this. This saw that you have been writing about XYZ topic. We have a new client whose expertise is also XYZ they can speak about. And then I usually list off like three kind of newsworthy topics based on what I’m seeing in the coverage and say, hope you’ll reach out if this is ever of interest. And then after that, I might wait three weeks or even four weeks and come back with a stronger pitch that’s like, hey, I heard you writing about the impact of COVID on small businesses. This epidemic that is working with us has this unique expertise or take on what’s happening. Would you like to set up an interview kind of thing?

Melinda Wittstock:

So, is there any domain area of expertise? I mean, you did say you’re working kind of like more in the B2B Professional Services, that kind of thing. Are there any particular industries that you specialize in?

Caitlin Copple:

Yeah, we have several law firm clients in different. Different fields of law, as well as different markets. We also have worked with folks in the financial services sector. We’ve worked with executive coaches, leadership and development training experts.

Caitlin Copple:

Holly Healthcare is another big one. One of our longest clients is actually the University of Washington School of Medicine, their WMI medical school partnership. In some of the rural states that don’t have a brick and mortar medical.

Melinda Wittstock:

So, where your agency is right now and all the things that you’re doing for your clients and whatnot, where are you thinking of expanding or where do you see the growth of your business?

Caitlin Copple:

Yeah, our goal is to take this agency to at least 5 million in annual revenue. That’s kind of the size and scale when I think it brings us a lot more optionality in terms of, you know, being business owners. Part of the desire, I think, to take the risk of creating your own business and scaling that business is to give yourself more freedom in your life and to have more choices. We’ve worked really hard these past five years, and I don’t think we regret anything about it. But also, you know, the reality is I don’t know that we want to work quite that hard until we’re 65. So, we’re going to continue to grow the team, right? Size the team, you know, perfect our systems of delivering really excellent results from our clients and then see, you know, see what our options are once we hit that number.

Holly Conti:

We always made the really conscious choice to hire team members early on. We hired people, I think much earlier than some of our other entrepreneur friends had. But now we’re in a really exciting place where we’re not just hiring people, we’re actually bringing on some more senior leadership. And that is our first step at kind of giving Caitlin and I the space to continue to vision the business, but really be able to work on the business and have the senior leaders now serving the clients. So, we’re not in that day to day.

Melinda Wittstock:

I have to ask this question as the elephant in the room for anybody who’s involved in media or PR, advertising, marketing, the whole thing, how is AI impacting your business?

Caitlin Copple:

This is Caitlin, the writer speaking here, I feel like AI does not replace humans. It can definitely save you some time, especially if you’re researching a particular topic. But I don’t think AI is capable of creating a strong brand voice or a tone in the way that an actual human who, you know, is a critical thinker can sometimes do. I definitely use AI for research purposes sometimes and to try to get a sense of, like, how would ChatGPT put this thing together that I want to do, but I would never, you know, verbatim lift something from there or, you know, mistake AI’s capability to actually write a pitch. I feel like I can tell when I get, you know, spam emails that are clearly generated by AI based on, you know, people having access to my LinkedIn and therefore my email address sort of thing. I think it can be really annoying. I think it’s going to. In terms of the future of our democracy, we really need to make sure that we’re training kids and adults and voters to understand how to spot AI, especially when it comes to, like, deep fake, you know, voice content or video content so that it can’t be used to manipulate the public.

Melinda Wittstock:

Oh, my goodness, this is such a huge problem, like just with social media, even before AI came on the scene, I mean, we’ve already seen this explosion of disinformation and misinformation, mal information, and now it’s just like pouring gasoline on the fire. We see the results of that for our democracy. When I put my journalist hat on, I mean, journalists are aspiring to truth, right? And yet just the way the media has gone, it’s so hard for that truth to even make it through. And that’s interesting also in a business context, for, excuse me, losing my voice for a business really trying to be heard in all the noise or just, you know, up against what’s the truth of that business, up against competitors and whatnot. So how are you advising your clients to navigate all that?

Holly Conti:

I think when it comes to AI, it’s not going to be AI that takes our jobs. It’s going to be people who understand how to use AI. And so, what we’re counseling our clients on is let’s understand how people in your industry are using AI and let’s make sure that you know how to do that. Maybe it’ll help you deliver client services better. Maybe you’ll learn something that we can then pitch to the media that you can teach other people in your industry about. I think it’s about partnering with AI, AI in a smart way, but allowing the human focus, human centered approach always to be, be the thing that is front facing and forward driving everything forward.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, no, it’s really true. I mean, one thing I’ve noticed that in the podcasting space and what we do at Podopolo is AI is very, very powerful for us in terms of insights. Whether it’s topical, insights into, gosh, like our AI goes into hundreds of millions of episodes in real time and over time to understand what’s being talked about on podcast, we can understand the context and, and whatnot that drives a whole bunch of different things. Like, where’s the ideal pod? What’s the ideal podcast for your ad? What’s the ideal placement of that ad? What’s an indication of what kind of creative would resonate?

Caitlin Copple:

Right.

Melinda Wittstock:

So, the insights part of it and correlating that with audience insights, for instance, incredibly powerful. So, I guess you put that in the research category, maybe be, but the insights and there are the things that you can like, you know, automate, where it just kind of makes a process ease, you know, better. But on the generative side of what we do, it’s interesting because the generative content, you can take a podcast interview like this one, and our technology can, you know, create the show notes, create social posts, do all these things, you know, generate clips, do all the things. Yeah, and, but, and I will look at a result of that. And ours is proprietary, ours is really good. But even though it’s really good, does it really, does it really Know the voice of the person speaking. And increasingly it does like their kind of style because it’s learning from them. It’s learning that style. Or that tone or whatever. But the one thing it can’t do, because it’s all based on historical data, like what just happened, it can’t predict the future or it can’t come up with something necessarily like, like you were saying, like the, like a new way, an empathetic or intuitive way to connect or like an emotional connection or like any of those things. I’m curious your thoughts on all of that.

Caitlin Copple:

Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:

Tool can assist us, but can’t, I agree, can’t replace us.

Holly Conti:

I started as a producer in television and as then an account manager for creative agency. And what I found for people creating content is that starting from scratch can be really hard. Starting with a blank page, starting with nothing. Sometimes that space of just getting something on paper can take the longest. And so, what I see, AI is, is it offers you a starting point so that you’re not starting with a blank page. And then you can infuse your humanness, your ‘empatheticness’, your forward thinking into what’s been created. And I think it can help, can reduce the timeline of how long something will take because you’re not creating it from.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, that’s so true. I, you know, as a journalist, or if you’re writing copy or you’re writing some sort of news release or whatever, that blank page thing, you know, can be, can be hard. I mean, for me, I’m just so used to writing. I’ve been writing all my life, so for me, it’s not hard.

Holly Conti:

But I think you and Caitlin are in the minority there. She whips something up like in five minutes. I don’t know how she does it.

Melinda Wittstock:

It’s just, it’s just, I’ve just noticed that people notice that about me. Like my team is like, how did you write that email? Or how did you write that proposal? In like, like a nanosecond? Like, wait, what?

Caitlin Copple:

Yeah, working as a journalist, it definitely makes you, I think, a quick writer because you’re always writing on deadline as a journalist and also you’re used to having your stuff kind of chopped up and criticized. So, you develop a pretty thick skin, which can be helpful in life.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, that’s, that’s true. And in my case, on the Times, you know, just imagine for a moment this is like a really competitive news market. So back in the 90s, you had 12 other national daily papers that you were competing against, okay? And heaven forbid that like another reporter on like a competitive paper had a story you didn’t. So, you’re like used to being woken up at like midnight, stand up the story for the next edition or like, or knock it down or whatever. But heaven help you, even if you had like a couple of like you had 20 minutes to write something, or maybe you were even phoning it in like from a pay phone and you had a typo, you know, or anything wrong. Just the pressure of that, I just look back now and I think, God, that really prepared me for entrepreneurship because every day was different and like just being, performing on that kind of knife edge of pressure and getting good at it and nothing really much phases me anymore, I think, I don’t know, you know, was that kind of like. Because that, that experience is certainly interesting, you know, so let’s see, where am I going from here? We bounced around all sorts of things. It’s Friday.

Holly Conti:

I guess.

Caitlin Copple:

The only other thing I might add, Melinda, about the AI conversation is one thing that concerns me a lot about what’s happening with AI is that so much of it is built by, you know, white men. And I think we run the risk of further ostracizing and excluding folks who are not white men in the conversation. As we’re teaching, you know, AI bots to learn and to think right. We want to make sure that that innovation and that diversity is still there.

Melinda Wittstock:

Thank you so much for saying that. Because as a woman innovating in AI myself, I think, and there are women in this space, but we’re kind of like the hidden figures, you know, of it, like the movie, right? And the large language models. However, that part of it is controlled by big tech. I mean, basically, basically it’s Google, it’s Amazon, it’s Microsoft, OpenAI such, but even the major companies, those three companies have invested two thirds of the money in all AI startups. And the same, I’m really not kidding, the same six people, maybe eight now sit on the boards of all of the company. And they’re all guys. They’re all guys in Silicon Valley and India and places like that too, but like mostly in Silicon Valley. And our voices are not really being heard or incorporated and the safety standards are negligible.

Melinda Wittstock:

So, I am equally concerned about this. And I think women really need to be involved in this space. And really. And not just women, but minorities, but different countries like different languages, all of it, right? It’s a big problem.

Holly Conti:

You know, we’re trying to change systems, so we can’t, we can’t bring old systems into new technology.

Caitlin Copple:

Right.

Holly Conti:

We have to be bringing new approaches, new systems, and the new technology. It’s innovation in all ways. We can’t be relying on anything.

Melinda Wittstock:

I 100% agree with you. And I think just even in the ways that we’re innovating; we see things like blockchain being really important to this conversation because you can trust track everything from the way the content was generated, and which part was AI and which part was human or who owns what piece of the content. All that kind of stuff is one of the areas in which we’re innovating because we think blockchain part of the equation of at least having a transparent digital record of all of these things. It’s super important. Are any of your clients AI companies or how are they using AI?

Caitlin Copple:

I would say that many of our clients are using AI in the same way that, you know, our, our company is dabbling in it as well. But we don’t have any AI companies in that. Like that is what they’re producing or that’s what they’re working on. We have had a couple of software for clients that probably maybe use it more than even I’m aware of as their PR person, because we’re trying to make sure that people really understand the policy implications. I’m thinking of one client in particular that’s in the edtech space. So again, they’re working a lot on expanding access to affordable childcare that’s also of really high quality. And so, their algorithmic matching of supply and demand, they partner with state agencies to kind of help make that happen. Because in this country, access.

Caitlin Copple:

Access to data around who needs childcare and how much childcare exists out there is really hard to come by. My guess is that they’re using it more than probably I’m even aware of.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, that, that ability at rapid speeds, especially with the increasingly quantum type computing power answers on that kind of stuff, like incredibly fast. It makes that whole Cambridge Analytica scandal like, I mean, and that, that was, that was something because it got really into deep analysis of people’s emotional kind of makeup and whatnot. I mean, scary stuff. So, like, like anything like AI, you hold up a knife and you look at the knife and you say, okay, this is a tool, it’s going to cut my steak. But it’s also a weapon. And AI is same thing.

Holly Conti:

And just like any weapon, any tool, you have to use it with caution. You have to be careful when, when using it.

Melinda Wittstock:

This is so, so true. As we wrap up, I just want to get your take on what makes a really good PR campaign because it’s so hard in our attention economy. How do you stand out in all the noise? What are the key things that any company has to keep in mind?

Caitlin Copple:

I would say, and this is Caitlin again, the first thing is to give yourself enough runway that you can be really thoughtful about it. And you also have some time to monitor the news cycle or for your agency to monitor the news cycle and really start to uncover those opportunities that will allow you to cut through the noise. I think often folks come to us because they feel like they have an audience problem, they want to reach more people. But then in talking with them, we find that perhaps they also have a positioning problem and that it’s not clear what they do or why they do it or why someone would care about what it is that they do. And so, our work on key messaging, brand positioning can help with all of that and allow them to have more effectiveness when they’re ready to actually start sending pitches out in order to get in front of more people.

Melinda Wittstock:

100%. Well, Caitlin and Holly, I want to make sure everyone knows how to, to find you. And it’s full swing pr and I believe that you have a one-page PR plan for everybody just to check out. And I’ll have that in the show notes. But what’s the best way to kind of connect with you? If you’re someone listening to this and think, oh, yeah, I’d really like to work with Caitlin and Holly. What’s the best way?

Caitlin Copple:

Absolutely. Go ahead, Holly. Sorry.

Holly Conti:

Yeah, absolutely. You said our website, Full Swing pr, dot backslash freebies actually will bring you to a page with a lot of free resources that you can download right away and get access to. That that’s a great place to start. On all of the social media channels, we are at Full Swing PR and then Caitlin and I are both on LinkedIn as well.

Melinda Wittstock:

Fantastic. Well, thank you so much for putting on your wings and flying with us today.

Caitlin Copple:

Thank you. We’re so happy to be in your orbit. And also, the film folks that listen to this show, it’s going to take all of us, I think, to change the world and women business owners are just the coolest. So, thanks.

Holly Conti:

Thank you, Melinda.

[INTERVIEW ENDS]

Melinda Wittstock:

Holly Conti and Caitlin Copple are the co-owners of Full Swing PR. Make sure you take advantage of their free offers – check out the show notes to get the details – and also inviting you to create and share your favorite moments with Podopolo’s clip feature, and feel free too to leave a comments so we can all take the conversation further.

Melinda Wittstock:

That’s it for today’s episode. Head on over to WingsPodcast.com – and subscribe to the show. When you subscribe, you’ll instantly get my special gift, the WINGS Success Formula. Women … Innovating … Networking … Growing …Scaling … IS the WINGS of Inspired Business Formula …for daily success in your business and life. Miss a Wings episode? We’ve got hundreds in the vault, all with actionable advice and epiphanies. Check them out at MelindaWittstock.com or wingspodcast.com. You can also catch me on LinkedIn or Instagram @MelindaAnneWittstock. We also love it when you share your feedback with a 5-star rating and review on Apple, Spotify or wherever else you listen, including Podopolo where you can interact with me and share your favorite clips.