Episodes

  • What Solo PR Pros Need to Know Now About the Specialization Economy

    What Solo PR Pros Need to Know Now About the Specialization Economy
    Jul 27 2026
    Episode Summary Michelle opens with the question a lot of solo PR pros have been quietly asking themselves: if I call myself a communications generalist on my website right now, am I costing myself money? Karen's answer is immediate — not 'am I?' but 'you already are.' What follows is a data-driven, practically grounded conversation about the specialization economy: the growing body of research across the freelance and independent consulting world in 2026 that shows generalists getting squeezed and specialists pulling away. Karen and Michelle aren't just reporting a trend — they're translating it specifically for PR and communications practitioners who've never had anyone apply this research to their work. The episode covers the bimodal income distribution hiding inside freelance averages, the vertical-horizontal framework for finding your niche, four common objections to specializing (with honest answers to each), a three-question filter for identifying your niche, and the metric-capturing habit that makes specialization pay off over time. This is a conversation for the solo practitioner who has 'I do everything' on their website tonight — and might be ready to change it. Episode Highlights [00:03] The Opening Question That Frames Everything: Michelle opens before the intro music with a direct question to Karen: if she calls herself a communications generalist on her website right now, is she costing herself money? Karen's answer: not 'am I?' but 'you already are.' The episode's premise is immediate and personal — and Karen and Michelle make clear they're talking to themselves too.[01:05] The Specialization Economy: What the Data Shows: Freelance and independent consulting data in 2026 is pointing in the same direction across multiple sources: generalists are getting squeezed and specialists are pulling away. The average US freelancer earning rate hides what Karen calls 'a canyon' — generalist content and writing on the low end, specialists in high-demand niches billing well over $100 an hour on the high end. Almost nobody is actually earning the average. The floor is dropping for generalized skills; the ceiling is rising for specialized ones. Karen's framing: the middle — 'I'm pretty good at a lot of things' — is where people get stuck. Note: some figures referenced in this episode are still working through the show's verification process; sourcing details will be linked in the resources section as they are confirmed.[04:13] Why Specialization Wins: The Practical Case, Not the Philosophical One: The argument for specializing isn't philosophical — it's structural. A generalist PR consultant competes with an enormous pool of other generalist PR consultants. Someone who specifically handles crisis communications for mid-size healthcare systems competes with a much smaller, more identifiable group. Smaller pool, higher rates, and — critically — the client doesn't have to explain their industry from scratch. That last point is underrated: starting a client engagement already fluent in their world, their vocabulary, and their stakeholders is worth real money. Karen also flags a related shift: companies are increasingly requiring proof of impact before hiring specialists, not just portfolios. That proof is much easier to produce when you've done the same kind of work for the same kind of client repeatedly.[06:40] The Vertical-Horizontal Framework: What Niching Actually Means in Practice: Karen and Michelle push back on the idea that niching just means picking an industry. The framework showing up across freelance research: pick a vertical (the industry — healthcare, legal, fintech, sustainability, professional services) and a horizontal (the service — media relations, crisis management, thought leadership, internal comms, funding round communications). Your niche is the intersection. Examples drawn from recent guests: Sharon Toerek does IP and marketing law for independent agencies. Kara Ryan came up through healthcare communications and built an advisor-led, AI-powered practice on top of that. Both dialed in the vertical and the horizontal. The practical test: once you say your niche out loud, it should stop sounding like a limitation and start sounding like a positioning statement.[09:06] The Filtering Benefit Nobody Talks About Enough: When you're specific, the wrong-fit inquiries mostly stop coming in. You stop getting the 'can you also just quickly help with our internal newsletter' request from an industry you don't want to be in. Positioning does some of your qualifying for you before the discovery call even happens. Karen and Michelle note this is deeply connected to scope creep — a topic worth its own episode.[10:02] Specialization Is an Income Stability Conversation, Not Just a Rate Conversation: Once you're known for a specific thing, you stop pitching one-off projects and start getting asked to stay. Broader freelance data shows a large majority of hiring managers plan ...
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    25 mins
  • The Hidden Messages for Solo PR Pros in the Muck Rack State of PR Report

    The Hidden Messages for Solo PR Pros in the Muck Rack State of PR Report
    Jul 20 2026
    Episode Summary Muck Rack's State of PR 2026 report surveyed 971 PR professionals. Only 18% were solos. The rest were mostly from agencies and in-house teams — which means that when the report says 66% of PR pros rate their stress above five out of ten, or that 55% worked more than 40 hours last week, those numbers were never really measuring a department of one. Karen and Michelle decided to build the solo column themselves. This episode takes three of the report's most significant findings and translates them through the solo lens: first, why the stress and workload data almost certainly understates what solos are experiencing; second, why the industry's move toward volume pitching at the exact moment journalists are demanding relevance is actually good news for solo practitioners who were never going to out-blast a team of account coordinators; and third, why the GEO ownership vacuum — 29% of organizations say no one owns it — is one of the clearest competitive opportunities solos have right now. Karen and Michelle also draw on Muck Rack's companion State of Journalism 2026 report throughout, giving the journalist perspective that makes the pitching data land harder. This is a data-driven, translation episode built for the practitioner the industry keeps forgetting to count. Episode Highlights [00:03] The Opening Question That Frames Everything: Karen opens without a greeting: 'Quick question before we even say hello. Did you read Muck Rack's new State of PR report and feel like it was describing someone else's job?' Michelle's answer: she pored through it, noticed only 18% of respondents were solos, and across every chart — stress, hours, pitching, GEO — there was no solo column. The episode's mission: build that column themselves.[02:17] The Report Was Not Built for You — and the Data Understates Your Load: Karen walks through the report's sample: 971 usable responses, 56% agencies, 18% solo. When the report says 66% rate their stress above five out of ten, or that 77% worked after hours at least once last week — those numbers come largely from people with a team absorbing some of the load: an account coordinator to pick up an email thread, an intern to build the coverage report, a colleague to cover a sick day. There is no chart in this report for running all of those roles simultaneously.[03:43] What Freelance and Creative Industry Research Fills In: Because Muck Rack didn't ask solos specifically, Karen and Michelle pull parallel research from broader freelance and creative industry studies. The finding: the majority of freelancers report burnout symptoms, and a notable share describe energy depletion even when logging fewer hours than a traditional employee. The theory is that when you're responsible for delivery, sales, admin, and income security simultaneously, the load doesn't show up as more hours — it shows up as more weight per hour. Michelle: 'Boy, isn't that the truth.'[05:53] Segment 2: Precision Over Volume — Why Solos Are Already Winning the Pitch Game: 49% of PR pros say they pitch more than 20 journalists per campaign. 24% pitch more than 50. Meanwhile, personalization is moving in the wrong direction: only 66% say they always or usually personalize pitches, down from 70% last year, and 73% of those who do personalize are only changing a few sentences. The trend line: pitch more people, customize less per person. And then the number that should stop everyone doing this cold.[06:56] 88% of Journalists Immediately Delete Irrelevant Pitches: Karen and Michelle pulled Muck Rack's companion State of Journalism 2026 report directly. 88% of journalists say they immediately delete a pitch that is irrelevant to their coverage — the single biggest reason pitches get trashed, ahead of being overly promotional at 71% and looking like a mass email at 50%. And 70% say the number one thing a pitch should demonstrate is clear relevance to their beat — ahead of interview access, data, and everything else. 43% say relevant pitches are seldom or never what they actually receive. A journalist quoted in the open-ended responses: 'Don't pitch widely, pitch selectively and then widen as needed.'[09:42] The Solo Reframe: Your Constraint Is Actually Your Strategy: Karen's line: you were never going to out-blast a team with a subscription database and three account coordinators. You cannot pitch 50 people with real personalization by yourself. But the data shows that is exactly the wrong strategy anyway. The industry is trading relevance for reach at the moment journalists are punishing that trade. What solos assumed was a disadvantage turns out to be pointing them at the right approach by default. It's not that you need a bigger list — you need a sharper one. 15 real relationships outperform 50 cold contacts.[11:53] The GEO Ownership Vacuum Is a Solo Opportunity: 73% of PR pros say GEO is at least somewhat important to their strategy. But 29% — the single largest group — say no...
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    18 mins
  • Why Senior PR Pros Should Focus on Development Not Decline

    Why Senior PR Pros Should Focus on Development Not Decline
    Jul 13 2026
    That Solo Life Episode 347: Why Senior PR Pros Should Focus on Development Not Decline Episode Summary Are you in the later stages of your Solo PR career? Today’s episode of That Solo Life is one of the most grounded, research-backed, and genuinely useful conversations the show has had about what it means to be a late-career practitioner in an AI-dominated landscape — and why the narrative telling experienced pros they're behind the curve is not only wrong, it's the exact opposite of what the evidence shows. Karen and Michelle walk through the real data on AI adoption, two peer-reviewed studies that directly challenge the 'experience is a liability' myth, a practical three-bucket framework for deciding what to ignore, what to adopt, and what to anchor, four mindset shifts for the final stretch, and three action items that can be done this week. The tone throughout is not inspirational poster energy. It's honest, warm, and built for practitioners who are genuinely tired and need a practical path forward, not another list of tools to chase. Episode Highlights [00:25] The Opening Sentence That Names What Everyone Is Feeling: Michelle opens with what she calls 'a statement a lot of our listeners have either said out loud or are saying to themselves': she's five years from wrapping up her career, and she just doesn't have it in her to learn one more new tool. Karen doesn't argue. She validates it — and then reframes it. The feeling isn't laziness or fear. It's the cumulative weight of four or five complete technology revolutions inside a single career.[01:59] The Real Weight of Experience: Four Technology Revolutions in One Career: Karen lists what experienced PR pros have already navigated in a single career: typewriters to desktop publishing, fax machines to email, print media to social, and now AI. The question she frames for the rest of the episode: the real question isn't 'can I learn this?' — you've already proven you can, repeatedly. The question is how much of this do you actually need to learn, and how do you protect your energy for what matters most.[03:16] The Data on the AI Usage Gap — and What It Actually Means: Karen cites National Bureau of Economic Research data: AI tool usage at work is about 34% for workers under 40, and about 17% for workers 50 and up. That gap is real. But the research also shows it's not about ability — it's about confidence and on-ramps. Nobody handed experienced practitioners a clear 'start here' door. The industry is selling urgency, not discernment. And discernment is exactly what experience builds.[04:41] Busting the Myth: Experience Is Not a Liability in an AI World: The myth Karen and Michelle want to kill: that going further along in your career means you're slower, behind, and less valuable in an AI world. The counter-argument is research-backed. As AI makes production work cheaper, what becomes scarce and valuable is judgment — knowing what's worth doing, what's true, and what will land with a reporter versus blow up in a client's face. Karen's line: you cannot prompt your way to 30 years of pattern recognition.[05:51] Two Studies That Prove Experience Is an Advantage, Not a Liability: Karen cites two unexpected findings. A University of Mannheim study of BMW plant workers found productivity actually increased with age, right up to retirement — because veterans knew which problems were expensive and headed them off before they occurred. A North Carolina State study of software developers found that older programmers knew a wider range of topics, answered questions better, and in some cases were more adept with newer systems. The researcher's theory: if you're fluent in old technology, you understand new technology better because you know what problem it's solving.[09:48] The Three-Bucket Framework: Ignore, Adopt, Anchor: The practical core of the episode. Ignore: the platform of the month (if it's durable, it'll still be there in a year), tool maximalism (one capable AI assistant covers the overwhelming majority of actual work), becoming a technologist (fluency, not engineering), and anything you're only doing out of fear. Adopt: baseline AI fluency using one tool for real tasks, and understanding how audiences are now finding information through AI rather than clicking through to websites. Anchor: the things you don't age out of — judgment, relationships, trust built over decades, storytelling, strategy, and ethics.[15:30] Anchor: The Things You Don't Age Out Of: Karen's framing for the anchor bucket: as the tools get cheaper, your judgment gets more valuable. This includes knowing what not to publish, when to tell a client to stay quiet, and how to catch the AI-generated thing that is confidently, completely wrong. Michelle: that last one is becoming a job all in itself. Karen's reframe for the whole framework: the new tools handle the first draft. You handle the final judgment. That's not a demotion. That's the senior seat. You've ...
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    24 mins
  • Why Independent PR Firms Are Outperforming Holding Companies Right Now

    Why Independent PR Firms Are Outperforming Holding Companies Right Now
    Jul 6 2026
    That Solo Life Episode 346: Why Independent PR Firms Are Outperforming Holding Companies Right Now Episode Summary It's the week after the Fourth of July, and Karen and Michelle are talking about a different kind of independence. It turns out that the future of PR looks a lot like its past: closer to the work, the relationships, and the accountability that got lost as holding companies scaled. Karen and Michelle walk through the data backing that argument — holding company headcount cuts, a Forrester forecast for 2026, independent firm revenue and growth figures, and a client tenure study that should make every solo practitioner feel validated. This is a celebratory, data-backed episode about why this moment belongs to independent practitioners, and a reminder that going solo doesn't mean going it alone. Episode Highlights [01:13] The Article That Sparked This Episode: Karen and Michelle discuss a PR News article by Jennifer Risi founder and president of The Sway Effect, titled “Old School Is the New School: How Independent PR Is Outrunning the Holding Company Model.” According to the article the future of PR looks like its past, not the bloated, multi-layered approval structures that came with scale, but direct relationships, accountability, and responsiveness.[02:29] The Industry Backdrop: Mergers, Layoffs, and a Symbolic Real Estate Shift: The article was published around Cannes Lions, timed against a wave of holding company consolidation, including a major agency merger referenced in the piece. Michelle highlights a striking detail: WPP gave up its longtime beach space at Cannes, and an independent agency took it over, a literal changing of the guard discussed in the original article.[03:10] The Headcount Numbers Behind the Shift: According to the article, holding companies cut headcount by an average of 8% in 2025, with a Forrester forecast cited for a 15% reduction in 2026. Karen and Michelle are clear that this isn't something to celebrate, hey don't take pleasure in layoffs or peers in the industry struggling, but the data underscores the structural shift taking place. All source data referenced in the episode will be linked in the show notes.[05:59] Independent Firms Are Posting Real Growth: Citing O’Dwyer's 2026 independent PR firm rankings, the independent sector pushed combined fee income to $4.8 billion, with nearly a third of the top 140 independent firms surveyed posting double-digit growth in the same year holding companies were announcing layoffs. Karen and Michelle's takeaway for solo listeners who haven't seen that kind of growth yet: there is work being awarded right now, and consistency in business development matters more than ever.[07:08] Independent Clients Stick Around Longer: A 2025 joint study from the ANA and the 4A's found that clients stay with independent agencies an average of 7.3 years, compared to 5.8 years at holding company agencies. Karen notes this surprised her. She expected the gap to be even wider based on anecdotal experience with solo practitioners but the data confirms what many independents have felt for years: that tenure reflects trust renewed over and over again, not just convenience.[10:21] Why Now? Two Forces Colliding: Michelle frames the moment as two things happening at once. The holding company model scaled to a point where margin optimization started to outweigh relationship investment. At the same time, AI emerged and gave independent practitioners the tools to work smarter and keep pace without the overhead that scale requires.[11:11] The Counterintuitive AI Argument: Judgment Becomes More Valuable, Not Less: The article asserts that AI doesn't make communications less important; it makes human judgment more valuable. When the media environment is fragmented, and machine-generated content adds speed and volume to an already chaotic landscape, clients need a human who can say what's actually real, what matters, and what to do next. That judgment cannot be automated and it does not live in headcount, it lives in a person.[13:14] Independence Means Choosing What You Carry: Independence isn't the absence of structure, it's choosing what structure to carry. For a solo practitioner, that means no committee, no internal routing, no extra layers, just the strategy, the execution, and the phone call. Karen adds an honest counterpoint: that freedom carries real weight too, and most solos who are drawn to this work want that weight. It's not a burden when it's the work you signed up for.[16:19] The Honest Tension: Concentration Without a Bench: Michelle names the tradeoff directly. Being the whole agency means there's no one to hand a midnight crisis to, no colleague down the hall to sanity-check a risky call. The freedom and the isolation come in the same box. Karen's answer is the Solo PR Pro community — built specifically to give independent practitioners the peer support, expertise, and gut-checks that solo work doesn't naturally ...
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    22 mins
  • The New Rules of Trust but Verify

    The New Rules of Trust but Verify
    Jun 29 2026
    That Solo Life Episode 345: The New Rules of Trust but Verify Episode Summary Every solo PR pro has heard the same directive for the past year: show up in AI search. Get cited by ChatGPT, Gemini, and the rest. But Karen and Michelle pose a different question: when AI mentions your client, does anyone actually believe what it says? New research says visibility and believability are two distinct jobs, and most practitioners have only been working on one. Karen walks through Burson's new Credibility Paradox report (with Profound), which analyzed roughly 55,000 believability forecasts across 85 companies and seven AI platforms. The headline finding: executive and leadership messaging is the least believable claim type across every industry studied, while third-party proof — product results, workplace recognition, and independent coverage — ranks highest. Karen and Michelle unpack why this is genuinely good news for solo practitioners, why it doesn't mean ditching executive thought leadership, and what to actually do about it starting Monday morning. Episode Highlights [01:54] The Credibility Paradox: Visibility Is Necessary But Not Sufficient: Burson's new report, produced with Profound, ran roughly 55,000 believability forecasts across 85 companies on seven major AI platforms. The headline finding: simply being mentioned by an AI tool is not the win. The real work now is building enough evidence around a brand that the AI's answer is actually believable to the people who matter.[03:01] The Finding That Stops Practitioners in Their Tracks: Leadership Messaging Ranks Least Believable: Across every industry studied, executive and leadership claims scored as the least believable claim type. The highest-scoring claims were product results, innovation, workplace recognition, and other third-party signals, proof that comes from somewhere other than the brand's own mouth. Karen is careful to note the nuance: this does not mean executive thought leadership is worthless. It means leadership messaging is the lowest-leverage lever for believability when it isn't anchored to proof.[05:40] What This Looks Like on a Real Account: Karen walks through a practical example: a SaaS founder wants to be known as the most innovative platform in their category. An AI tool can repeat that claim, but a skeptical buyer will read it as marketing and discount it. Compare that to an independent review site ranking the same company, a trade outlet covering a customer's actual results, or a workplace award genuinely earned. Same underlying message, completely different believability. The shift isn't to stop telling the story. It's to get credible third parties to tell it alongside you.[07:37] The Good News: Earned Media Is Quantifiably the Most Believable Lever: A 2026 Stacker study found that distributed earned media drove a 239% lift in AI citations compared to owned content alone. Separately, Muck Rack's analysis of over 25 million links found earned media accounts for roughly 82–84% of all AI citations. For solo practitioners, this reframes years of fuzzy ROI conversations into one of the most quantified arguments for earned media ever, and it's a number a budget-holding client can understand immediately.[10:36] Why Solos Specifically Win Here: You Don't Need a Paid Media Budget: The believability lever that matters most - earned coverage and third-party proof - is exactly the lever solo practitioners are already built to pull without a paid media budget. Karen's framing is that you can't always outspend a big agency, but you can outearn them. AI didn't make solo practitioners obsolete. It handed them the receipts.[11:34] The Foolproofing: Buyers Still Verify Before They Trust: A third report, G2's Answer Economy study, surveyed over 1,000 B2B software buyers and found only 2% will buy from an AI-recommended brand without verifying it first, and 69% of those who verified ended up choosing a different vendor than originally planned. The conclusion: the AI conversation doesn't replace human trust, it feeds into it. The proof a practitioner builds is exactly what's waiting when a buyer goes to verify.[13:11] Judgment Is the Scarce Resource, Not Content: AI can draft a press release in nine seconds. It cannot tell a practitioner whether that's the right tactic for the right client at the right moment. Karen and Michelle make the case that experienced judgment, knowing which proof point actually moves believability for a specific client, in a specific industry, with a specific buyer, is the solo PR pro's defining advantage in the AI era. It is not something a tool can be prompted into replicating.[18:10] The Monday Morning Action: Ask AI What It Says About Your Client: Karen's first practical step is to ask an AI tool what it currently says about your client, then read the answer the way a skeptical buyer would. Is it leaning on the brand's own claims, or on verifiable third-party proof? The second step is take an hour that ...
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    20 mins
  • The Secrets that Filmmakers Know About Marketing That Most Business Owners Never Learn

    The Secrets that Filmmakers Know About Marketing That Most Business Owners Never Learn
    Jun 22 2026
    That Solo Life Episode 344: The Secrets that Filmmakers Know About Marketing That Most Business Owners Never Learn with Jake Isham Episode Summary Jake Isham describes himself as an accidental marketer. He went to film school, realized he wasn't going back for a grad degree, and spent his 20s learning to build a business the hard way. He is the Chief Executive Officer of Creative Minds, a creative agency rooted in filmmaking and storytelling that helps entrepreneurs build personal brands through video content, photography, and a signature podcast model that takes clients out of the studio and into the environments where they actually come alive. In this episode, Jake joins Karen and Michelle to talk about his journey and the hard-won lessons along the way. He breaks down how a filmmaker's lens changes the work he does for clients, why the Hero's Journey is a more useful brand-building framework than most marketing playbooks, how his on-location podcast model turns a client's hobby into a content engine, and the business development principle that he wishes someone had told him on day one: promote at a volume that feels impossible, measure the results six weeks later, and get 1% better every time. Episode Highlights [01:43] The Accidental Marketer Origin Story: Jake went to film school, considered grad school for about a semester, and decided he'd already spent four years doing what he was about to spend two and a half more years doing. What followed was a decade of figuring it out, freelancing, building, and course-correcting, guided by a piece of advice from his father.[07:35] The Filmmaker's Lens: Why the Hero's Journey Is the Real Brand Framework: When everyone claims to tell stories, the differentiator is understanding what storytelling actually means. Jake draws the line between sharing an anecdote and structuring a narrative. payoff. He uses Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey as a practical brand-building tool: who is your hero, who is your enemy, who are your allies, what are you standing for, what are you standing against. These are the questions that build a brand identity rather than a content calendar.[10:24] Getting Clients Comfortable on Camera: Jake's superpower as a director is making people comfortable in front of a camera, and he leverages that in his work with clients. He describes a client whose first shoot took four hours with a teleprompter. Their most recent shoot took one hour, no teleprompter, off the top of his head, and produced more usable content than the first session ever did. The skill is not just technical but the accumulated experience of working with actors, directing scenes, and creating the conditions for someone to be fully themselves.[12:30] The Signature Series Podcast Model: Rather than building another studio podcast, Jake developed a signature format: take the client's hobby or genuine interest and build a location-based show around it. A golf enthusiast on the course. A client at their place of worship. The host is in an environment that makes them feel natural and engaged, which changes everything about how they show up on camera. [20:12] The Business Development Truth Nobody Tells Creative Entrepreneurs: When asked what he wishes someone had told him at the start, Jake doesn't hesitate: promote, promote, promote, promote. He describes watching a gym owner tell his mentor he had distributed 300 flyers. The mentor's response: I do 5,000 a day. The lesson is not that what you're doing is wrong. It is that you are almost certainly not doing it at anywhere near the volume required. Jake shared the experiment he used and the data that he relies on for business development success. [23:04] The Six-Week Lag: How to Measure Business Development Without Losing Your Mind: Jake has identified a consistent pattern in his own practice in which promotion activity produces income results approximately six weeks later. The implication is practical and clarifying. Don't judge a business development effort in the first six weeks. Measure from week six to week twelve. [26:52] The 1% Better Principle: Why You Don't Need to Leap to Progress: Jake co-hosts a filmmaking show called The Creative Lens. He shows his first episode as an example: his setup was visibly rough next to his co-host's polished rig. By episode eight or nine, the gap had closed — not through a single overhaul, but through consistent incremental improvement. One better backdrop. One better light. One more structured opening. He applies the same logic to business development: not 100 posts more, but one more post. Not a complete brand overhaul, but one sharper headline. Get 1% better. Then do it again. About Jake Isham Jake Isham is a filmmaker, photographer, and the owner and founder of Creative Minds, a creative agency focused on personal brand building through video content, photography, and signature podcast production. After film school and a brief flirtation with grad school, Jake spent his...
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    28 mins
  • What Solo PR Pros Need to Know About IP, AI Legal Risk and Building a More Valuable Agency

    What Solo PR Pros Need to Know About IP, AI Legal Risk and Building a More Valuable Agency
    Jun 15 2026
    That Solo Life Episode 343: What Solo PR Pros Need to Know About IP, AI Legal Risk and Building a More Valuable Agency Episode Summary Most solo practitioners have contracts. What they don't have is a strategy. Sharon Toerek, founder and principal of Legal+Creative | Toerek Law, and an intellectual property attorney whose entire practice serves independent marketing, advertising, PR, and creative services agencies, joins Karen and Michelle to make the case she has been making for years — and that most of us have never fully absorbed. Legal protection is not a cost center; it is a profit center. The frameworks you've built, the methodologies you've refined, the media lists you've curated, the processes you've quietly deployed for every client engagement are intellectual property. This means that many of them can be protected, packaged, and monetized. Sharon walks through her IP Triangle framework, breaks down the specific AI legal risks that every solo practitioner using AI tools needs to understand, and closes with the practical advice that runs through everything she does: focus on progress over perfection, start with one thing, and don't wait for the exit to start caring about what you've built. Episode Highlights [04:25] Legal as a Profit Center, Not a Cost: Sharon reframes the entire conversation about legal investment. Most agency owners think about legal as defense — something you pay for when things go wrong. Sharon's argument is different: a well-negotiated client agreement directly impacts the revenue you capture from that relationship. Exclusivity should carry a premium. Payment terms are a negotiating lever, not a formality. And the intellectual property you've built has monetization potential that most solos have never explored. The mindset shift from legal-as-expense to legal-as-revenue-strategy is the foundation of everything that follows.[09:26] You Have IP You Don't Know About: Karen names the pattern that runs through the solo practitioner community: years of developed workflows, methodologies, and frameworks, quietly deployed in every client engagement, never formally recognized as assets. Sharon validates this and introduces the essential caveat: not all IP has equal economic value. The discipline is in the inventory — taking stock of what you have, assessing which of it is genuinely differentiating, and then deciding what to protect and how.[10:44] The IP Triangle: Brand, Content, Transactions: Sharon's framework for assessing and protecting agency IP has three points. Brand: the names, systems, methods, and proprietary products you've developed — protectable through trademark. Content: your media lists, content libraries, proprietary processes, anything that gives you a competitive advantage in your vertical — protectable through trade secret or copyright law, depending on whether it's public-facing. Transactions: the agreements that govern work flowing out of the agency (licenses, deliverables) and into it — critically, the contracts with freelancers and 1099 contractors that determine whether you actually own the work you paid for. Walk through all three. Do the inventory. Then figure out what it means for your pricing and packaging.[16:29] IP and the Exit Strategy Most Agency Owners Haven't Considered: Karen raises the question that matters to practitioners thinking about the next chapter: how should mid-to-late career agency owners be thinking about their IP right now? Sharon has seen agencies with a defined body of protected IP achieve business valuations significantly higher than comparable agencies without it. She has also seen owners who aren't ready to leave the work entirely create separate buyers for the client book and the intellectual property, keeping the asset they built while transitioning the day-to-day. The options multiply when you've done the work ahead of time. The time to start is not at the exit.[23:24] AI and the Two Legal Risk Areas Every Practitioner Needs to Understand: Sharon is direct: every conversation at her firm right now touches AI in some way. The risk landscape falls into two areas. First: intellectual property — who owns work created with AI, and who is liable if AI-generated content infringes a third party's rights. Second: data privacy and confidentiality — how easy it is to accidentally breach client confidentiality by feeding sensitive information into AI tools, and how exposed practitioners become when contractors use free AI accounts that train on every input. Both risks are manageable. Neither is optional to address.[24:30] What Needs to Be in Your Contracts Right Now: Sharon gets specific. Every client engagement agreement and every independent contractor agreement needs language covering: IP ownership for AI-generated work, IP infringement responsibility, and what happens to confidential client information when AI tools are used to process it. Beyond the contracts, she recommends an internal AI policy and a ...
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    34 mins
  • What the 2026 USC Global Communications Report Says About PR Today

    What the 2026 USC Global Communications Report Says About PR Today
    Jun 8 2026
    That Solo Life Episode 342: What the 2026 USC Global Communications Report Says About PR Today Episode Summary Karen and Michelle open with a question that lands before the intro music fades: When was the last time a client approved a statement without pushback? The answer tells you everything about the communications environment right now and so does the report they spend this episode unpacking. The USC Annenberg Center for Public Relations 2026 Global Communications Report, titled A Quiet Shift, surveyed over 700 PR professionals, more than 1,000 members of the general public, and conducted one-on-one interviews with Fortune 500 chief communications officers. Karen and Michelle read it with the solo and independent practitioner in mind and pull three findings that are immediately relevant to how you counsel clients, frame messages, and navigate a landscape that has shifted more dramatically in two years than many expected. A fourth and fifth finding will be covered in a future episode, and in an exclusive YouTube behind-the-mic segment, the co-hosts announce at the close. Episode Highlights [03:01] The Perception Gap — You Feel It More Than Your Clients Do: The report identifies a meaningful gap between how PR professionals perceive the current environment and how the general public does. 81% of PR professionals say polarization is extremely or very high right now — but only 69% of the general public agrees. That 12-point gap has practical implications for how practitioners advise clients. Karen asks the key question: are you advising clients based on your own anxiety about the landscape, or are you exercising the restraint that meets your audience where they actually are? The solo advantage here is real — without agency layers and group dynamics amplifying collective anxiety, solos have more room to reality-test their instincts before they become strategy.[08:52] Corporate Social Advocacy Has Retreated — Sharply and Fast: The data on this one is stark. In 2023 and 2024, 89% and 85% of PR professionals respectively, said companies have a responsibility to advocate for social issues. By 2026, that number has dropped to 55%. The general public sits even lower at 42%. The drop took two years. For practitioners working with nonprofits, purpose-driven brands, or clients whose missions touch social issues, the wind is no longer at your back — but it hasn't stopped blowing. The shift is not uniform: 6 in 10 Gen Z and 7 in 10 millennial PR professionals still hold this belief. Understanding your client's audience generation is now essential to calibrating how hard to push on purpose-driven messaging.[14:55] The Content That Disappeared After the 2024 Election — and What Replaced It: Using exclusive data from Cometrics.io, the report analyzed LinkedIn posts from 6,317 C-suite executives at Fortune 500 companies across a six-month window before and after the November 2024 election. The volume of communication stayed the same. The topics shifted dramatically. AI and agents content rose 75%. Cybersecurity up 29%. Technology ethics up 27%. On the other side: LGBTQ+ content dropped 77%. Greenhouse gas content down 50%. Net zero down 44%. DEI content down 13% — though Karen and Michelle both note that number is likely understated by now. A separate Meltwater analysis of media coverage tracked the same pattern. The practical implication: if your clients have content in the declining categories, the framing strategy has to change. The story doesn't stop — but how you tell it does.[20:08] What Solo PR Pros Do With This Information: Karen and Michelle close with the practitioner application: if a client's content falls in the declining categories, you don't stop. You reframe. You spend more time at the strategy table. You adjust how the message lands without abandoning who the client is. Michelle's reminder: your voice as a practitioner is still your voice. You navigate circumstances — you don't abandon your position. And if a client's business includes a credible AI story, tell it. If they aren't, others are telling it for them. Coming up: Karen and Michelle will cover additional findings from the USC report in an exclusive behind-the-mic YouTube segment for deeper discussion. Resources & Additional Information USC Annenberg Center for Public Relations — 2026 Global Communications Report: A Quiet Shift: annenberg.usc.edu/cprCometrics.io: cometrics.ioMeltwater: meltwater.comSolo PR Pro membership community: soloprpro.comThat Solo Life podcast website: thatsololife.com Host & Show Info That Solo Life is a podcast created for public relations, communication, and marketing professionals who work as independent and small practitioners. Hosted by Karen Swim, APR, President of Solo PR Pro, and Michelle Kane, Principal of Voice Matters, the show delivers expert insights, encouragement, and practical advice for solo PR pros navigating today's dynamic professional landscape. Listen to all episodes and catch ...
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    24 mins