Kaitlin McCready calls it 'many lives of communications', a career that has moved through corporate tech, the MTA in New York City, Jacobs Engineering, the Joint Office of Energy and Transportation inside the federal government, and now Communio Strategies, her solo practice that is about one year old. But the through line across all of those chapters is the same problem: the gap between what an organization says and what its audience actually believes, understands, or acts on.
Kaitlin joins Karen and Michelle to talk through how that through line became the foundation of her practice, the WEAVE framework she developed to bring change management discipline into communications work, the 90-day project-based consulting model that is working exceptionally well in the current market, how a relationship with her masseuse led to a county government client through a mayor introduction, and the Substack she started not primarily to grow an audience but to maintain a writing practice and own a topic she had genuinely earned. This is a rich episode for practitioners who want to think more rigorously about what communications is actually for, and for solos about a year in who need to hear that the path from interest to paying client is slower than it looks but more networked than it feels.
Full show notes available at https://www.thatsololife.com/357