Source:
https://www.podbean.com/eau/pb-8a537-148446d

If you’re thinking of diversifying your PR practice or pivoting away from day-to-day client work, this episode is for you.
 
Transcript
Michelle Kane (00:17):
Thank you for joining us for this episode of That Solo Life, the podcast for PR pros and marketers who work for themselves, people like me, Michelle Kane, with VoiceMatters, and my wonderful co-host, Karen Swim of Solo PR Pro. Hello, Karen. How are you doing this week?
Karen Swim (00:34):
I'm doing great, Michelle. How are you doing?
Michelle Kane (00:37):
I'm doing pretty well. Yes, yes. As this episode airs, we're hitting that mid-August stride, which means change for so many. For some of us it means “Leave me alone. I am still having summer.” But for others it means going back to college, getting ready to go back to school, or just getting ready to go enter another rhythm of life. But that sort of speaks to what we're going to talk about today, where our topic is the PR migration, and just things that we're seeing amongst our colleagues and in PR in general. You know, many people are pivoting away from PR or just starting to dabble in other fields, like education or maybe even something completely different. So we thought, hey, let's talk about this and see what we might be able to encourage our listeners.
Karen Swim (01:31):
Yeah. Isn't it interesting, I'm seeing, I get a lot of the emails now from PR people that are selling services to PR people rather than doing PR. So I'm not sure what's behind the number of PR people that are still in the prime of their working years, still have lots of road ahead of them that are like, let me pivot over to something else. If it's just a genuine shift that we're seeing, because maybe it's been driven by the climate that we're in.
Michelle Kane (02:03):
It could be. And you know, it could be just a certain number of people are just feeling that need to shift. I know sometimes even within a job, right? Every few years or so, you just need a little something new, a little different challenge to keep life interesting for yourself. And I wonder how many of our listeners are having those moments of kind of putting their head up and going, huh, what else could I be doing?
Karen Swim (02:34):
That's such a great point. You're right that in a traditional job, you don't typically do the exact same job for year after year after year after year, your responsibilities shift, you get a different role, you change companies, something changes to keep you on your toes and refreshed. And so it could be that, although I have to say that given some of the challenges that we face today, I can certainly understand those people that are leading the profession because it's just become really difficult to succeed. You know, <laugh> great example, Forbes now has a policy, it does not, you know, there's different brands of Forbes, but Forbes has this policy now that if they put out a query, they do not want anyone except for the expert to respond. They will not take pitches from PR people, and they call out PR people specifically.
So they say, “PR people: do not pitch us, but ask your source to contact us directly per Forbes policy.” So that's an interesting shift, and yeah, one I hope doesn't spread to other outlets. I also almost think “Sure, good luck with that,” because journalists take for granted the amount of value that we truly do bring to that relationship. And some of what we control and avoid to make sure that they get the very best piece of information possible and that they, that communications are streamlined. I think that they are seeing us maybe as an annoyance, but
Michelle Kane (04:20):
Oh, ok Forbes.
Karen Swim (04:22):
…we know the back story on a lot of these things. So <laugh> Yeah. I mean, I could particularly see people poking their head up and going, okay, what else is out there? So I'm seeing people do things like sell everything from business development for PR people. So there are PR salespeople who want to sell you on how to sell clients on your behalf or things like tools that we use, from databases to pitch tools to all kinds of things that we utilize. Yeah, I'm seeing a lot more of that.
Michelle Kane (05:00):
Yeah. And can we just do a shout out to some of those companies solo PR pros are not really into buying at the enterprise level? We are solo shops. Yes, we would love to be your customer, but there's usually maybe 1, 2, 3, maybe five of us. So just think if you get 10 solos to buy your product at a decent price point, oh, there's your enterprise. Anyway. Ok, rant off <laugh>.
Karen Swim (05:28):
I agree. We could do an entire episode on the PR industry and the tools market. And, at the PR industry in general, it's very unfortunate that in so many instances, everything is directed to large agencies or in-house PR people. We just get overlooked quite a bit and that's very sad because we do the same job. And we del