July 13, 2026
Why Senior PR Pros Should Focus on Development Not Decline
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 earned the editor's chair.
- [16:33] Four Mindset Shifts for the Final Stretch: Development not decline — treat this stage as its own stage with its own strengths, not as a countdown. Curiosity over mastery — you don't have to be the best at the new thing, just conversant enough that you're never in a meeting where a term comes up and you have no idea what it means. Pick one tool and go deep — depth in one beats a panic attack across many. Partner, don't martyr — bring in a younger pro or a specialist for execution-heavy tasks; you bring the strategy and judgment, they bring the hands-on tooling. Everybody wins.
- [21:04] Legacy: The Mindset Piece That Reframes Everything: The fourth mindset shift is the one that hits differently: legacy. The mentoring, the coaching, the teaching, the writing — these are not the consolation prize of winding down. They are how your judgment keeps compounding and outlives your client roster. At this stage, the experience is the product. And that's exactly what the Solo PR Pro community is built around — a private, safe place to ask the questions you don't want to ask out loud in front of a client or prospect.
- [22:07] Three Action Items — Small Ones: Karen closes with three specific, this-week actions. Pick one AI assistant and use it for one real task — not a course, not a certification, just one task. Take your 'supposed to learn' list and run it through the three-bucket framework — cross out everything in the ignore column and watch the list get lighter. Have one conversation about partnering — find one execution-heavy thing you keep avoiding and find a person to delegate it to, not to learn it.
Resources & Additional Information
- National Bureau of Economic Research: Workplace Adoption of Generative AI
- Oxford Academic: Work, Aging and Retirement late-career development mindset study
- Science Direct - Productivity and Age: Evidence from work teams at the assembly line
- Muck Rack: The State of AI in PR (2026, 2025)
- North Carolina State University: Older is Wiser
- Solo PR Pro membership community: soloprpro.com
- That 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 up on previous conversations at thatsololife.com.
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That Solo Life Episode 347: Why Senior PR Pros Should Focus on Development Not Decline
Karen Swim, APR (00:02):
Welcome to That Solo Life. I'm Karen Swim, president of Solo PR Pro.
Michelle Kane (00:08):
And I'm Michelle Kane of Voice Matters. And Karen, I have a question for you. Or actually, I want to start today with a statement, and I think it's something that a lot of our listeners have either said out loud or are saying to themselves these days.
Karen Swim, APR (00:23):
Ooh, okay, go.
Michelle Kane (00:25):
Okay, here goes. I'm five years away from wrapping up my wonderful solo PR career, and I just can't... I don't have it in me to learn one more new tool. I'm done.
Karen Swim, APR (00:41):
Yeah, that one lands.
Michelle Kane (00:43):
Right? It's not a small thing. There's a whole group of solos and these are brilliant, accomplished people. They're, as we say in our private group, the smarties. And for those who are in their last stretch of client work, they can see retirement on the horizon. The message they're hearing everywhere these days is keep up or get left behind.
Karen Swim, APR (01:09):
Yeah. And we push back on that today hard because the people with the most experience are very often the ones best positioned to use these new tools well. They just don't always believe it yet.
Michelle Kane (01:25):
Right. So today we're going to talk about how to stay relevant, keep delivering real value in this last stretch of your career, without setting yourself on fire chasing every shiny new thing.
Karen Swim, APR (01:37):
How to know what you can safely ignore, what's actually worth adopting, and the mindset that carries you all the way to the finish line. All right, let's get into it.
Intro music
Michelle Kane (01:51):
So Karen, I want to take a minute on the hard part for a second before we go fixing anything because I think it matters.
Karen Swim, APR (01:59):
Agreed. Because this feeling, the I'm tired, I don't have the bandwidth, that is not laziness and it's definitely not fear of change.
Michelle Kane (02:11):
No, no. I mean, we know these people. Some days we are these people. And what we've already lived through, gosh, four or five complete technology revolutions in one career, that's why we're tired.
Karen Swim, APR (02:28):
At least. I mean, think about it. If you've been doing this for 30 years, you went from typewriters to desktop publishing, fax machines to email, print media to social, and now AI on top of all of it.
Michelle Kane (02:43):
Right. So if you're sitting there thinking, can I even learn this stuff? Well, let's get real. The answer is yeah, because you've done it over and over and over again. You've proven it. So yeah, you can.
Karen Swim, APR (02:56):
And so what that means is the real question isn't, can I learn it? It's how much of this do I actually need to learn and how do I protect my energy for the parts that matter most?
Michelle Kane (03:11):
That's right there, protecting our energy. And that's a completely different question.
Karen Swim, APR (03:16):
It is. And I want to name something very real here because there is a gap and it's measurable. The National Bureau of Economic Research, they ran this big nationally representative survey on who's actually using these AI tools at work. And the usage drops with age, but for workers under 40, it was about 34%. For workers 50 and up, it was about 17%.
Michelle Kane (03:47):
It's basically it's cut in half.
Karen Swim, APR (03:50):
Cut in half. But that gap is not about ability. When you dig into the research, it's about confidence and it's about on - ramps. Nobody handed experience pros a door that says, start here.
Michelle Kane (04:09):
And for real, nobody's telling our pros, no one's telling us what we're allowed to ski. Everyone in the space is selling urgency.
Karen Swim, APR (04:18):
Right. I mean, everyone is selling, you're behind. Nobody's selling discernment.
Michelle Kane (04:25):
No, exactly. And discernment is the thing you've spent your whole career building.
Karen Swim, APR (04:31):
Yeah. And this is the perfect place to bust the biggest myth.
Michelle Kane (04:37):
Yes. So that myth, say it playing, Karen Swim.
Karen Swim, APR (04:41):
The myth we want to kill is experience is a liability now. And that myth... So what it's saying is that as you go further along in your career, it means you're slower, you're behind, you're less valuable in an AI world.
Michelle Kane (05:00):
No. And in truth, the reality is complete opposite.
Karen Swim, APR (05:05):
It really is. And so here's the logic for that. As these tools make the actual production of work nearly free or lower cost, whatever, the drafting, summarizing, first pass research, all of it, the thing that becomes scarce and valuable is judgment. Knowing what's worth doing, knowing what's true, knowing what will land with a reporter and what will blow up in a client's face.
Michelle Kane (05:39):
And that's the thing that experience buys you, knowing how to prompt so your quick and dirty graphic doesn't look like AI slop. You can't shortcut this stuff. You have to know it.
Karen Swim, APR (05:51):
You really cannot prompt your way to 30 years of pattern recognition. And the research backs us up in places you'd never expect. There was a study out of the University of Manheim that looked at workers at a BMW plan. And so this is a real physical demanding environment. And they found that productivity actually increased as workers got older right up to retirement.
Michelle Kane (06:21):
Wow. What do you think was driving that?
Karen Swim, APR (06:24):
Because the veterans know where to focus. They knew which problems were going to be expensive and they headed them off before they had fewer costly mistakes.
Michelle Kane (06:37):
That's the judgment. And that's exactly what you just said. And if I could add, Ford is going through this right now, hiring back their so - called gray beards.
Karen Swim, APR (06:47):
I'm seeing that here in Michigan in a lot of different companies. So you're absolutely right. And when I speak to those people that are being hired back and in demand and they want them to come back full-time. Some were retired and they're working 40, 50 hours a week. So that is real. And there was a study at North Carolina State that looked at software developers. Now you don't get any closer to that notion of a young person's game than software development, right?
Michelle Kane (07:21):
Right.
Karen Swim, APR (07:23):
But here is a surprise. The study found that the older programmers actually knew a wider range of topics, answered questions better, and in some cases were more adept with the newer systems.
Michelle Kane (07:40):
Well, sure, because they know all the ancient languages. And there we go again, the opposite of the stereotype.
Karen Swim, APR (07:48):
Yeah. I mean, the researcher's theory was basically if you're fluent in the old technology, like you just said, you understand the new technology better because you get what problem it's solving.
Michelle Kane (08:02):
Right. Now translate that to our world. If you've lived through the death of the press release as the only tool in our box, you understand exactly what an AI search result is trying to do.
Karen Swim, APR (08:16):
Yeah, exactly. And another piece that I love, it's about the mindset. There's research in a journal called Work, Aging and Retirement, and they found that older workers tend to see their late career more in terms of development than decline.
Michelle Kane (08:38):
I love that. Stick that on my forehead on a sticky note. Development, not decline. I
Karen Swim, APR (08:45):
Know. I love that too. That could honestly be our whole entire episode, right?
Michelle Kane (08:50):
Okay, great. So we're done. No, actually let's reframe this. AI can generate, as we've said this before, it can't judge, it can't discern. And the judgment and the discernment is the one thing that you and me and our listeners out there are spending their careers building.
Karen Swim, APR (09:08):
Yeah. So I want to just encourage all of our senior PR pros out there. And by senior, I mean senior level, not senior citizen, but senior in your career, that you're not behind the curve. You're holding the exact thing that the curve is racing toward.
Michelle Kane (09:30):
Yeah. Yep. So true. Okay. So let's frame this again. Let's get practical with it because I can hear someone saying, maybe it's me. That's great, but I still have 47 browser tabs of tools I'm supposed to learn. Where do I start?
Karen Swim, APR (09:48):
Yeah. Well, you don't need to learn everything. You need a filter and here's ours. Three buckets. Ignore, adopt and anchor.
Michelle Kane (10:00):
Love it. Start with ignore. Okay, that's it. We're done now. But I think that's the relief of it. There are some things we can ignore.
Karen Swim, APR (10:09):
That is the permission slip. So ignore. First thing that you can let go of the platform of the month. Every quarter there's a new app, everyone's panicking about. I can name a few, but it's been the flavor of the month, the flavor of the quarter. If it's actually durable, it'll still be there in a year and it'll be clearer and easier to learn.
Michelle Kane (10:38):
Right. So we don't have to be the early adopters. Let the early adopters be the beta testers and just ride it out. Looking at Euclip House. Yeah.
Karen Swim, APR (10:48):
So true. I mean, I agree. Let them have it. And then second, toll maximalism. You do not need 14 AI subscriptions. You just don't. One good capable assistant covers the overwhelming majority of what you actually do.
Michelle Kane (11:09):
Exactly. And third -
Karen Swim, APR (11:12):
You don't have to become a technologist. I think that scares a lot of people. Yeah. You never needed to understand how email worked under the hood to send an email. It's the same here. It's fluency, not engineering.
Michelle Kane (11:28):
Yeah. And I can think of a fourth actually that would be good to put into our prism is how they say, don't make any decisions out of fear. Well, I say we give you permission to ignore anything you're only doing out of fear. If the only reason that you're chasing this tool is that you're scared of being left behind, that's the noise getting to you. So don't let that happen. Adopt from your strategy without the panic that honestly, the people trying to sell us this stuff are instilling in we know this because sometimes we help create that urgency.
Karen Swim, APR (12:05):
That's true. Michelle, that was so beautifully said. And for anyone that's worried that opting out makes you a dinosaur in PR specifically, the holdouts are a tiny group. Muckrock's research found that only about 7% of PR pros say they don't use AI and they don't plan to. That's so tiny. So you can be selected in what you're using without being a holdout. There's a lot of room in between that 7% and the rest of the crowd.
Michelle Kane (12:46):
Yeah. Okay. So we've decided what we're ignoring. Yay. Now bucket number two, adopt.
Karen Swim, APR (12:53):
Yeah. These are the things that are genuinely worth your energy because they're not going away. So number one, baseline AI fluency, taking one good AI assistant, using it to research, draft a first pass, summarize a long document, or pressure test an idea before you bring it to a client. And there's just so many more uses.
Michelle Kane (13:15):
Yeah. And these are the table stakes right now. This is no longer exotic. It's a tool firmly in our arsenal right now for many of us.
Karen Swim, APR (13:25):
Absolutely. So the same muckrack research found about 76% of PR pros, they're already using generative AI, but mostly for writing and editing. So this is the mainstream of our profession now, not the frontier.
Michelle Kane (13:44):
Right, right. And now the second thing we should adopt is
Karen Swim, APR (13:49):
Understanding how people are actually finding information now. That's big. So the biggest real shift isn't a single tool. It's that audiences are increasingly getting answers straight from AI and from search instead of clicking through to a website. So we've talked about this here. That changes what credibility even looks like, and it changes what your clients need from you.
Michelle Kane (14:16):
And you don't necessarily have to execute all of this yourself, like we've said many times about many things.
Karen Swim, APR (14:23):
True. But you need to understand it well enough to advise a client intelligently and to know when to bring in a partner. And there's a lot of firms specializing just in AI visibility popping up. So here's the urgency that has nothing to do with your age. The old channels are getting harder for everyone. 72% of PR pros blame lower response rates from reporters and 62% point to shrinking media lists. Oh
Michelle Kane (14:55):
Yeah. I mean, the ground's been moving under all of us and it continues to do so. So a 28-year-old PR pro is dealing with the same shrinking media lists that a more seasoned advanced in years PR pro is dealing with. We're all literally on the same playing field for good
Karen Swim, APR (15:14):
And bad. We are actually. You are so right. And so adopting a few new approaches, that's not vanity. It's just the job no.
Michelle Kane (15:23):
Yeah, exactly. Well onto third bucket anchor. This is my favorites.
Karen Swim, APR (15:30):
So these are the things that you don't age out of. You actually get more valuable as the tools get cheaper. Your judgment, your relationships, the trust you've built over decades, that's a model that cannot reproduce your network, your storytelling and strategy and your ethics, knowing what not to publish, when to tell a client to stay quiet, how to catch the AI generated thing that is not confidently completely wrong.
Michelle Kane (16:04):
Yeah. And that last one is becoming a job all in itself.
Karen Swim, APR (16:09):
True story. True story. So here's the reframe for the whole framework. The new tools just handle the first draft. You handle the final judgment. That's one way to look at it. That's not a demotion. That's the senior seat. You've earned the editor's chair.
Michelle Kane (16:33):
Yep. Yep. Oh, absolutely. So now let's shift to talking about the inner dialogue for a minute because these tactics only work if your head's in the right place. Well, we talk to ourselves a lot during the day. Talking about myself, that could be a challenge.
Karen Swim, APR (16:48):
And I think we already said the first one, it's development not decline. Treat these last years as their own stage, not the long end where you're dragging your butt across the finish line. So if you were ever a marathon runner, this is not you're at mile 22 and 26 seems so far away. That's not it. You treat it like it's on stage and it has its own strengths, the perspective, the candor, the freedom to actually say what you think in a client meeting.
Michelle Kane (17:25):
There's such a liberty and a real to being at that point where you can just tell the client the truth.
Karen Swim, APR (17:31):
Huge gift. Huge gift. And that does not always come easily at 22. So the second mindset shift I think is, I won't try to say that one fast on air, that'll get us in trouble. But it's curiosity over mastery. You don't have to be the best at the new thing. You just have to stay curious enough to remain conversant.
Michelle Kane (18:04):
Yeah, define conversant within this context because I think people set the bar too high sometimes.
Karen Swim, APR (18:15):
Well, we're PR codes. We type As. That's what we do.
(18:17):
That's what we do. And so I'm going to say that the bar is you're never in a meeting where a term comes up and you have no idea what it means. Doesn't mean that you have to be the expert at it, but when somebody says AEO, you should know what that means. In the same way that we learned things like SEO. And we were not masters at SEO. We were not masters at Wikipedia. We were not masters at these things, but at least we had the familiarity with what it was and how it could play into what we did. That's not a very high bar.
Michelle Kane (18:56):
No, no. And you know what? Totally achievable and definitely takes the pressure off. I think we're always battling against feeling like we need to know everything about everything. Well, we don't.
Karen Swim, APR (19:08):
We really don't. So third thing, pick one tool, just one, and then go deep. So instead of 10 tools and being shallow and anxious, like I'm over here, I'm using Jasper and Perplexity and Chat and Claude and Gemini and Opus and Figma and Canva and Descript. My brain's going to blow up. One tool, just one tool. Depth in one beats a panic attack across many.
Michelle Kane (19:48):
So true and especially true for solos. You don't have to do it all yourself.
Karen Swim, APR (19:55):
Yeah. Partner, don't martyr.
Michelle Kane (20:00):
Okay. We have to get that branded on a sticker for Solo PR Pro.
Karen Swim, APR (20:05):
I'm on it.
Michelle Kane (20:07):
Partner, don't martyr. If there's an execution, heavy new tactic, bring in a younger pros when you can mentor or bring in a specialist. You've done this before with other things. We don't all design websites to their perfection. So we have people we work with. So you bring the strategy and the judgment. They bring the hands-on tooling. Everybody wins.
Karen Swim, APR (20:34):
Yeah. And here's the good news. Everyone is figuring this out at the same time. So the training gap is real across every age group. Most workers say they want more AI training than they've actually gotten. So you're not behind some class that already graduated. There is no class. We're all in the room together.
Michelle Kane (20:56):
Yeah. Yeah. And the last mindset piece, which kind of makes you really think about things. Wow.
Karen Swim, APR (21:04):
Legacy.
Michelle Kane (21:06):
Yeah, legacy. The mentoring, the coaching, the teaching, the writing, the things that light us up as we share our craft with those that are following behind us, that's not the consolation prize of winding down. And that's the way your judgment keeps compounding and really outlives your client roster.
Karen Swim, APR (21:25):
Yeah. At this stage, the experience that you have really is the product. And honestly, this is exactly what we built the Solo PR Pro community around having that private safe place to ask the questions you don't want to ask out loud and in front of a client or a prospect, especially the, wait, what is this saying? And do I even need it questions?
Michelle Kane (21:50):
And we've all asked those in the group.
Karen Swim, APR (21:53):
The point
Michelle Kane (21:54):
Is - What is that? The point is no one should have to navigate this stuff alone and no one should have to pretend that they've got it all figured out. And the good news is you don't have to.
Karen Swim, APR (22:07):
Yeah, that is the good news. So let's leave everybody with something they can actually do because I don't want anyone walking away inspired but stuck.
Michelle Kane (22:19):
Okay. Three things. Small ones.
Karen Swim, APR (22:23):
Okay. Pick one AI assistant, just one, and use it for one real task this week. Whether it's summarizing a long report, drafting a first pass of a pitch, pressure test a strategy, on task, not a course, not a certification, just one task.
Michelle Kane (22:42):
Excellent. Two, take your big scary, I'm supposed to learn all of this list and run it through our prism of the three buckets. Cross everything out that's in the ignore column and watch how much lighter that list gets and suddenly it feels more manageable and you might even be excited about it.
Karen Swim, APR (23:04):
I feel the weights just flying off my shoulders right now. So what's number three, Michelle?
Michelle Kane (23:10):
Three, have one conversation about partnering. Find one execution heavy thing that you keep avoiding and find a person to hand it to. Not to learn it, but to delegate it. And I think this is probably one of the hardest things I ever face in my career for sure.
Karen Swim, APR (23:31):
Here's a little secret about that delegation piece too. When you partner with someone else on another specialty service, you actually have a more robust set of services that you can sell. So don't sleep on that. Yeah. So the bottom line for anybody that's in this last stretch who's tired, staying relevant does not mean keeping up with everything. It means getting ruthlessly clear about the few things that are actually worth your energy.
Michelle Kane (24:08):
And trusting that the judgment that you spent a whole career building is exactly the thing this moment is short on.
Karen Swim, APR (24:18):
That's good. And that's our show. If this one resonated, do us a favor and share it with a fellow PR Pro who's navigating this stage. They really need to hear it.
Michelle Kane (24:29):
Yeah, make sure you subscribe to that Solo Life wherever you listen. Please leave us a review. We want to hear from you guys and come find us in the whole community at soloprpro.com.
Karen Swim, APR (24:40):
Yeah. And before we let you go, here's our question for you this week. What's the one thing you've decided to stop worrying about keeping up with? We'd love for you to tag us on social media or email us, and we might actually read it on a future episode.
Michelle Kane (24:58):
Awesome. And until next time, take care of yourselves.
Karen Swim, APR (25:03):
That's The Solo Life
Karen Swim, APR (00:02):
Welcome to That Solo Life. I'm Karen Swim, president of Solo PR Pro.
Michelle Kane (00:08):
And I'm Michelle Kane of Voice Matters. And Karen, I have a question for you. Or actually, I want to start today with a statement, and I think it's something that a lot of our listeners have either said out loud or are saying to themselves these days.
Karen Swim, APR (00:23):
Ooh, okay, go.
Michelle Kane (00:25):
Okay, here goes. I'm five years away from wrapping up my wonderful solo PR career, and I just can't... I don't have it in me to learn one more new tool. I'm done.
Karen Swim, APR (00:41):
Yeah, that one lands.
Michelle Kane (00:43):
Right? It's not a small thing. There's a whole group of solos and these are brilliant, accomplished people. They're, as we say in our private group, the smarties. And for those who are in their last stretch of client work, they can see retirement on the horizon. The message they're hearing everywhere these days is keep up or get left behind.
Karen Swim, APR (01:09):
Yeah. And we push back on that today hard because the people with the most experience are very often the ones best positioned to use these new tools well. They just don't always believe it yet.
Michelle Kane (01:25):
Right. So today we're going to talk about how to stay relevant, keep delivering real value in this last stretch of your career, without setting yourself on fire chasing every shiny new thing.
Karen Swim, APR (01:37):
How to know what you can safely ignore, what's actually worth adopting, and the mindset that carries you all the way to the finish line. All right, let's get into it.
Intro music
Michelle Kane (01:51):
So Karen, I want to take a minute on the hard part for a second before we go fixing anything because I think it matters.
Karen Swim, APR (01:59):
Agreed. Because this feeling, the I'm tired, I don't have the bandwidth, that is not laziness and it's definitely not fear of change.
Michelle Kane (02:11):
No, no. I mean, we know these people. Some days we are these people. And what we've already lived through, gosh, four or five complete technology revolutions in one career, that's why we're tired.
Karen Swim, APR (02:28):
At least. I mean, think about it. If you've been doing this for 30 years, you went from typewriters to desktop publishing, fax machines to email, print media to social, and now AI on top of all of it.
Michelle Kane (02:43):
Right. So if you're sitting there thinking, can I even learn this stuff? Well, let's get real. The answer is yeah, because you've done it over and over and over again. You've proven it. So yeah, you can.
Karen Swim, APR (02:56):
And so what that means is the real question isn't, can I learn it? It's how much of this do I actually need to learn and how do I protect my energy for the parts that matter most?
Michelle Kane (03:11):
That's right there, protecting our energy. And that's a completely different question.
Karen Swim, APR (03:16):
It is. And I want to name something very real here because there is a gap and it's measurable. The National Bureau of Economic Research, they ran this big nationally representative survey on who's actually using these AI tools at work. And the usage drops with age, but for workers under 40, it was about 34%. For workers 50 and up, it was about 17%.
Michelle Kane (03:47):
It's basically it's cut in half.
Karen Swim, APR (03:50):
Cut in half. But that gap is not about ability. When you dig into the research, it's about confidence and it's about on - ramps. Nobody handed experience pros a door that says, start here.
Michelle Kane (04:09):
And for real, nobody's telling our pros, no one's telling us what we're allowed to ski. Everyone in the space is selling urgency.
Karen Swim, APR (04:18):
Right. I mean, everyone is selling, you're behind. Nobody's selling discernment.
Michelle Kane (04:25):
No, exactly. And discernment is the thing you've spent your whole career building.
Karen Swim, APR (04:31):
Yeah. And this is the perfect place to bust the biggest myth.
Michelle Kane (04:37):
Yes. So that myth, say it playing, Karen Swim.
Karen Swim, APR (04:41):
The myth we want to kill is experience is a liability now. And that myth... So what it's saying is that as you go further along in your career, it means you're slower, you're behind, you're less valuable in an AI world.
Michelle Kane (05:00):
No. And in truth, the reality is complete opposite.
Karen Swim, APR (05:05):
It really is. And so here's the logic for that. As these tools make the actual production of work nearly free or lower cost, whatever, the drafting, summarizing, first pass research, all of it, the thing that becomes scarce and valuable is judgment. Knowing what's worth doing, knowing what's true, knowing what will land with a reporter and what will blow up in a client's face.
Michelle Kane (05:39):
And that's the thing that experience buys you, knowing how to prompt so your quick and dirty graphic doesn't look like AI slop. You can't shortcut this stuff. You have to know it.
Karen Swim, APR (05:51):
You really cannot prompt your way to 30 years of pattern recognition. And the research backs us up in places you'd never expect. There was a study out of the University of Manheim that looked at workers at a BMW plan. And so this is a real physical demanding environment. And they found that productivity actually increased as workers got older right up to retirement.
Michelle Kane (06:21):
Wow. What do you think was driving that?
Karen Swim, APR (06:24):
Because the veterans know where to focus. They knew which problems were going to be expensive and they headed them off before they had fewer costly mistakes.
Michelle Kane (06:37):
That's the judgment. And that's exactly what you just said. And if I could add, Ford is going through this right now, hiring back their so - called gray beards.
Karen Swim, APR (06:47):
I'm seeing that here in Michigan in a lot of different companies. So you're absolutely right. And when I speak to those people that are being hired back and in demand and they want them to come back full-time. Some were retired and they're working 40, 50 hours a week. So that is real. And there was a study at North Carolina State that looked at software developers. Now you don't get any closer to that notion of a young person's game than software development, right?
Michelle Kane (07:21):
Right.
Karen Swim, APR (07:23):
But here is a surprise. The study found that the older programmers actually knew a wider range of topics, answered questions better, and in some cases were more adept with the newer systems.
Michelle Kane (07:40):
Well, sure, because they know all the ancient languages. And there we go again, the opposite of the stereotype.
Karen Swim, APR (07:48):
Yeah. I mean, the researcher's theory was basically if you're fluent in the old technology, like you just said, you understand the new technology better because you get what problem it's solving.
Michelle Kane (08:02):
Right. Now translate that to our world. If you've lived through the death of the press release as the only tool in our box, you understand exactly what an AI search result is trying to do.
Karen Swim, APR (08:16):
Yeah, exactly. And another piece that I love, it's about the mindset. There's research in a journal called Work, Aging and Retirement, and they found that older workers tend to see their late career more in terms of development than decline.
Michelle Kane (08:38):
I love that. Stick that on my forehead on a sticky note. Development, not decline. I
Karen Swim, APR (08:45):
Know. I love that too. That could honestly be our whole entire episode, right?
Michelle Kane (08:50):
Okay, great. So we're done. No, actually let's reframe this. AI can generate, as we've said this before, it can't judge, it can't discern. And the judgment and the discernment is the one thing that you and me and our listeners out there are spending their careers building.
Karen Swim, APR (09:08):
Yeah. So I want to just encourage all of our senior PR pros out there. And by senior, I mean senior level, not senior citizen, but senior in your career, that you're not behind the curve. You're holding the exact thing that the curve is racing toward.
Michelle Kane (09:30):
Yeah. Yep. So true. Okay. So let's frame this again. Let's get practical with it because I can hear someone saying, maybe it's me. That's great, but I still have 47 browser tabs of tools I'm supposed to learn. Where do I start?
Karen Swim, APR (09:48):
Yeah. Well, you don't need to learn everything. You need a filter and here's ours. Three buckets. Ignore, adopt and anchor.
Michelle Kane (10:00):
Love it. Start with ignore. Okay, that's it. We're done now. But I think that's the relief of it. There are some things we can ignore.
Karen Swim, APR (10:09):
That is the permission slip. So ignore. First thing that you can let go of the platform of the month. Every quarter there's a new app, everyone's panicking about. I can name a few, but it's been the flavor of the month, the flavor of the quarter. If it's actually durable, it'll still be there in a year and it'll be clearer and easier to learn.
Michelle Kane (10:38):
Right. So we don't have to be the early adopters. Let the early adopters be the beta testers and just ride it out. Looking at Euclip House. Yeah.
Karen Swim, APR (10:48):
So true. I mean, I agree. Let them have it. And then second, toll maximalism. You do not need 14 AI subscriptions. You just don't. One good capable assistant covers the overwhelming majority of what you actually do.
Michelle Kane (11:09):
Exactly. And third -
Karen Swim, APR (11:12):
You don't have to become a technologist. I think that scares a lot of people. Yeah. You never needed to understand how email worked under the hood to send an email. It's the same here. It's fluency, not engineering.
Michelle Kane (11:28):
Yeah. And I can think of a fourth actually that would be good to put into our prism is how they say, don't make any decisions out of fear. Well, I say we give you permission to ignore anything you're only doing out of fear. If the only reason that you're chasing this tool is that you're scared of being left behind, that's the noise getting to you. So don't let that happen. Adopt from your strategy without the panic that honestly, the people trying to sell us this stuff are instilling in we know this because sometimes we help create that urgency.
Karen Swim, APR (12:05):
That's true. Michelle, that was so beautifully said. And for anyone that's worried that opting out makes you a dinosaur in PR specifically, the holdouts are a tiny group. Muckrock's research found that only about 7% of PR pros say they don't use AI and they don't plan to. That's so tiny. So you can be selected in what you're using without being a holdout. There's a lot of room in between that 7% and the rest of the crowd.
Michelle Kane (12:46):
Yeah. Okay. So we've decided what we're ignoring. Yay. Now bucket number two, adopt.
Karen Swim, APR (12:53):
Yeah. These are the things that are genuinely worth your energy because they're not going away. So number one, baseline AI fluency, taking one good AI assistant, using it to research, draft a first pass, summarize a long document, or pressure test an idea before you bring it to a client. And there's just so many more uses.
Michelle Kane (13:15):
Yeah. And these are the table stakes right now. This is no longer exotic. It's a tool firmly in our arsenal right now for many of us.
Karen Swim, APR (13:25):
Absolutely. So the same muckrack research found about 76% of PR pros, they're already using generative AI, but mostly for writing and editing. So this is the mainstream of our profession now, not the frontier.
Michelle Kane (13:44):
Right, right. And now the second thing we should adopt is
Karen Swim, APR (13:49):
Understanding how people are actually finding information now. That's big. So the biggest real shift isn't a single tool. It's that audiences are increasingly getting answers straight from AI and from search instead of clicking through to a website. So we've talked about this here. That changes what credibility even looks like, and it changes what your clients need from you.
Michelle Kane (14:16):
And you don't necessarily have to execute all of this yourself, like we've said many times about many things.
Karen Swim, APR (14:23):
True. But you need to understand it well enough to advise a client intelligently and to know when to bring in a partner. And there's a lot of firms specializing just in AI visibility popping up. So here's the urgency that has nothing to do with your age. The old channels are getting harder for everyone. 72% of PR pros blame lower response rates from reporters and 62% point to shrinking media lists. Oh
Michelle Kane (14:55):
Yeah. I mean, the ground's been moving under all of us and it continues to do so. So a 28-year-old PR pro is dealing with the same shrinking media lists that a more seasoned advanced in years PR pro is dealing with. We're all literally on the same playing field for good
Karen Swim, APR (15:14):
And bad. We are actually. You are so right. And so adopting a few new approaches, that's not vanity. It's just the job no.
Michelle Kane (15:23):
Yeah, exactly. Well onto third bucket anchor. This is my favorites.
Karen Swim, APR (15:30):
So these are the things that you don't age out of. You actually get more valuable as the tools get cheaper. Your judgment, your relationships, the trust you've built over decades, that's a model that cannot reproduce your network, your storytelling and strategy and your ethics, knowing what not to publish, when to tell a client to stay quiet, how to catch the AI generated thing that is not confidently completely wrong.
Michelle Kane (16:04):
Yeah. And that last one is becoming a job all in itself.
Karen Swim, APR (16:09):
True story. True story. So here's the reframe for the whole framework. The new tools just handle the first draft. You handle the final judgment. That's one way to look at it. That's not a demotion. That's the senior seat. You've earned the editor's chair.
Michelle Kane (16:33):
Yep. Yep. Oh, absolutely. So now let's shift to talking about the inner dialogue for a minute because these tactics only work if your head's in the right place. Well, we talk to ourselves a lot during the day. Talking about myself, that could be a challenge.
Karen Swim, APR (16:48):
And I think we already said the first one, it's development not decline. Treat these last years as their own stage, not the long end where you're dragging your butt across the finish line. So if you were ever a marathon runner, this is not you're at mile 22 and 26 seems so far away. That's not it. You treat it like it's on stage and it has its own strengths, the perspective, the candor, the freedom to actually say what you think in a client meeting.
Michelle Kane (17:25):
There's such a liberty and a real to being at that point where you can just tell the client the truth.
Karen Swim, APR (17:31):
Huge gift. Huge gift. And that does not always come easily at 22. So the second mindset shift I think is, I won't try to say that one fast on air, that'll get us in trouble. But it's curiosity over mastery. You don't have to be the best at the new thing. You just have to stay curious enough to remain conversant.
Michelle Kane (18:04):
Yeah, define conversant within this context because I think people set the bar too high sometimes.
Karen Swim, APR (18:15):
Well, we're PR codes. We type As. That's what we do.
(18:17):
That's what we do. And so I'm going to say that the bar is you're never in a meeting where a term comes up and you have no idea what it means. Doesn't mean that you have to be the expert at it, but when somebody says AEO, you should know what that means. In the same way that we learned things like SEO. And we were not masters at SEO. We were not masters at Wikipedia. We were not masters at these things, but at least we had the familiarity with what it was and how it could play into what we did. That's not a very high bar.
Michelle Kane (18:56):
No, no. And you know what? Totally achievable and definitely takes the pressure off. I think we're always battling against feeling like we need to know everything about everything. Well, we don't.
Karen Swim, APR (19:08):
We really don't. So third thing, pick one tool, just one, and then go deep. So instead of 10 tools and being shallow and anxious, like I'm over here, I'm using Jasper and Perplexity and Chat and Claude and Gemini and Opus and Figma and Canva and Descript. My brain's going to blow up. One tool, just one tool. Depth in one beats a panic attack across many.
Michelle Kane (19:48):
So true and especially true for solos. You don't have to do it all yourself.
Karen Swim, APR (19:55):
Yeah. Partner, don't martyr.
Michelle Kane (20:00):
Okay. We have to get that branded on a sticker for Solo PR Pro.
Karen Swim, APR (20:05):
I'm on it.
Michelle Kane (20:07):
Partner, don't martyr. If there's an execution, heavy new tactic, bring in a younger pros when you can mentor or bring in a specialist. You've done this before with other things. We don't all design websites to their perfection. So we have people we work with. So you bring the strategy and the judgment. They bring the hands-on tooling. Everybody wins.
Karen Swim, APR (20:34):
Yeah. And here's the good news. Everyone is figuring this out at the same time. So the training gap is real across every age group. Most workers say they want more AI training than they've actually gotten. So you're not behind some class that already graduated. There is no class. We're all in the room together.
Michelle Kane (20:56):
Yeah. Yeah. And the last mindset piece, which kind of makes you really think about things. Wow.
Karen Swim, APR (21:04):
Legacy.
Michelle Kane (21:06):
Yeah, legacy. The mentoring, the coaching, the teaching, the writing, the things that light us up as we share our craft with those that are following behind us, that's not the consolation prize of winding down. And that's the way your judgment keeps compounding and really outlives your client roster.
Karen Swim, APR (21:25):
Yeah. At this stage, the experience that you have really is the product. And honestly, this is exactly what we built the Solo PR Pro community around having that private safe place to ask the questions you don't want to ask out loud and in front of a client or a prospect, especially the, wait, what is this saying? And do I even need it questions?
Michelle Kane (21:50):
And we've all asked those in the group.
Karen Swim, APR (21:53):
The point
Michelle Kane (21:54):
Is - What is that? The point is no one should have to navigate this stuff alone and no one should have to pretend that they've got it all figured out. And the good news is you don't have to.
Karen Swim, APR (22:07):
Yeah, that is the good news. So let's leave everybody with something they can actually do because I don't want anyone walking away inspired but stuck.
Michelle Kane (22:19):
Okay. Three things. Small ones.
Karen Swim, APR (22:23):
Okay. Pick one AI assistant, just one, and use it for one real task this week. Whether it's summarizing a long report, drafting a first pass of a pitch, pressure test a strategy, on task, not a course, not a certification, just one task.
Michelle Kane (22:42):
Excellent. Two, take your big scary, I'm supposed to learn all of this list and run it through our prism of the three buckets. Cross everything out that's in the ignore column and watch how much lighter that list gets and suddenly it feels more manageable and you might even be excited about it.
Karen Swim, APR (23:04):
I feel the weights just flying off my shoulders right now. So what's number three, Michelle?
Michelle Kane (23:10):
Three, have one conversation about partnering. Find one execution heavy thing that you keep avoiding and find a person to hand it to. Not to learn it, but to delegate it. And I think this is probably one of the hardest things I ever face in my career for sure.
Karen Swim, APR (23:31):
Here's a little secret about that delegation piece too. When you partner with someone else on another specialty service, you actually have a more robust set of services that you can sell. So don't sleep on that. Yeah. So the bottom line for anybody that's in this last stretch who's tired, staying relevant does not mean keeping up with everything. It means getting ruthlessly clear about the few things that are actually worth your energy.
Michelle Kane (24:08):
And trusting that the judgment that you spent a whole career building is exactly the thing this moment is short on.
Karen Swim, APR (24:18):
That's good. And that's our show. If this one resonated, do us a favor and share it with a fellow PR Pro who's navigating this stage. They really need to hear it.
Michelle Kane (24:29):
Yeah, make sure you subscribe to that Solo Life wherever you listen. Please leave us a review. We want to hear from you guys and come find us in the whole community at soloprpro.com.
Karen Swim, APR (24:40):
Yeah. And before we let you go, here's our question for you this week. What's the one thing you've decided to stop worrying about keeping up with? We'd love for you to tag us on social media or email us, and we might actually read it on a future episode.
Michelle Kane (24:58):
Awesome. And until next time, take care of yourselves.
Karen Swim, APR (25:03):
That's The Solo Life