Kelly Reynolds  

All right. Welcome to the Get Your Act Together podcast. I'm your host, Kelly Reynolds and today I have an exciting guest on our agency series. Welcome Caitlin, can you introduce yourself? Sorry, I'm running you right over in the beginning. Can you introduce yourself and tell everyone about your business?

 

Caitlin Copple Masingill  

Absolutely. I'm Caitlin Kapil Massengill and the founding partner at Full Swing PR, which is a PR agency. I started it in 2019, and began to scale it about a month before the pandemic hit. So it's been an interesting ride, we're coming up on our four-year anniversary and just had our first seven-figure year this year. So we're really excited to be among the 2% of women on businesses that do that.

 

Kelly Reynolds  

That's amazing. That's amazing. I can't wait to hear all about that. So what made you pick an agency, like what made you say PR agency is the way I want to go?

 

Caitlin Copple Masingill  

Oh, it was not that intentional. I actually just kind of built the business in a weekend after quitting my job at an agency and really just was aiming for like, low six-figure solopreneur life, you know, best case scenario, I had a two-year-old at the time and really wanted to be able to spend more time with him, and still be, you know, able to pay my bills, etc. But I had no ambition to actually build a business with employees until I started learning more about the plight of women in business, if you will. And I think beginning to realize who I was most passionate about working with our underrepresented leaders, so LGBTQ founders, BIPOC founders, folks who are often left out of the media conversation, and figuring out a way to elevate those stories and also grow an amazing team of underrepresented folks in even the PR industry was a cool way to go in a way to fulfill a kind of my personal mission, which I would say is to get women more money, more power and into positions of decision making in our country and our democracy. I love that, you know, to be able to do that. I love it.

 

Kelly Reynolds  

So what made you so what was the turning point for you? Then you said you were going to start out as this? You know, solopreneur? When did it become an agency? Like how did you get there? 

 

Caitlin Copple Masingill  

I would say that two factors really made me want to scale the agency. I think I'm also just the type of person that if someone tells me, I can't do it, then I want to do it like twice backward in high heels. You know, that's finality. And I think like, once I heard this stat that only 2% of women-owned businesses ever, you know, hit a million dollars or more in revenue. I was just horrified by that, because I just kind of decided to make it my new feminist challenge to do it. I also had the encouragement of a longtime friend who is building a law firm in multiple states with his wife and business partner. And I think they've been clients of ours for a long time, or since the beginning, basically, and watching their journey. And having Luke's encouragement definitely inspired me to go for it. I think the other thing was connecting with Rachael Rogers of Hello seven in spring 2020. And just really feeling like, okay, these are my people. Yeah, like, Yes, perhaps I'm not like a fortune 100 kind of PR firm. And that's okay with me. But I really, really like helping elevate underrecognized leaders, folks from historically marginalized populations so that they can tell their stories and begin to get themselves into the news media.

 

Kelly Reynolds  

I love this idea, like, PR marketing, it's so hard anyway, just like as a thing, those things are hard, especially when you have that mindset that you're a terrible marketer, or you don't know how to talk to people. So adding on all the other social economic reasons that it makes it extremely hard. Like, I love the fact that that is your thing.

 

Caitlin Copple Masingill  

Yeah, yeah. 35% of experts quoted in the news media, are women in this country, and you know that those are mostly straight, straight, white, you know, cisgender women, which just isn't okay with me, it doesn't reflect our communities. And it doesn't reflect democracy that I believe, you know, we are called upon to build as part of America's Promise, I'm very patriotic in my, in my core, I just love the ideals of this country. And it pains me that we're falling so short of this.

 

Kelly Reynolds  

I think that that's one of the one things I love most about this online world. I came from Wall Street. So it was very much especially 1015 years ago. It was white men doing everything. You know, women were the assistants. They were like one there was like one in higher level. But coming here, everyone's woman, woman. You don't I mean, like it's such a wonderful world to be in. Like when you get on meetings. There's a lot of faces that are just women and it's wonderful. Like it's such a different world that I then when I come came from incorporate I know what I mean.

 

Caitlin Copple Masingill  

I think it's just really power empowering to Think about how we can build things differently. And that's what I've really appreciated about the halo seven community is just having other folks in my orbit that I wouldn't otherwise meet without, you know, the power of the interwebs. And Rachael Rogers, like, I would never know that there were other people that felt this way, and like wanted to do things differently. And it's just been cool to sort of flout the conventional wisdom about what you have to do to build a business from, you know, zero in 2019 to $1.1 million this year. And I mean, we offer health care on day one, we offer three months paid parental leave, like we do the things that people say they can't afford to do, we have a dei coach, we invest in, you know, Rachael Rogers and her community as continuing education for ourselves. And, you know, we're still able to pay ourselves and pay our bills. So like, I do think it can be done differently. And it takes different people being in charge, to be able to bravely like power through that. And then, you know, be an example for others that want to want to build a different kind of capitalism and a different kind of world.

 

Kelly Reynolds  

So tell me more about this. Because I love this idea that you, you know, pay your people while and you take care of them. Because I feel like that is not the norm. Right? 

 

Caitlin Copple Masingill  

Most of the businesses will be better. I think for me, like there's a woman I like love to follow at noon Chianti Nicholas, she's an astrologer, and has a free app. And I highly recommend it if you're into that sort of thing. But she's also queer. And she's built this incredible business that has $80,000 minimum wage, and I think that is so badass. Like, I mean, we're not at that level yet. But we are paying a living wage, and we have an internship program and start all of our interns at $20 an hour, which makes them very happy, and you know, is is important and good. And we definitely pay a competitive wage. And I think where we've struggled, honestly, is with paying ourselves, myself and business co owner, you know, Holly, we all have always had to pay ourselves something. But I don't know that we've always paid ourselves what we are worth, right. But that's part of having skin in the game and in growing and scaling. So

 

Kelly Reynolds  

I think that's an interesting mindset, because I feel like some people are just gonna take all the money for themselves, and then like, shortchange everyone else. Or the other side of that is I'm gonna pay all of my people even if I don't pay myself. Even if it's not enough, you don't I mean, I feel like there's Yeah, I

 

Caitlin Copple Masingill  

can we. And it does. I mean, I think the thing that people don't talk about enough probably is like, oh, man, it would be so cool to make a million dollars. And yes, it is cool. And it feels great pat myself on the back. However, it is very different than me personally taking home million dollars, or Holly and I splitting a million dollars, right? That is not the world in which we live. It is also easy to spend a million dollars on staff and on you know, all the things. And so I do think like it's important to talk about profitability to like in the professional services world that we're in as agencies like 40% and 50%. Profit margins are what typical accountants will tell you to shoot for. I'm pretty comfortable with like 20 to 30%. Because I want to be like a good person and like have a business that I feel like is fulfilling, you know, our values and our social mission as well. And I want us to build a say, say yes. Or say no to things that matter to me, even if they're not necessarily like the bottom line choice, right?

 

Kelly Reynolds  

Yeah. So when you say, when you say like that 20 30%? Is that after you guys pay yourselves and your people? Right? Well, it depends. Because

 

Caitlin Copple Masingill  

usually, when you have, you know, an S corp, which is what we became after we became business partners and transition from like a traditional LLC, we take a salary that is low on paper, and then we pay ourselves owners drawers, right? So the owner guys can come out of the profitability, guys. Sure.

 

Kelly Reynolds  

Yeah. Like this is all the little stuff that no one really tells you about in the beginning, right, like, and then somebody says, You should go get an S corp. And that doesn't explain why were they like a lot of people like I got my S corp, I have no idea why or I don't know what I'm supposed to do. So that's why I asked her like,

 

Caitlin Copple Masingill  

you have more than $60,000 a year in profit. So for example, that first year I was in business, I did like 136, right? And it was just me. So my expenses were very, very low. And so of course, I had more than $60,000 in pure profit. And so I ended up paying a ton of taxes because I was not an S corp yet. I was kind of okay with that. Because I think in my mind at that time, like just saving 15 to 20%. And knowing it was gonna go away, made me feel safer than you know, dealing with like a bunch of accountants and stuff simply made sense for us to you know, find an accountant partner that worked well with us and, you know, invest in a bookkeeping team, which actually is not that expensive, in my opinion for how much stress they removed from your rights.

 

Kelly Reynolds  

It was like, I don't want to pay for that. But it's so off your plate.

 

Caitlin Copple Masingill  

It can be really freeing, I think to do that. And just, you know, just like if you're somebody that you know, like I think a lot of women like we inhaled this belief that we're like bad at math, right and then we're not good at finance. We're bad with money and just trying to dip a toe into reprogramming that belief if you will, like whether it's you know, listening to personal finance podcasts, whether it's, you know, actually going and getting a finance Digital advisor for yourself in your business. Yeah, um, you know, all of those things are really important reading books like profit first. Like I think it's very understandable even if that's not the system that ends up working for you. My business partner Holly is also obsessed with this guy red meat to know who I'm talking about. But he's big on Instagram. I feel like if you Google money and revenue, it will come. It will come to you.

 

Kelly Reynolds  

I don't know that when that's good. I've been listening to a lot of Brooke Castillo because she just talks about making money and being rich. And yeah, like, it's just normal. And we're in business. And we're supposed to make you money. Because that's it's not a hobby. So yeah, I totally get that like, being okay with it like I am. I'm good at talking about numbers. And a lot of people are not. And in fact, last week, or the last interview, not last week on this podcast was Luisa Alberto. And she is a Finance Agency for women. Oh, cool. And it was such like, I love her. And I want to talk to her about money all the time. Because it's that, like, it's so empowering. When you know what's happening. When you're not scared about it? Yeah, you know, yeah.

 

Caitlin Copple Masingill  

Yeah. And I think, you know, one of the things that Hello seven talks a lot about is the idea of million dollar decisions, like, what are what are the decisions that a millionaire would make? And how can you, you know, at least dip a toe in making those decisions for yourself. So I think oftentimes, for women, it's like, okay, what can I just take off my plate? Like, how can I buy my time back? Because if I'm not cleaning my house, and I'm not, you know, doing my own laundry, like, that's more money, I can spend, you know, developing myself or building my business.

 

Kelly Reynolds  

Yeah, or just chilling the eff out, like some days, especially like, yoga. Like, I just want to sit quietly, somewhere without anyone talking to me for half an hour like that, to me, sometimes it's just self care. That's like, you know, being able to get myself my brain back to a working place where I can think again and create new things for the business. Yeah, not getting a lot of that, right. You have, you have children, I do. I have a nine year old son, and his birthday, and then there's Halloween, and then there's the holidays, and I feel like the fall all of a sudden becomes a blur. And I fight very hard to keep my sanity through all of that, like, what's business, you know, that like whole workforce balance, or workplace balance? Or what like, all of that kind of stuff where, you know, you preach? I have to get my life together, I have to breathe, and then you get in the middle, and you're like, how did I get here? How is it such a mess? And I feel like that's where we are this week?

 

Caitlin Copple Masingill  

Yeah, yeah, I've got a six year old. So it's a it's fun. Sometimes I do miss when they take multiple naps a day. But now he's in school.

 

Kelly Reynolds  

So get on break. So all right. So tell me about your team. What does that look like? All employees? How many are there? What 

 

Caitlin Copple Masingill  

Yeah, so we have five full time, w two employees at the moment, we have been as big as 10. We are in hiring mode right now for two to three positions, it looks like so we're I think part of growing a business is also that it always feels like the business like a child is growing out of its clothes. And so you know, like for my son who is six, I'm constantly wanting to buy a size eight to 10 clothes, because he's also a big six year old, but he also grows really fast. And I think it's kind of similar with like figuring out who to hire, because I'm trying to think of like, who are we going to need three to six months from now, that can also fill the gaps that are like, you know, keeping me up at night, right now.

 

Kelly Reynolds  

You're gonna have to hire them, you have to like figure out who to hire, then you have to hire them, then you have to train them. That's a couple months, totally, or you can like, Here you go. So you have to know who you're going to need in a couple months to prepare them, like reverse engineering.

 

Caitlin Copple Masingill  

And I just remember even you know, from my own life, like whenever I had a new job, like prior to starting my own business, I felt like it takes you like three to six months to really get your feet under you. You feel competent, and not just feel that like achiness in your brain. That means it's growing as you're absorbing all of the information. So it's a lot. Yeah. And so I'm hopeful that we will be growing as we get into q1 Because we've we've sold a lot of services this quarter, which is great. Now we have to deliver those services.

 

Kelly Reynolds  

Isn't that funny? Like how this online world, this like, small business, it moves so much faster, like one year in online businesses, like 10 years, I feel like in real life

 

Caitlin Copple Masingill  

and that way for you too, because I feel the same.

 

Kelly Reynolds  

Right? Like all of a sudden you're like, Wait, how did this all happened in a month? And trying to plan for that? So like how, how do you plan for that? Like how do you look six months out when six months seems like 10 years and try to figure out what you need so that you can hire the person you're going to need like you've sold all these things and you have to deliver and then figuring out the resources like how do you plan over the next do you plan one? Yeah, how far out do you plan and what does that look like?

 

Caitlin Copple Masingill  

Yes. So we have a one three and five your vision for the company. And I will tell you I feel a lot more confident about the one year than anything else because it just changed so much. You know, I'll get back at what or, you know, even our one year plan was for this year and it changed tremendously. We're also sticklers about SOPs, so standard operating procedures, and we my favorite of loom videos for all time, I feel bad for whoever asked to read them someday or watch them rather. But they are I think the infrastructure of the business and make it much easier to onboard people. So I see the wisdom of our operations manager and making us do this. She's also invested in our operations manager who's a total rock star and put her through the opposite authority program. Have you heard Oh,

 

Kelly Reynolds  

yeah, do Oh, I'm gonna do Oh, oh, cool.

 

Caitlin Copple Masingill  

Okay. Yeah, I was like, I love SOPs, perhaps you are. So should we put her through that certification program, and it's just been really huge. She walked Holly, my business partner and I through this strategic mapping exercise. And then we were able to do that with our full team a couple weeks ago when we had our in person retreat. So we're an all remote team. We live in basically three states at the moment, Washington, Idaho, and New York. And so we were all together in upstate New York picking up on nice photos, and also working. And it was great. And so we did a lot of planning at that time, which was, which was great. Looking ahead to this next year.

 

Kelly Reynolds  

That's amazing. I may have been her strategic mapping coach I was in for a long time. That's funny. I don't know what's wrong. She wasn't but I might have been her coach.

 

Caitlin Copple Masingill  

I feel like she finished this summer. That might that might

 

Kelly Reynolds  

have been me. Oh, that is so I'd have to look it up. Make sure. That's really funny. Yeah, it's a great program. And like that idea of like the strategic mapping, and then the strategy and the running of it. Yeah, that's awesome. It's awesome.

 

Caitlin Copple Masingill  

If anyone like listening is at that kind of six figure level where maybe you're relying a lot on contractors. I think the single like most game changing thing that we did to get on the path to seven figures with hiring an operations manager. So

 

Kelly Reynolds  

see people's operations. I'm like, the like the biggest preacher of operations and systems and keeping everything running well. And yeah, so here you go. Here's from a client side. Talking about that kind of stuff. Yeah. I mean, I did a podcast a couple weeks ago, it was all about like, everybody thinks they need leads. And then if they get a whole bunch of leads, their whole business would break because nothing else is running. Well. Yeah. And they can't handle anything. And then it's a mess. And then there's some poor VA trying to piece everything together. And no one knows what's going on. And there's like a, there's just someone in the corner crying like,

 

Caitlin Copple Masingill  

yeah, so yeah, I mean, it was interesting. So Holly, and I actually we've skimped on our own kind of assistant support, because we really wanted to make it work with the ops manager. And then of course, I think it's a great rule of thumb, if you have someone who's a top performer, you hire them and assistant, which is essentially what we did for a hot minute, this person is also very talented. So she's kind of been a wonderful floater, in terms of doing what we need at the moment. But yeah, it's just that operations core, I think is huge. Especially if you know, at some point you think you might want to sell your agency, you have to have those systems in place. And yes, so do you actually have something to sell? Because a book of business is great, and you need that too, but it's not enough? I don't think I think you need like a three legged stool. You know,

 

Kelly Reynolds  

I totally agree. I mean, like, if someone's gonna buy a business, they want the business, like the running of everything to keep running. And if everything's in your head, then you know, you can't buy that. Like it needs to be out of their heads. Yeah, totally. Love it, or God forbid you get hit by a bus, you know? Well, that's it. I mean, you're saying the things I love right now, because this is what I've been preaching and preaching and preaching. We do systems and setting up dashboards and all this kind of stuff. Because it's so important. And it's like, not the sexiest thing. Like I'm sure like building Funnels is sexier. But like, it's super important to making money. Yeah,

 

Caitlin Copple Masingill  

when you can't really effectively measure whether or not your funnel is working, if you don't have a KPI dashboard, in my opinion. I mean, I think it's really like important as so we built out a new offer that's called our make headlines, PR accelerator. And it's basically a six week program where we deliver a lot of quick wins for clients in a short amount of time and give them a taste of what it's like to have us on retainer. It's a great way to like lay the foundation for your PR if you can't afford, you know, traditional kind of 12 month retainer agreement, which is the bulk of our clients. But also it can be a great way to just test and see if it's a good fit and see if you want to go down the retainer route. So I say all that just for two reasons. One, you know, as we launched that new product, it was really important for Holly and me to deliver it ourselves. We are just now starting to step back from delivering it because we've perfected delivering it you know, we have a lot of wins. We've have a lot of testimonials. We have happy clients, and now we can train our team how to do it the way that we would do it which is huge in terms of scaling as an offer. I think the other reason it's important is going back to the KPIs, this is like you really want to be able to show people what they're getting back from their investment with you. And PR can just be kind of nebulous, you know, it can be like, Oh, it's the secret sauce, but it's all who they know. And their Rolodex or whatever the virtual equivalent of that is. And that's really not what it is. I mean, Holly used to produce live TV, I used to be a print journalist, and it's really about knowing what is newsworthy, I think and being able to make reporters lives easier and deliver them a well packaged, you know, sustained story, because that's what they're ultimately looking for. And there's so much turnover in the media to like, even if you have context, like the odds that they're going to still be there in a year, are not great. So we've had clients and you know, all of the kind of household name top tier publications, and it's not because of any special, you know, secret relationship that we have, we built relationships, but it's because we deliver good pitches.

 

Kelly Reynolds  

I love what you said before about we've perfected this, first, we've gotten results, we can prove it works, then we step back. And I feel like that is so important to say and like highlight, because I think a lot of people want to build it, and then just pass it off to people without any of that testing. There's some something, there's a lot of advice out there, let's say that you don't need to be doing any of the work just to have your team run everything. And I think that you should saying that is so important. You need to figure out if it works, you need to be able to deliver those results. And then you can deliver that to the team. And then you can teach the team how to do it. But you can't expect your team to know how to do all this stuff. Because that's what you do. Right?

 

Caitlin Copple Masingill  

Yeah, I mean, you have to be able to cast your vision. And I think you have to be able to boil down your approach to solving whatever problem you solve for your clients, you have to be able to boil those down into a series of SOPs, right might not be the person that has to teach every person every time, but you have to somehow download your brain so that your ops person can train them. And I think you have to be able to as a leader, know what your blind spots are, so that you can hire around those like, I am not an ops person, I have nothing but respect for ops people. And I absolutely knew that we needed an ops person. And we needed one that was going to work for us. And so we got that. And she's been, you know, transformational for the business.

 

Kelly Reynolds  

So amazing. That's awesome. I'm all about the ops. Love it. I love it. 

 

Caitlin Copple Masingill  

 And quite often people need ops before they need PR too, because I will tell you like this hasn't happened so much now because I think we've gotten better at targeting kind of the right people for our who will benefit the most from working with us. But like earlier on in their business, even like six months ago, a year ago, like we would get people coming to us for PR help. And I'm like, Oh no, you need an executive coach, or you need an ops person. Because you know, the last thing we want to do is blow you up and get you you know, and then your times and then your website crashes. Because you don't have any way to like deal with leads or capture them or,

 

Kelly Reynolds  

you know, you get 100 leads and email list. Yeah, well, you can call them back or you can deliver it even if you want it to. Right,

 

Caitlin Copple Masingill  

totally. And then people are like PR doesn't work looks like well actually slept with business and something, you know, an offer that already. So

 

Kelly Reynolds  

yeah, like if you it doesn't matter how many leads come in, if you can't sell the thing and deliver it? Well, yeah, it doesn't matter, you will start you will not make money. Everyone will hear how you are terrible at whatever you do, because you can't get it done for each time. Totally. So what is? So you're talking about, like, kind of honing in on your clients? How do you get clients? And how have you honed that? Is it your messaging that you've honed better to get more qualified clients?

 

Caitlin Copple Masingill  

Yeah, I think that's such a good question. And something that, you know, all business owners that I know are continually refining. I mean, it's a lot has been through our networks. That has, I think when once I started the business, it was clear to me like people did want to work with me. And even if they hadn't worked with me at a previous agency that I did not own, they actually didn't want to work with me. And so that was really empowering. I mean, I walked away with one client and had three more, I think, by the end of two weeks, that first, you know, weekend that I started my business essentially. So it was very empowering. And I think that network has really shown up for me, but it's also changed as we've changed and grown and raised our prices and all of the things that come along with like, you know, perfecting your business model and growing your team. So now I would say a ton of our leads and who become clients are actually referrals. So word of mouth, from previous clients, folks that we meet from our networks from the Rachael Rogers community that we're a part of from other, you know, trainings or conferences that we've been to board service that we've done, that sort of thing. And we've only really just in June and perfecting our online funnel. So actually investing in ADS. We didn't always take our own advice because it can be hard when you're, you know, in startup mode, like just carve out 10% of your gross and spending that on your own, which is what I would tell any claim to do. Right? But did I do that myself? Not always. I did invest in operations though. We've kind of we've gotten that not cracked or whatever. And so now we can go back and do our own marketing better. I think we've also done a good job of freeing up Holly and me to work on the business instead of being so mired in the business and working with clients all the time. Because now we feel like our team can do more of that. And so now we are investing, we spend at least two grand a month on Facebook ads, essentially online ads. We're beginning to dabble in YouTube, we're starting our own podcast, you'll have to come be on mine. And q1 in January sometime, so yeah, so we're, you know, we're starting to do more of that content creation and perfecting kind of our own funnel to get folks in the door. Got it?

 

Kelly Reynolds  

Yeah, I think that's always like an interesting way of like, especially when you have when you when you're by yourself, or you have long term retainer clients, and then they slap that was us we've had I've two clients we had since 2016. Like, they've just been here forever, you know, so there wasn't a lot of I didn't have a funnel built. I didn't have to do ads, like, and we've been rebuilding and re changing sort of word, but you don't I mean, changing things for a little while. And so I'm always fascinated, like, is it ads? Is it network? Is it how are you building that? And then getting that messaging, right, because I mean, that's your thing, right? The opposite is my thing. But the messaging is your thing, I think is important.

 

Caitlin Copple Masingill  

And I think it's also got to be a fit between whatever your offer is, including, like, if it's a freebie, right? Are you doing a free webinar, which was a strategy, a lot of people were doing six to 12 months ago, I feel like and we just determined, like our people are too busy to sit on a webinar, they might listen into one on demand, but like they are running, you know, three to $5 million businesses in general, right? They're not going to background so chances are they have other obligations or caring for elders or caring for babies or, you know, something in between. They're just they don't have a lot of time. And so we've really been trying to figure out, like, what are those done for you services that we are really good at providing and that do get people results that we can do at a no brainer price point to get them in the door. So we did our first page challenge, which was really fun around writing and pitching your first guest column, your first piece of thought leadership, and had a great little cohort of folks for that, I still think that was a little too time intensive for the folks that we really want to get. But we've had a few people, you know, by our next offer, basically based on that challenge, and then we're running a challenge in January, that's going to be around building your PR plan for 2023, which I think will be really helpful. In So yeah,

 

Kelly Reynolds  

that sounds awesome. Yeah, I'm finding that with like my coaching clients and my other colleagues, like there is a switch from we everyone wants to save money and do all that stuff. But it's not as much DIY for the people that we want to work with. Like, I feel like a lot of the DIY stuff is for people that are starting out that are not going to get the retainer or the package or whatever. And the people that really need our help right now need that done for you thing, they don't want me to teach them how to make an SOP, they want me to do the damn SOP and they're not. And they're like, I can't find anybody. I don't I don't have big ticket clients, or I don't have these. And I'm like, but you're not talking to them either. Yeah, yeah.

 

Caitlin Copple Masingill  

And I think it's, it's important to also remember that, like, if this seems hard, let's because it is hard. And yes, I do messaging ways to Sunday for other people. But you can get really too close to your business. And it's helpful to have, you know, outside help I even outsourced. I actually hired a publicist for myself, because I was like, I don't have time to do this for myself, I could do it for myself, but I was too busy delivering for clients. But I knew at the same time, if we really wanted to grow our email list and grow our reach, I'm moving into 2023 I needed to be showing up in other places to do that. So

 

Kelly Reynolds  

yeah, it's like sometimes you just need someone outside looking in, right? Like, you can't, you can't. It's hard. Like I was a strategic mapping coach. And it's, like hard for me to look at business and be like, oh, yeah, because I'm gonna tell myself the exact thing I already thought so why am I like, it's very hard to work yourself through. And you kind of need that person to challenge you. Yes. Yeah, that's all you really said. Did you hear reset, if you like to map it out? Right. So what is your day look like? What is at this point in this four year journey? Like where? What is your day your week look like? What are you spending time on? Is it marketing is IT ops is a client's delivery? team management, what does that look like?

 

Caitlin Copple Masingill  

Yeah, so it still is not as consistent As I would like, and that's partly because we did create a new offer in June, which is the accelerator that I was mentioning earlier, that has kind of become a big focus for Holly and me because it's a way to keep our pipeline for our retainer work full. And so I think from that same point, I'm still doing client delivery. I am also not working myself into the ground, which is great. I, we had a busy, we had a busy quarter. But like, for example, today, I got up about 615 made my coffee read the paper because I still get the old school local paper. I love it. Did the Wordle you know, pumpkin pancakes, you know, like from scratch, I do really like to cook. It's not really that hard. But sounds impressive. 

 

Kelly Reynolds  

Pancakes aren't as hard.

 

Caitlin Copple Masingill  

Sounds cool, you know, and I walked it put the little dotson he's around here somewhere in his little hoodie, his red little puffy coat, and we walked to school, and it's very charming, you know, and it's like, it's a great life. And then I settle in, and it was like, 9:15, and my time and I was like, Oh, I gotta be on the podcast, but or make my matcha. And then I was ready for you. And so this is like the way I'm beginning my day, which is really quite lovely. So I barely looked at my email so far. And, you know, I'll be done by 3:40 to go pick up my son and take him to jujitsu. And usually while he's there either to work in the lobby, or I will go do it run by the Boise River. So it's good.

 

Kelly Reynolds  

Nice. Yeah, I love it. And so do you. Do you want to be out of client work? I feel like so many people tell us we have to. But do you want to be?

 

Caitlin Copple Masingill  

I don't you know, I think it's about like, do I want to be I want to be in relationship with our clients, I want to be guiding their strategy. I do not want to be doing quite as much execution for our clients. Yes. Understood. And I think that's where it's like, okay, I'm writing social posts for this client for a month, like, is that the highest and best use of my time? No. However, is there anyone else who can do it? No, this moment, because everyone's busy doing other things. So, you know, we definitely, like I said, we're in hiring mode. And I think capacity wise, it's going to shake out a little bit better even going into January. But yes, there are still days when I'm doing stuff that I'm like, really? Why am I doing this that totally makes someone else do this. But I also you know, I'm working pretty much nine to four ish. And then you know, once a while I do have to catch up early in the morning or on Saturday morning or something. But it's um, I definitely do not feel burnt out every day, I wake up and feel absolutely in love with my job. And I think a lot of that is testament to Holly too, and having a business partner, because I like to call her my work wife. Because we have each other you know, and so it's very, it's a lot easier to take breaks, I think when all the pressure is not on you all the time. And we can kind of share tha weight.

 

Kelly Reynolds  

Oh, yeah, yeah, I mean, that must be lovely. I don't know, I don't know how I would deal with a partner. I like to talk. I like everything on my own. But that must be lovely. Like, right now I feel like everything like I am the buck stops here, right? Like I have a team, they're dealing with things. But there's been like a whole bunch of chaos with clients and all this kind of stuff. And it's like, I end up jumping in because I want to make sure what's going on I wanna make sure everyone's taken care of. And it's not like they couldn't. But there's some times I'm the only one who knew about a thing five years ago, because we have these really old clients. So really, yeah, I feel like this last couple weeks have been jumping in and be like, No, I know how to do that. And I was like, I don't know what's going on. Like, yep, seven years ago, we had a thing and but you know, yeah, but I mean, I'm glad that it's so nice to hear someone say I'm not burned out. This is lovely. I love my job. Because I feel like especially when you're working from home, you can tend to just have a run on life where everything blurs together and you don't have work and you don't have family. Everything is like there's a laptop and a kid and a dog and all the things at the same time. I do have two dogs,

 

Caitlin Copple Masingill  

then that's all right here in this office right now.

 

Kelly Reynolds  

Find out because he cries the whole time he wants me to let him out. So if I'm if I'm recording a podcast, you've got to get kicked out. Because otherwise he'll just sit there and he talks. Yeah, we'll be quiet about it. You'll just hear him talking the whole time. He's out. Yeah,

 

Caitlin Copple Masingill  

it is hard. It's, I mean, it's a balance. Because I think you know, as the folks who have kind of birthed these businesses, like of course we're attached to them. And we want the client work to be really excellent. And I think getting comfortable with like the inevitable failure, which often I will say, like what looks like a failure to me is barely noticeable to a client and easily fixable by the team. And so I've had to let go of my own need to control everything, to just let them figure it out and let them grow. And remember, like, Well, when I was in my 20s, like I had bosses that, you know, for whatever reason, didn't they let me fail to you and that's why I got to do what I do today. So I think we all have to just be a little bit more comfortable with not being perfectionist, right. folks learn

 

Kelly Reynolds  

that I feel like it's one of the hardest thing For agency, anyone who comes to me for coaching, anyone who talks about agency, it's always about how do you let other people talk to my stuff? How did you kind of get over that? How did you let people in and deal with clients and talk to people? Like, how did you what? Well, I guess I should start out by saying Was it hard? Was it easy?

 

Caitlin Copple Masingill  

A lot of is just about being able to be vulnerable as a leader and like, own your shadow side. And like, I'm an Enneagram, eight, which, if you know anything about the Enneagram, that's like the worst one, really, in some ways. It's like this world world domination, personality. Sometimes people call us eight holes, and they're not wrong. So yeah, we can be really like Not fun bosses, and sure, and not great, you know, friends and partners, etc. So I think like, you know, just knowing what is the shadow side of your personality is important. Because once you integrate, it can really be part of your superpower, really, because I mean, I'm Yes, I am bossy. However, that also means I have executive leadership skills. And it also means that I was able to build this amazing thing that I'm really proud of, you know, and that I am able to inspire people to join in on this vision that I have for this business. So yes, I also should not, you know, be an asshole. It's all balanced. But I do think like that partner in our team is really into the the will. We've had business astrology readings for the team, like, which are all based around my chart, because I'm the one that like, initiated the thing. So then it's all about, like how our charts interact with each other. So that's fascinating. We do the Enneagram. We do strength finder, we do disk. That's our latest one. I'm a D shocking. But we actually haven't totally balanced team, we have somebody that's an i and s an A C. So we're very balanced. It's amazing.

 

Kelly Reynolds  

Yeah.

 

Caitlin Copple Masingill  

So it's really great.

 

Kelly Reynolds  

I haven't done this. I try to remember I did the Strength Finders, but I didn't really research it. Oh, it's awesome to my coach was big in the Enneagram. So I learned a lot about being a six because she was a six. And we like to worry about everything. Like, we haven't been everything. She's so good at her job. Well, that's it, I kind of learned that it's like, well, you can worry about everything because you want to think through everything. Or you can take it and like say no, well, I have a plan for now everything. Because as soon as someone starts talking about it, like I realize my brain starts calculating the project plan for it. Like, okay, what are all the contingencies we need to think about like, and that's great when you're a mom, and you're leaving the house, and you need to have like extra clothes for your kid because they're just gonna be muddy, or, like all those little things that drive me nuts. I've started to recalibrate that in my head like, no, no, no, you're really good at this. That's why you're good at your job. That's why you can look at something and know what the team should be. Or how should we should do the opposite. And those kind of things about your personality, like learning that about you, and then you can kind of re frame it to not be like instead of me being a crazy warrior, I'm just really prepared.

 

Caitlin Copple Masingill  

Yeah, exactly. So like learning that was great. Or you can ask, you know, the part of you that can be more neurotic to just like thank you for your service. Now you can step back for a second because I got this.

 

Kelly Reynolds  

Yeah, I'm still working on that part. Because

 

Caitlin Copple Masingill  

honor so ourselves. And like, anytime you do therapy, and you do personal work, I think it helps you grow your business. So

 

Kelly Reynolds  

I think like growing your business, it's almost impossible not to do personal work.

 

Caitlin Copple Masingill  

Totally. Yeah. I mean, everything we've learned from the other folks who are in our kind of Hello, seven mastermind for seven figure business owners, like everybody that's like, the main advice is like, go to therapy, engage in self care. Right? Like, okay, well, that's I didn't expect that to be what my life looks like, for the next five years. But okay, because I think we're so conditioned that, like, work is hard. And people that get ahead and America are slaving away from, you know, seven in the morning till 10 at night. And that's like, we have this like tech, bro, you know, image in our mind of like, what it means to be a successful business owner. And it's really not true, or it's really doesn't have to be true. So I'm doing it differently, and building a healthier system for everyone.

 

Kelly Reynolds  

What is the biggest mistake you think you've made? As you're building your business? Because I think a lot of people think you were saying before failing is great. Because you need to learn from your failures. Yeah, and I don't ever like to fail. Like, that's part of me. I'm like, no, no, I'm gonna, you know, that's a hard thing for me to remember is like, it's okay to mess up. Because you're learning from that the only way you're gonna learn it. And most of the time I feel like when I mess up is usually whether there's a problem. It propels me forward so much faster. So is there a mistake that really helped you learn so much in your agency?

 

Caitlin Copple Masingill  

Oh, yes, there's lots of mistakes, I'm sure. The fee magically, like they're all kind of connected, right. So like, one is probably around pricing like under charging and like waiting a bit too long to charge people what you're worth because you're trying to get up the guts to like, have that conversation with your older clients, especially who've been with you so hard. Um, you know, I don't think anyone looks forward to that conversation. You know, no matter where you are in your business. I think boundaries are also important as when you're working in a retainer kind In a way, and does not, you know, I actually have been thinking of this note that resist the urge to solve client problems for free, is like on my computer right now. Because like I do, I just like problem solving is my love language. And I just really want to make sure that folks are successful. This is something that is rewarded and work life, more so than in your personal life, it turns out, but I really like to solve people's problems, because I can see how much better their life would be if they would just listen to me. But there's all kinds of problems with that. It's It's unfortunate, really. So yes, boundaries around all of that is, I think, really important. And then the other thing that has been hard is like hiring friends, or just like getting to really like people that work for you. And then having to make a change, I think, finding that balance between, you know, folks who we have a lot of folks that want to work for us, which is a great problem to have, because of our mission, right, and because of our commitment to anti racism and LGBTQ equality, etc. But it's can be very hard, I think, to, to really care about someone as a human or be friends with them, and then have to make a change for the good of the organization. So

 

Kelly Reynolds  

I feel like the hiring, that kind of thing is always so hard. I feel like those are the biggest mistakes in the beginning, at least, my first couple hires, they were lovely people, but they were like the worst hires in the world. Like I had no idea what they were doing. I didn't they were a bad fit. And then I was I was mad, they weren't psychically knowing exactly what I wanted to do. And they weren't perfect. You don't like all that kind of stuff. So I know we're getting we're almost out of time here. So I want to ask one last question. It's rare, because I have a lot of people that are coming to me thinking about agency. I've been talking about us for a while. And there's not a lot of people out there talking about that. And they kind of come in, they're like, Well, I'm thinking of starting an agency. And I'm always like, Are you sure? And because it's it's not easy? Because business isn't easy, right? So what do you think one of the most important considerations is if you want to start an agency, like what do you think? Do you need something in particular? Is there something you need to think about, that you should have on your hands? What do you think is like one of them?

 

Caitlin Copple Masingill  

Yeah, I mean, I think that you need to have some clients before you start or a trust fund, probably, but you need to have some kind of revenue, some kind of business model that works, you need to be selling something that people want to buy, I think the more you can niche down the better. So really focusing on who you want to work with, and only talking to them is a very smart way to go. And I think you also have to be really comfortable with sales. Because at the end of the day, if you're successful, like your role is increasingly going to be like paying the bills, you're not going to be the person like pitching Time magazine, or whatever, you know, like if you're in my, in my world, it's funny. Sometimes it can be kind of fun, because I'm like, Oh, um, you know, I still got it. I can still pitch stuff and get success, or people look at this thing I just wrote, but you know, by and large, like I'm responsible for selling and for, you know, casting the vision that's gonna take us to the next level.

 

Kelly Reynolds  

Yeah. And I think that's, that was a bigger surprise. I think. When I as I was growing, that I, as I got out of more of the day to day, which was great, because it's, you know, there was lots of chaos and clients, businesses, and I couldn't do all of that. Yeah, like the idea of that it was shifting so much towards sales and marketing. And I was like, oh, did I did I want to do this? Like, yeah, like, did I want to be this person all the time making videos? So yeah, I think that's a interesting. Yeah. Like, when you get to that point, things change?

 

Caitlin Copple Masingill  

Totally. I think the other thing that is important to think about is like, how do you really feel about scaling? And, you know, why do you want to scale and what number is kind of the number for you, because really, when we when we think about what we want our lives to look like, after we exit this business, or just draw salary from it, or, you know, whatever that might look like, like, you have to get to two to $3 million to be taken seriously for purchase by another acquisition by another. So I think it's just, you know, are you do you have the stomach to do that. There will be times when your life isn't super chill, and you may feel burnt out, you know, like I had strep throat a couple of weeks ago, it was definitely related to overworking. However, this week is great, you know, and we're hiring some people and it's all gonna be fine. And I would say, by and large, like, my life truly is great. And I feel absolutely in love with this business. And I've always been the kind of person that like, what work work work, or whether I was working for someone else or myself if I needed to. And this has been the owning my own business has felt like the most balanced or integrated way of being in the world for my personality.

 

Kelly Reynolds  

Yeah, I think that the funny thing is like, we're in business. So it's like so much on us, but at the same time we get to dictate what it is. Yeah, yeah. I can't imagine going back and having a corporate job at this point, like having someone tell me how to be somewhere all day every day, like commuting. Like, there's no way my brain just can't do that anymore.

 

Caitlin Copple Masingill  

Yeah, yeah. I like to say I'm totally unemployable. So I gotta make this work. Right.

 

Kelly Reynolds  

When there's, there's this large clients a whole saga this year, but one of my long, long older clients. They sold business over the summer. And it's just been chaos. And I'm like, everyone's like, Would you ever go back to work? And I was like, I would literally dig ditches and said, like, there's no way just in my backyard, just digging ditches and filling back in and like, I can't go back. I kick it back. Yeah, Caitlin, this has been fantastic. Thank you so much for being on the podcast today. Can you tell everyone where they can find you?

 

Caitlin Copple Masingill  

Sure, yeah, we're at Full Swing PR on Instagram and www.fullswingpr.com. I also am pretty active on LinkedIn and Twitter. So you can definitely find me as a real human there.

 

Kelly Reynolds  

awesome. And we will put all this information in the show notes, you can find Caitlin, and thanks so much. Awesome. Thank you for having me. Have a great day. And then we'll talk to you next week. Thank you so much for joining me this week. If you have an agency or want to create one, come join my facebook community. Get Your Agency Together, where we talk all the things growing and scaling your agency. For show notes and more info on all the things head over to Reynoldsobm.com. Follow me on Instagram and Facebook at Reynolds OBM. And finally, if you enjoy this podcast, I would love for you to give us a review on iTunes.  

 

Bloopers: Yes, yes. I have a husband who ran for Congress a couple years ago. Those are the reasons. Yeah, it didn't go well.