Why Senior PR Pros Should Focus on Development Not Decline

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 [https://www.nber.org/digest/202412/workplace-adoption-generative-ai?page=1&perPage=50] * Oxford Academic: Work, Aging and Retirement [https://academic.oup.com/workar] late-career development mindset study * Science Direct - Productivity and Age: Evidence from work teams at the assembly line [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2212828X15000304] * Muck Rack: The State of AI in PR [https://muckrack.com/resources/research/state-of-ai-in-pr](2026, 2025) [https://muckrack.com/blog/2025/01/16/state-of-ai-in-pr-2025/] * North Carolina State University: Older is Wiser [https://news.ncsu.edu/2013/04/wms-murphyhill-age-2013/] * Solo PR Pro membership community: soloprpro.com [https://soloprpro.com] * That Solo Life podcast website: thatsololife.com [https://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. Did this episode inspire you? If you found value in this conversation, please take a moment to leave us a review [https://www.thatsololife.com/reviews/new/]. Your feedback helps us reach more solo pros just like you! Don't forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode.

Why Independent PR Firms Are Outperforming Holding Companies Right Now

That Solo Life Episode 346: Why Independent PR Firms Are Outperforming Holding Companies Right Now Episode Summary It's the week after the Fourth of July, and Karen and Michelle are talking about a different kind of independence. It turns out that the future of PR looks a lot like its past: closer to the work, the relationships, and the accountability that got lost as holding companies scaled. Karen and Michelle walk through the data backing that argument — holding company headcount cuts, a Forrester forecast for 2026, independent firm revenue and growth figures, and a client tenure study that should make every solo practitioner feel validated. This is a celebratory, data-backed episode about why this moment belongs to independent practitioners, and a reminder that going solo doesn't mean going it alone.   Episode Highlights * [01:13] The Article That Sparked This Episode: Karen and Michelle discuss a PR News article by Jennifer Risi founder and president of The Sway Effect, titled “Old School Is the New School: How Independent PR Is Outrunning the Holding Company Model.” According to the article the future of PR looks like its past, not the bloated, multi-layered approval structures that came with scale, but direct relationships, accountability, and responsiveness. * [02:29] The Industry Backdrop: Mergers, Layoffs, and a Symbolic Real Estate Shift: The article was published around Cannes Lions, timed against a wave of holding company consolidation, including a major agency merger referenced in the piece. Michelle highlights a striking detail: WPP gave up its longtime beach space at Cannes, and an independent agency took it over, a literal changing of the guard discussed in the original article. * [03:10] The Headcount Numbers Behind the Shift: According to the article, holding companies cut headcount by an average of 8% in 2025, with a Forrester forecast cited for a 15% reduction in 2026. Karen and Michelle are clear that this isn't something to celebrate,  hey don't take pleasure in layoffs or peers in the industry struggling,  but the data underscores the structural shift taking place. All source data referenced in the episode will be linked in the show notes. * [05:59] Independent Firms Are Posting Real Growth: Citing O’Dwyer's 2026 independent PR firm rankings, the independent sector pushed combined fee income to $4.8 billion, with nearly a third of the top 140 independent firms surveyed posting double-digit growth in the same year holding companies were announcing layoffs. Karen and Michelle's takeaway for solo listeners who haven't seen that kind of growth yet: there is work being awarded right now, and consistency in business development matters more than ever. * [07:08] Independent Clients Stick Around Longer: A 2025 joint study from the ANA and the 4A's found that clients stay with independent agencies an average of 7.3 years, compared to 5.8 years at holding company agencies. Karen notes this surprised her. She expected the gap to be even wider based on anecdotal experience with solo practitioners but the data confirms what many independents have felt for years: that tenure reflects trust renewed over and over again, not just convenience. * [10:21] Why Now? Two Forces Colliding: Michelle frames the moment as two things happening at once. The holding company model scaled to a point where margin optimization started to outweigh relationship investment. At the same time, AI emerged and gave independent practitioners the tools to work smarter and keep pace without the overhead that scale requires. * [11:11] The Counterintuitive AI Argument: Judgment Becomes More Valuable, Not Less: The article asserts that AI doesn't make communications less important; it makes human judgment more valuable. When the media environment is fragmented, and machine-generated content adds speed and volume to an already chaotic landscape, clients need a human who can say what's actually real, what matters, and what to do next. That judgment cannot be automated and it does not live in headcount, it lives in a person. * [13:14] Independence Means Choosing What You Carry: Independence isn't the absence of structure, it's choosing what structure to carry. For a solo practitioner, that means no committee, no internal routing, no extra layers, just the strategy, the execution, and the phone call. Karen adds an honest counterpoint: that freedom carries real weight too, and most solos who are drawn to this work want that weight. It's not a burden when it's the work you signed up for. * [16:19] The Honest Tension: Concentration Without a Bench: Michelle names the tradeoff directly. Being the whole agency means there's no one to hand a midnight crisis to, no colleague down the hall to sanity-check a risky call. The freedom and the isolation come in the same box. Karen's answer is the Solo PR Pro community — built specifically to give independent practitioners the peer support, expertise, and gut-checks that solo work doesn't naturally include. Resources & Additional Information * PR News — Old School Is the New School ( [https://www.prnewsonline.com/old-school-is-the-new-school-how-independent-pr-is-outrunning-the-holding-company-model/]Jennifer Risi, The Sway Effect):  * O’Dwyer's - Independent PR Firm Rankings 2026 [https://www.odwyerpr.com/pr_firm_rankings/independents.htm] * ANA / 4A's Joint Client Tenure Study, 2025 - Press Release [https://www.ana.net/content/show/id/pr-2025-04-tenure] * Solo PR Pro membership community: soloprpro.com [https://soloprpro.com] * That Solo Life podcast website: thatsololife.com [https://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. Did this episode inspire you? If you found value in this conversation, please take a moment to leave us a review [https://www.thatsololife.com/reviews/new/]. Your feedback helps us reach more solo pros just like you! Don't forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode.

The New Rules of Trust but Verify

That Solo Life Episode 345: The New Rules of Trust but Verify Episode Summary Every solo PR pro has heard the same directive for the past year: show up in AI search. Get cited by ChatGPT, Gemini, and the rest. But Karen and Michelle pose a different question: when AI mentions your client, does anyone actually believe what it says? New research says visibility and believability are two distinct jobs, and most practitioners have only been working on one. Karen walks through Burson's new Credibility Paradox report (with Profound), which analyzed roughly 55,000 believability forecasts across 85 companies and seven AI platforms. The headline finding: executive and leadership messaging is the least believable claim type across every industry studied, while third-party proof — product results, workplace recognition, and independent coverage — ranks highest. Karen and Michelle unpack why this is genuinely good news for solo practitioners, why it doesn't mean ditching executive thought leadership, and what to actually do about it starting Monday morning.   Episode Highlights * [01:54] The Credibility Paradox: Visibility Is Necessary But Not Sufficient: Burson's new report, produced with Profound, ran roughly 55,000 believability forecasts across 85 companies on seven major AI platforms. The headline finding: simply being mentioned by an AI tool is not the win. The real work now is building enough evidence around a brand that the AI's answer is actually believable to the people who matter. * [03:01] The Finding That Stops Practitioners in Their Tracks: Leadership Messaging Ranks Least Believable: Across every industry studied, executive and leadership claims scored as the least believable claim type. The highest-scoring claims were product results, innovation, workplace recognition, and other third-party signals, proof that comes from somewhere other than the brand's own mouth. Karen is careful to note the nuance: this does not mean executive thought leadership is worthless. It means leadership messaging is the lowest-leverage lever for believability when it isn't anchored to proof. * [05:40] What This Looks Like on a Real Account: Karen walks through a practical example: a SaaS founder wants to be known as the most innovative platform in their category. An AI tool can repeat that claim, but a skeptical buyer will read it as marketing and discount it. Compare that to an independent review site ranking the same company, a trade outlet covering a customer's actual results, or a workplace award genuinely earned. Same underlying message, completely different believability. The shift isn't to stop telling the story. It's to get credible third parties to tell it alongside you. * [07:37] The Good News: Earned Media Is Quantifiably the Most Believable Lever: A 2026 Stacker study found that distributed earned media drove a 239% lift in AI citations compared to owned content alone. Separately, Muck Rack's analysis of over 25 million links found earned media accounts for roughly 82–84% of all AI citations. For solo practitioners, this reframes years of fuzzy ROI conversations into one of the most quantified arguments for earned media ever, and it's a number a budget-holding client can understand immediately. * [10:36] Why Solos Specifically Win Here: You Don't Need a Paid Media Budget: The believability lever that matters most - earned coverage and third-party proof - is exactly the lever solo practitioners are already built to pull without a paid media budget. Karen's framing is that you can't always outspend a big agency, but you can outearn them. AI didn't make solo practitioners obsolete. It handed them the receipts. * [11:34] The Foolproofing: Buyers Still Verify Before They Trust: A third report, G2's Answer Economy study, surveyed over 1,000 B2B software buyers and found only 2% will buy from an AI-recommended brand without verifying it first, and 69% of those who verified ended up choosing a different vendor than originally planned. The conclusion: the AI conversation doesn't replace human trust, it feeds into it. The proof a practitioner builds is exactly what's waiting when a buyer goes to verify. * [13:11] Judgment Is the Scarce Resource, Not Content: AI can draft a press release in nine seconds. It cannot tell a practitioner whether that's the right tactic for the right client at the right moment. Karen and Michelle make the case that experienced judgment, knowing which proof point actually moves believability for a specific client, in a specific industry, with a specific buyer, is the solo PR pro's defining advantage in the AI era. It is not something a tool can be prompted into replicating. * [18:10] The Monday Morning Action: Ask AI What It Says About Your Client: Karen's first practical step is to ask an AI tool what it currently says about your client, then read the answer the way a skeptical buyer would. Is it leaning on the brand's own claims, or on verifiable third-party proof? The second step is take an hour that would normally go toward polishing executive voice and redirect it toward harvesting one piece of third-party proof,  a review, a pitch, or an award worth pursuing. Resources & Additional Information * Burson: The Credibility Paradox (with Profound) [https://www.bursonglobal.com/newsroom/global/burson-research-highlights-gap-between-visibility-and-believability-in-generative-engine-optimization] * Stacker:  2026 AI Citation Study [https://stacker.com/blog/source-decay-research-the-stacker-network-effect-on-ai-citation-persistence] * Muck Rack: Earned Media & AI Citation Analysis [https://muckrack.com/blog/what-is-ai-reading-may-2026] * G2:  Answer Economy Study [https://company.g2.com/news/g2-research-the-answer-economy] * Solo PR Pro membership community: soloprpro.com [https://soloprpro.com] * That Solo Life podcast website: thatsololife.com [https://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. Did this episode inspire you? If you found value in this conversation, please take a moment to leave us a review [https://www.thatsololife.com/reviews/new/]. Your feedback helps us reach more solo pros just like you! Don't forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode.

The Secrets that Filmmakers Know About Marketing That Most Business Owners Never Learn

That Solo Life Episode 344: The Secrets that Filmmakers Know About Marketing That Most Business Owners Never Learn with Jake Isham Episode Summary Jake Isham describes himself as an accidental marketer. He went to film school, realized he wasn't going back for a grad degree, and spent his 20s learning to build a business the hard way. He is the Chief Executive Officer of Creative Minds, a creative agency rooted in filmmaking and storytelling that helps entrepreneurs build personal brands through video content, photography, and a signature podcast model that takes clients out of the studio and into the environments where they actually come alive.  In this episode, Jake joins Karen and Michelle to talk about his journey and the hard-won lessons along the way.  He breaks down how a filmmaker's lens changes the work he does for clients, why the Hero's Journey is a more useful brand-building framework than most marketing playbooks, how his on-location podcast model turns a client's hobby into a content engine, and the business development principle that he wishes someone had told him on day one: promote at a volume that feels impossible, measure the results six weeks later, and get 1% better every time.   Episode Highlights * [01:43] The Accidental Marketer Origin Story: Jake went to film school, considered grad school for about a semester, and decided he'd already spent four years doing what he was about to spend two and a half more years doing. What followed was a decade of figuring it out, freelancing, building, and course-correcting, guided by a piece of advice from his father. * [07:35] The Filmmaker's Lens: Why the Hero's Journey Is the Real Brand Framework: When everyone claims to tell stories, the differentiator is understanding what storytelling actually means. Jake draws the line between sharing an anecdote and structuring a narrative. payoff. He uses Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey as a practical brand-building tool: who is your hero, who is your enemy, who are your allies, what are you standing for, what are you standing against. These are the questions that build a brand identity rather than a content calendar. * [10:24] Getting Clients Comfortable on Camera: Jake's superpower as a director is making people comfortable in front of a camera, and he leverages that in his work with clients.  He describes a client whose first shoot took four hours with a teleprompter. Their most recent shoot took one hour, no teleprompter, off the top of his head, and produced more usable content than the first session ever did. The skill is not just technical but the accumulated experience of working with actors, directing scenes, and creating the conditions for someone to be fully themselves. * [12:30] The Signature Series Podcast Model: Rather than building another studio podcast, Jake developed a signature format: take the client's hobby or genuine interest and build a location-based show around it. A golf enthusiast on the course. A client at their place of worship. The host is in an environment that makes them feel natural and engaged, which changes everything about how they show up on camera.  * [20:12] The Business Development Truth Nobody Tells Creative Entrepreneurs: When asked what he wishes someone had told him at the start, Jake doesn't hesitate: promote, promote, promote, promote. He describes watching a gym owner tell his mentor he had distributed 300 flyers. The mentor's response: I do 5,000 a day. The lesson is not that what you're doing is wrong. It is that you are almost certainly not doing it at anywhere near the volume required. Jake shared the experiment he used and the data that he relies on for business development success.   * [23:04] The Six-Week Lag: How to Measure Business Development Without Losing Your Mind: Jake has identified a consistent pattern in his own practice in which promotion activity produces income results approximately six weeks later. The implication is practical and clarifying. Don't judge a business development effort in the first six weeks. Measure from week six to week twelve.  * [26:52] The 1% Better Principle: Why You Don't Need to Leap to Progress: Jake co-hosts a filmmaking show called The Creative Lens. He shows his first episode as an example: his setup was visibly rough next to his co-host's polished rig. By episode eight or nine, the gap had closed — not through a single overhaul, but through consistent incremental improvement. One better backdrop. One better light. One more structured opening. He applies the same logic to business development: not 100 posts more, but one more post. Not a complete brand overhaul, but one sharper headline. Get 1% better. Then do it again.   About Jake Isham Jake Isham is a filmmaker, photographer, and the owner and founder of Creative Minds, a creative agency focused on personal brand building through video content, photography, and signature podcast production. After film school and a brief flirtation with grad school, Jake spent his 20s learning how to build a business without a mentor and without a safety net — and has turned that hard-won experience into a practice that helps entrepreneurs show up authentically on camera and build content strategies that compound over time. He is also the co-host of The Creative Lens, a podcast about filmmaking, gear, and the business of visual storytelling. Jake is based in the Los Angeles area and works with entrepreneurs building personal brands at every stage. * Website: creativemindsofficial.com [https://creativemindsofficial.com] * Instagram: @JakeCreativeMarketing [https://instagram.com/jakecreativemarketing] * LinkedIn: Jake Isham [https://linkedin.com/in/jakeisham] Resources & Related Episodes * The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell: Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey [https://www.amazon.com/Hero-Thousand-Faces-Collected-Works/dp/1577315936] * That Solo Life, Episode 308: Branding, Bravery and Breaking Through with Melissa Vela-Williamson [https://www.thatsololife.com/branding-bravery-and-breaking-through-with-melissa-vela-williamson-episode-308/] * That Solo Life, Episode 296: The Big Idea with Jess Sato [https://www.thatsololife.com/the-big-idea-with-jess-sato/] * That Solo Life, Episode 319: Succeeding at Business Development in a Tough Year [https://www.thatsololife.com/succeeding-at-business-development-in-a-tough-year/] * Join the Solo PR Pro membership community: Solo PR Pro [https://soloprpro.com/join] 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. Did this episode inspire you? If you found value in this conversation, please take a moment to leave us a review [https://www.thatsololife.com/reviews/new/]. Your feedback helps us reach more solo pros just like you! Don't forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode.

What Solo PR Pros Need to Know About IP, AI Legal Risk and Building a More Valuable Agency

That Solo Life Episode 343: What Solo PR Pros Need to Know About IP, AI Legal Risk and Building a More Valuable Agency Episode Summary Most solo practitioners have contracts. What they don't have is a strategy. Sharon Toerek, founder and principal of Legal+Creative | Toerek Law, and an intellectual property attorney whose entire practice serves independent marketing, advertising, PR, and creative services agencies, joins Karen and Michelle to make the case she has been making for years — and that most of us have never fully absorbed. Legal protection is not a cost center; it is a profit center. The frameworks you've built, the methodologies you've refined, the media lists you've curated, the processes you've quietly deployed for every client engagement are intellectual property. This means that many of them can be protected, packaged, and monetized. Sharon walks through her IP Triangle framework, breaks down the specific AI legal risks that every solo practitioner using AI tools needs to understand, and closes with the practical advice that runs through everything she does: focus on progress over perfection, start with one thing, and don't wait for the exit to start caring about what you've built.   Episode Highlights * [04:25] Legal as a Profit Center, Not a Cost: Sharon reframes the entire conversation about legal investment. Most agency owners think about legal as defense — something you pay for when things go wrong. Sharon's argument is different: a well-negotiated client agreement directly impacts the revenue you capture from that relationship. Exclusivity should carry a premium. Payment terms are a negotiating lever, not a formality. And the intellectual property you've built has monetization potential that most solos have never explored. The mindset shift from legal-as-expense to legal-as-revenue-strategy is the foundation of everything that follows. * [09:26] You Have IP You Don't Know About: Karen names the pattern that runs through the solo practitioner community: years of developed workflows, methodologies, and frameworks, quietly deployed in every client engagement, never formally recognized as assets. Sharon validates this and introduces the essential caveat: not all IP has equal economic value. The discipline is in the inventory — taking stock of what you have, assessing which of it is genuinely differentiating, and then deciding what to protect and how. * [10:44] The IP Triangle: Brand, Content, Transactions: Sharon's framework for assessing and protecting agency IP has three points. Brand: the names, systems, methods, and proprietary products you've developed — protectable through trademark. Content: your media lists, content libraries, proprietary processes, anything that gives you a competitive advantage in your vertical — protectable through trade secret or copyright law, depending on whether it's public-facing. Transactions: the agreements that govern work flowing out of the agency (licenses, deliverables) and into it — critically, the contracts with freelancers and 1099 contractors that determine whether you actually own the work you paid for. Walk through all three. Do the inventory. Then figure out what it means for your pricing and packaging. * [16:29] IP and the Exit Strategy Most Agency Owners Haven't Considered: Karen raises the question that matters to practitioners thinking about the next chapter: how should mid-to-late career agency owners be thinking about their IP right now? Sharon has seen agencies with a defined body of protected IP achieve business valuations significantly higher than comparable agencies without it. She has also seen owners who aren't ready to leave the work entirely create separate buyers for the client book and the intellectual property, keeping the asset they built while transitioning the day-to-day. The options multiply when you've done the work ahead of time. The time to start is not at the exit. * [23:24] AI and the Two Legal Risk Areas Every Practitioner Needs to Understand: Sharon is direct: every conversation at her firm right now touches AI in some way. The risk landscape falls into two areas. First: intellectual property — who owns work created with AI, and who is liable if AI-generated content infringes a third party's rights. Second: data privacy and confidentiality — how easy it is to accidentally breach client confidentiality by feeding sensitive information into AI tools, and how exposed practitioners become when contractors use free AI accounts that train on every input. Both risks are manageable. Neither is optional to address. * [24:30] What Needs to Be in Your Contracts Right Now: Sharon gets specific. Every client engagement agreement and every independent contractor agreement needs language covering: IP ownership for AI-generated work, IP infringement responsibility, and what happens to confidential client information when AI tools are used to process it. Beyond the contracts, she recommends an internal AI policy and a conversation guide for discussing AI use with clients before an engagement begins. The goal is alignment before the work starts, not damage control after. * [29:23] Progress Over Perfection: Where to Start: Sharon closes with the advice that runs through everything she does: don't let the size of the opportunity paralyze you. If you haven't signed a new contract with a long-term client in five years, start there. If you know you have systems and methodologies worth protecting, start the inventory. Pick one thing, do it, then do another. The legal and financial advisors come later. Today, look at what you have and start making lists. About Sharon Toerek Sharon Toerek is the founder and principal of Toerek Law, known through her brand Legal+Creative, an intellectual property law firm whose practice is devoted exclusively to independent marketing, advertising, PR, and creative services agencies. She created the Agency Protection System and the AI Agency Legal Toolkit, a practical resource for navigating the fast-moving legal landscape around artificial intelligence. Sharon speaks regularly at industry events, including Inbound, Content Marketing World, and the Build a Better Agency Summit, and serves on the 4A's legal consultants panel. She is also the host of The Innovative Agency podcast, which covers innovation, business development, technology, and creativity for agency owners. You can connect with Sharon at legalandcreative.com [https://legalandcreative.com/] or via LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/sharontoerek/]. Resources & Additional Information * The Agency Legal Audit Checklist: legalandcreative.com [https://legalandcreative.com/] * The Innovative Agency Podcast: The Innovative Agency on Apple Podcasts [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-innovative-agency/id1419747902] * Solo PR Pro membership community: soloprpro.com [https://soloprpro.com] * Episode 242: Navigating the New Terrain of Labor Laws for Solo PR Pros [https://www.thatsololife.com/navigating-the-new-terrain-of-labor-laws-for-solo-pr-pros/] * Episode 220: Unveiling the Warsaw Principles: Ethical AI in PR [https://www.thatsololife.com/unveiling-the-warsaw-principles-ethical-ai-in-pr/]   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. Did this episode inspire you? If you found value in this conversation, please take a moment to leave us a review at That Solo Life. [https://www.thatsololife.com/reviews/new/] Your feedback helps us reach more solo pros just like you! Don't forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode.