Female Founders: Caitlin Copple Masingill Of Full Swing Public Relations On The Five Things You Need To Thrive and Succeed as a Woman Founder
An Interview With Candice Georgiadis
It’s actually not that hard to start a business. People less qualified than you do it all the time. I launched Full Swing in a weekend. Starting an LLC took about 15 minutes on the Secretary of State’s website. I had the network in place to start with a couple of clients, and an initial business model that is not at all what the company does now, but it got us started.
As a part of our series about “Why We Need More Women Founders”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Caitlin Copple Masingill.
Caitlin Copple Masingill is the founding partner at Full Swing Public Relations, a PR and digital marketing firm that helps women leaders be seen and sought after so they can reclaim their power and rewrite the human story. Fed up with the dismal statistic that 30% of media sources are women (and most of those, white women), Caitlin has grown Full Swing PR to a seven-person remote agency that has placed clients in Fast Company, Forbes, TIME, and The New York Times, among others. In 2019, she was named among Idaho’s Accomplished Under 40 by the Idaho Business Review, and in 2021, she was honored among the Idaho Women of the Year. Caitlin holds an M.A. in journalism from the University of Montana and was the first LGBTQ person elected to the Missoula, MT City Council in 2011.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit more. Can you tell us a bit about your “backstory”? What led you to this particular career path?
I started Full Swing PR in early 2019 after leaving a job at a national branding agency where I was the PR Director. Before that, I worked on the communications side of a top DC public affairs firm. What inspired me to go out on my own, believe it or not, was turning 35. It felt like one day I looked around the room and realized that I wasn’t the youngest person there anymore. I’d worked for enough men to see that they didn’t have any qualities that made them inherently better leaders or business owners than I could be. I also never felt fully “seen” at work. My ambition and drive were not always considered an asset. At some point the year I turned 25, I had enough experience and credibility to become “the boss,” versus feeling like I needed the validation of the people around me to garner respect. I also wanted to create a life that supported being a mother. My son was 2 when I started Full Swing.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began leading your company?
Deciding to scale the business was not something I initially planned on. I wanted to be able to provide a decent salary for myself, but my goal was really just to make what I made at my last agency job. I hit that number in less than six months. A good friend and longtime client, Luke Malek who is an owner of the law firm Smith + Malek, encouraged me to keep growing my business. I learned a lot about the statistics around women-owned businesses plateauing from my business coach, Rachel Rodgers. It’s beyond depressing that only 2% of women-owned businesses hit seven figures, so I made it my mission to do my part to change the stats.
I brought on my first full-time team member, Holly Conti, just one month before the world was turned upside down by COVID-19. I felt a lot of uncertainty at the time about how to scale my business and how to deal with all of the external factors brought on by the pandemic. But, by the summer of 2020, we had tripled Full Swing’s revenue from the year before and were on our way to being an S Corp and growing our team.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
I don’t know how funny it is, but when I started out, I only hired contractors, not full-time W2 employees, and most of them were my friends. I’ve always been a person who integrates work and personal life, so it seemed natural to lean on people in my personal network. That worked wonderfully well sometimes, as evidenced by my now-business-partner and forever work wife Holly Conti, but in other cases, hiring our friends majorly backfired. The HR part of business can be really overwhelming when you are just starting out. It’s important to have a fair, transparent process for hiring and letting people go when they aren’t a fit for the organization’s vision and needs.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?
I always tell entrepreneurs to invest in themselves through executive coaching, even when you feel like you can’t afford it. You can’t afford not to. I had a coach from day one, and since 2020, I’ve been part of Hello 7, Rachel Rodger’s company, as well as her mastermind for business owners at our revenue level. It’s a huge help to surround yourself with people who are going through the same challenges you are and to have a squad to support your success.
Ok, thank you for that. Let’s now jump to the primary focus of our interview. According to this EY report, only about 20 percent of funded companies have women founders. This reflects great historical progress, but it also shows that more work still has to be done to empower women to create companies. In your opinion and experience what is currently holding back women from founding companies?
Opportunities for women entrepreneurs are on the rise, but most of these opportunities still go to white women. I’m interested in hiring BIPOC and LGBTQ employees, as well as supporting businesses that are committed to anti-racism. To me, that’s the fastest way to change the statistics and who holds leadership and power and controls the narrative in our society.
More women leaders need to embrace the power of their influence, and that starts by owning their stories. So often, we are told we are too fat, too queer, too melanated, etc. to go after what we want. My approach to PR and personal branding centers on leaning into what makes you unique because that’s often where our superpowers lie.
Can you help articulate a few things that can be done as individuals, as a society, or by the government, to help overcome those obstacles?
At a basic level, vote. If you’re in a position to run for office, do that too. If you can donate to female, BIPOC, and LGBTQ+ candidates, that’s huge.
Surround yourself with people who are different from you. If 90% of your LinkedIn network is white, you’ll have a hard time hiring people who aren’t also white. Invest in DEI training, even when it feels like you can’t afford it. Hire BIPOC people and pay them well. If you hire a BIPOC contractor, don’t negotiate on price.
If you’re a parent, consider the books you read to your children, and whose stories are represented. Do they have BIPOC teachers? Do you have BIPOC friends, doctors, CPAs, etc? Living again in my home state of Idaho, I’m acutely aware of the impact of white supremacy here, and try to model for my child how we can do our part in dismantling its legacy in our community.
And, every chance you get, take steps toward reclaiming your power and owning your story. Full Swing’s mission is to help people own their stories because we believe that the more business owners and marginalized leaders share their individual stories, the closer we’ll be to having a more authentic and representative global story. Though we deliver PR and marketing services to our clients, we focus first and foremost on helping the leaders shape their experiences into stories that will resonate with the audiences they want to share them with. By teaching these skills, we are able to help change the perception of what a leader looks like and increase the number of women and BIPOC leaders seen as industry experts.
This might be intuitive to you as a woman founder but I think it will be helpful to spell this out. Can you share a few reasons why more women should become founders?
There’s no wage gap when you’re the boss, for starters. If you’re unhappy with how you’ve been treated by your employer or don’t like the policies in place, striking out on your own is a way to change the status quo. When women, particularly women of color, gain power and are at the proverbial decision-making table, we all win because we’ll have better governments, businesses, and communities.
What are the “myths” that you would like to dispel about being a founder? Can you explain what you mean?
That it is “so hard” to start a business. Starting and growing Full Swing is not necessarily easy, but it’s not nearly as hard as what we are taught. I never went to business school or even took a business class in college. There are values-aligned coaches and programs to help you hone your vision, own your story, and build the kind of company you dream about. Even for a queer kid who grew up in Idaho, like I did.
Is everyone cut out to be a founder? In your opinion, which specific traits increase the likelihood that a person will be a successful founder and what type of person should perhaps seek a “regular job” as an employee? Can you explain what you mean?
Entrepreneurs need to be comfortable with some amount of risk so they can bet on themselves and their team to do big things. They need to be adaptable to change. Most importantly, you need to be willing to work on yourself so you can be the best leader and embrace and model vulnerability and self-awareness for your team.
Ok super. Here is the main question of our interview. What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Started” and why? (Please share a story or example for each.)
- It’s actually not that hard to start a business. People less qualified than you do it all the time. I launched Full Swing in a weekend. Starting an LLC took about 15 minutes on the Secretary of State’s website. I had the network in place to start with a couple of clients, and an initial business model that is not at all what the company does now, but it got us started.
- Embrace your values. Full Swing PR has invested in DEI training from the beginning, and we are an aspiring anti-racist organization. We offer healthcare on day one and eight weeks paid parental leave, regardless of how long you’ve worked with us. We pay our interns $20 an hour to start. Just because business is done one way by most people doesn’t mean you need to copy that outdated and unjust model.
- Invest in yourself. Even if you feel like you can’t afford it, hire a coach. The Hello 7 Club is a great place to start building the community you need to scale your business. It’s also an incredible marketplace when it comes to hiring like-minded people to help you grow.
- Hire out what you’re bad at. You aren’t good at everything, and you don’t need to be. I’ve always felt insecure about my financial know-how, so we’ve enlisted a bookkeeper since the early days of the business. It’s huge to have someone who can back up your vision with numbers and give you the confidence you need to make decisions.
- Lift up others. When I moved back to Boise in 2016, I started a group called Boise Women Who Get Sh*t Done because I wanted to find like-minded women friends who were committed to changing the good ol’ boy business culture of our state and community. I found some of my closest friends that way. We don’t need to compete with each other as women-owned businesses. I’m interested in ways I can use whatever success I’ve had to lift up BIPOC and LGBTQ+ entrepreneurs.
How have you used your success to make the world a better place?
I spent my 20s working for nonprofits and advocacy organizations, driving change in domestic violence prevention, early education, protection of public lands, and LGBTQ equality in deep-red states. With Full Swing, I want to change the statistics around whose story gets told in the media and empower more women leaders to own their stories and build the platforms they need to leave a positive legacy for their families, communities, and the country.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good for the greatest number of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.
Electing more women and people of color to public office. Our democracy is struggling, and we desperately need more people in power who reflect the diversity of America.
Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this!
Female Founders: Caitlin Copple Masingill Of Full Swing Public Relations On The Five Things You… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.