15-20% Growth for 3 Years Without Adding a Single Hire

Sean Weisbrot: How is your industry changing because of ai?

Jackson Wightman: Our industry is probably one of the more drastically changed, I think because of ai. So scratch, EPT, I believe just turned three, and I think a lot of people have been using it for two plus years. It's absolutely affected the way PR agencies do work. So that is to say, I don't think I'd be able to find a PR agency where. AI isn't pretty significantly integrated into the workflow. What's been interesting to see is that over the three years of chat, GPT and others where PR people are using AI has shifted a bit. Maybe initially it was a little bit for tasks that AI kind of sucks at like writing. Now it's more for research and maybe data analysis and other backgrounds. So it's definitely changing in the context of AI integrating into workflows. But I would say also. Given how important, given the intersection of PA PR and AI search, there's a lot more focus now on how the output of pr, particularly how earned media, media coverage, journalistic work influences AI and how companies show up in AI search. So there's a booming business and a whole lot of noise. About how PR and its outputs affects AI search, and I think for people in the business, that represents a pretty big business opportunity.

Sean Weisbrot: Why should startup founders and investors care about these changes?

Jackson Wightman: I think they should care for a couple of reasons. Number one, startups in particular, pre A round startups. Often have a lot of trouble with pr. I am usually of the mind that a pre A round startup should not hire a PR agent or agency. Maybe after you get past that a round, it's time to kind of think about it, particularly if you're in specific industries, consumer facing industries, but B2B as well in some instances. And I think the changes really have made. The playing field very, very different. And, and the playing field is no longer level. Some agents, some agencies are egregiously behind because they haven't kept up with this stuff. And if you hire those people as a tech company, as a startup, you are going to run into pretty big trouble. 'cause really AI for a lot of people, I think is the new window on the internet. It's a new frontier for reputation for sure. You need to make sure that whatever the PR function is that you're working with, understands and, and can exist in that new world.

Sean Weisbrot: I've mentioned this fact to people that I know, uh, in, in that regard where if you're looking to hire someone to work with, whether it's a developer like a, well, yeah, whether you're trying to hire an employee or whether you're trying to find a CFO or whatever it is you're looking for. If they are not already using AI and promoting to you the fact that they're using ai, you probably shouldn't hire them because you're not gonna get the best service. Now granted, I get a ton of pitch, a ton of pitches from PR firms that all look like the same. AI wrote it. They all are espousing how amazing I am and, and how fantastic my interviews are, and how they just happen to know another person that would be a great fit for me. And, and all in paragraphs and paragraphs of praise about that person, which I can't stand. But uh, but yeah, it, people are using AI for those things, whether it's, uh, beneficial or not, it's being done.

Jackson Wightman: Yeah. And often it's terrible. I think we all have had those moments. Some of us a year ago, some of us three years ago, some of us somewhere in between, probably where we first saw what the output of AI was. We first saw chat, GPT ripping off, I don't know, press release or a pitch or whatever. It was, an essay, and it was amazing to see. But for a lot of people, at least smart people, I think. There's more and more realization that these, these tools, these LLM, have really severe limitations, at least for now. Will they forever? I dunno. But they have severe limitations and that there are moments and use cases to use them in. And then there are times not to, and the one you just alluded to, you know, sending a pitch to somebody who runs a podcast that's entirely written by a AI is probably not gonna go over too well. You are up on this stuff like most people you've seen. You know, tons and tons of AI slop, and it's just not gonna work. I think it allows people to be lazy in a way that they've never been able to be lazy before, do their job in a half-assed way, to a degree they've never been able to do before. By the same token, obviously it empowers people to do things that scale in a way they've never been able to do before, and ideate or maybe analyze data or some of these other things, do research in a way they've never been able to before.

Sean Weisbrot: Have, has AI helped you to run your business more efficiently?

Jackson Wightman: It certainly has. So we do, we do primary research, we do primary research for ourselves, and we do primary research for clients, and I would say the data analysis capacity, when you get, you know, survey responses from, let's say a thousand or 2000 people. The data analysis capacity is pretty amazing. Of course, it requires oversight because as we know, this stuff makes mistakes. It hallucinates, it comes up with bizarre conclusions, particularly if you work it a lot. It's like an intern that gets tired easily. I find it's been really interesting for the data analysis capacity, I would say for us as well, in terms of just being able to go. Look up things, let's say look up what a competitor's been up to. Um, analyze media coverage has been very powerful and one of the more interesting things, and I suspect other PR people that you speak to or listening or hear this will, will also would agree with this. One of the more interesting things that PR has been good for and any text founder, regardless of the stage they're at, could do this. It's a really useful media training tool, so. You can ask ai, you can feed it a bunch of articles from John Smith who's a journalist at Magazine X, and you can say to it, take on the personality of John Smith based upon what you've read. I am a founder who's, you know, just raised a series A round for his robotic company. What questions would you ask me if you were John Smith and we have found as a media training tool, this is incredibly useful. It's incredibly efficient in terms of. The time it takes our staff to put together really robust media training sessions, and this is anecdotal of course, but the proof spin in the pudding when we have trained clients this way, using ai, leveraging it, the output, the final product has been a hell of a lot better in some cases. I haven't

Sean Weisbrot: thought to do that. What, what I have done. Is, say to Gemini, for example, I want to create a product, but I don't know all of the details yet. Interview me about my idea. So the end goal is that we have, uh, an MVP plan that we can start developing immediately.

Jackson Wightman: Really smart. Really smart. And this would apply I think as well too. I am. On Sand Hill Road and I'm gonna go see the guys at Sequoia or whatever. Knowing what you know about partners, X, Y, and Z at Sequoia, what are the questions I need to prep for? It is handy for these kinds of things. Again, with, in our business at least, we're pretty careful about how we use it for public facing creative work, for public facing, written work, because I think it generally sucks at those things. And I think, and many people I'm sure would agree with this, that's just because all it can do is pull from the corpus of what is and not the corpus of what could be. Hmm.

Sean Weisbrot: The dream of AI is to have a one man billion dollar company. Hmm. Have you honestly found that AI is capable of enabling you right now to fire your team?

Jackson Wightman: No, it's not. It's absolutely not. We have, we have, we are running leaner and more efficiently as a result of it, and our firm has been growing at a rate of between 15 and 20% for the last three years. We have not expanded the team. Despite that growth rate. And just for context, 'cause I know some people are probably SaaS founders and others who have kind of hockey stick levels of growth for, for a PR agency, 15 to 20% growth is quite a lot. Growing for a PR agency at more than 20% of the year is, is quite stressful and puts a lot of pressure on the organization. Do people do it? Of course they do, but that's just important context. We haven't had to hire. I think part of the reason we haven't had to hire is because we have been able to integrate AI tools. One of the more interesting things, and this is just my own anecdotal experience, but I share it because it's a narrative out there in the world in terms of knowledge work, which PR absolutely is in terms of knowledge work. AI has meant for us that we haven't needed to hire particularly more junior people. We have been able to outsource a lot of the tasks that might've been the work I did when I was 24 or 23 or out of college to ai, and I don't really see that changing. I don't think that's necessarily a super positive thing. I know that every generation faces its challenges and perhaps this that's this generation's challenge, but. That's been our experience is we just haven't needed much hiring and we certainly haven't needed junior hiring.

Sean Weisbrot: I've been having this conversation with people as well, which is like, young people want jobs, but young people can't find jobs. And it's because they don't have the skills they need to beat an ai, which in the past they weren't competing with ai, they were competing with other people. Mm-hmm. And now they're competing against people who know how to use AI as well. The, the problem is something long term where if AI right now can replace or prevent the need to hire someone junior and will only get better over time. But a human wants the opportunity to get better so they can reach the mid or or senior level positions, but there's no opportunities for them to get that experience. Then inevitably, there won't be any people to hire in those middle and upper levels when people start to retire, which is soon. And especially because boomers are working longer than ever and, and Gen X is, they're like approaching, they're like, they're in their early fifties now. Um, so there's not much time left where, where young people will have the opportunity to get the experience they need to go into the middle and senior levels. And so AI will basically make it unnecessary to have those junior levels, but then there's nobody to hire. So then there's no skill growth and so then there's no up middle and upper level. So you're effectively in a race to train ais to be better in this middle and senior levels to fill the gap of people who don't have the skills and experience.

Jackson Wightman: Yes, it's had frightening. It's more than it's had threatening, isn't it? That I completely agree with. This is a discussion we have had, my partner and I both Gen Xers, both early fifties. Gen Xers, left late forties for me. She just turned 50. But it is, it is absolutely a real thing and it's absolutely a problem. And there has to be some way to allow these folks, many of whom are just as intelligent as any other generation, right? There's no, there's no, nothing is different. It's, it's human beings, but they need a chance to get the reps in. And the way they get to reps in is different than the way I got to reps in, or my father got to reps in, certainly. But they still have to do that. And the scary thing is, as you said, we're not letting them do that right now. It seems, because I, the story, you know, the story I told about not hiring junior people is a conversation you've had is a conversation I have heard all over the place, across a myriad of industries. So it's a real thing, I believe,

Sean Weisbrot: and

Jackson Wightman: it makes me scared to have a kid. It does, I'm sure. I'm sure.

Sean Weisbrot: Like I wanna have a kid, but like generally the idea is your goal is to do everything in your power to make sure your children have a better life than you've had. And I think my generation is the first one to look at the world and go, I don't know if I can do that.

Jackson Wightman: Yeah. Especially now, especially in the last three years.

Sean Weisbrot: Yeah. I mean I've, I've, I've had this fear for a decade.

Jackson Wightman: There are, to paraphrase the old rums, there are these unknown unknowns that we don't know what we don't know, and that's I think, always been the case. I remember I was around for internet one. I was young, but I was around and. I remember some of the doomsday talk and some of the, how this was gonna kill community and it was gonna do a range of really nasty things that were so fundamental to human existence.

Sean Weisbrot: But

Jackson Wightman: it has, we got through it. It seems It has, in a way it hasn't, in some ways it's, it's always a little bit more bizarre than the naysayers at the time said, and maybe a bit more mundane than the naysayers set also. So I think that will probably be the way this plays out. But it's definitely changing the job market for sure. You know, I am, I know you're in Portugal in North America. There's been a lot of noise recently because job numbers have suffered a little bit in the United States and Canada. People are attributing that to the adoption of ai. Am I sure that that's the case? I have no idea. That's not my expertise and there's a lot of factors out in the world, but it is, uh, it is an interesting signpost on the highway to be sure.

Sean Weisbrot: A lot of companies have blamed AI for firing people. I, I think it's just an excuse for a lot of these companies to just get rid of people. Um, I think the companies that are actually letting go of people, it's not because AI is replacing them. I, I think while ai, as you've said and as you've experienced, AI is really good at some things, but you need a person to do, to, to use the AI to get the benefit from it. Like even with agents, you need a person to create the agent. Mm-hmm. Right? You need a person like, so you know, someone a hundred years ago who operated a machine in a factory. Instead of them manually, uh, managing the machine, they can now code for the machine, right? So they've become developers instead of people using their hands to turn the machine on and off, right? So you can, you can create software, right? So those jobs changed. They didn't go away, they just evolved. So I think. There's a lot of that happening where people aren't being fired because the job isn't necessary. They're being replaced with people that understand how to use the AI necessary to keep the company running correct. And right now there are far fewer people who understand how to use AI than the opposite. And so positions are not being filled. Or because companies are scared of the macroeconomic and geopolitical risks that exist, that they're afraid to hire more people because they're not sure that they can afford to keep paying them when a recession is finally proven to be the reality. 'cause it's,

Jackson Wightman: it's being ignored right now, and it seems there's a confluence of potentially very nasty factors converging. So that's certainly weird. We're a consumer tech PR agency. Our clients almost entirely make things in China, in Vietnam, there's a lot going on. If that's your reality, there's a lot of sleepless nights. If that's your reality, and I'm not making a political statement one way or the other here. This is something that I think applies to everybody. So it's certainly an interesting time as far as that go. Layer in. They in the risks of it, they're in the risks of hiring somebody who doesn't have the skills to use it or manage it. And it's, uh, it's a recipe for people's freezing and, and not doing too much hiring.

Sean Weisbrot: Hmm. So you mentioned that you're working with people in China. What are you seeing? Because I, I think a lot of people are curious about China. I talk about it as much as I can, but I haven't been there in eight years. So there's a reality, there's a gap in my knowledge of what's truly happening right now.

Jackson Wightman: Yeah. So we are seeing, we are seeing one, we are seeing several things, and again, I'm, my lens on it is primarily consumer technology companies, so there. Are, and there continue to be as, there have always been a range of Chinese companies that are effectively factories that started a brand, and most of these are, you know, OEMs that are playing a low cost game and they're gonna make a charger of that. And they're gonna sell it on Amazon and, and that's what they're gonna do. That's gonna be their distribution channel. They don't care about retail, they don't really care about brand equity. They just wanna make a, make it good enough to sell on Amazon and sell it. That's going on. I think that will continue to go on. Um, what is interesting is now there are more and more Chinese brands that are playing a game that might have been. The preserve of Americans and Europeans and other first world nations in that they are trying to build sustainable brands. When they come to North America, they are not just thinking about DTC and Amazon. They're thinking about retail. They're thinking about different types of retail from Costco to Walmart to Best Buy to whatever it is. So there's a little more. Of that coming, there's a little more of we understand and we value brand equity and we can still make things that are great just as China has done for, you know, two, two plus decades, three plus decades, but there's a little more marketing savvy and brand savvy, and that is putting a lot of pressure on some incumbents here who might have gotten a little fat and lazy and comfortable I think.

Sean Weisbrot: Hmm. I was well aware of Chinese brands that the, the thing around Amazon and China is that Chinese factories have been known to steal the IP of the people that are their clients, and then go and sell it on Amazon at a lower price than them. And kind of like what Amazon does. And that has pissed off. I can't tell you how many people, I mean, it's gotta be at least few tens of thousands of brands, um, because China does not care about the ip. So hopefully this is a good shift. Hopefully they stop stealing the IP of the clients. Technically, they've. Build the technology, but you know, because the, the, the client is paying them to do it. To produce it. But yeah, I disagree with those methods. Um,

Jackson Wightman: certainly no, there's no, there's no room for that.

Sean Weisbrot: I noticed, uh, I, I've been introduced to some Chinese brands that are making millions of dollars a month off of Amazon. And spending wild amounts of money on ads to make that happen. Just literally buy, you know, there's a term called the buy box on Amazon. The buy box is the, uh, where the ads run, the, the sponsored products. So for people that don't understand, so they can outbid you on the buy box because they have more money than you'll ever understand what to do with. Because these factories are, the factories themselves are generating tens of millions, hundreds of millions of dollars a year making products for other people. And then now they have this secondary sales channel where they're taking the products that they've made for these people and selling them on Amazon and spending all of the client's money on ads to go off and sell the final product themselves under their own OEM net. And, and if you don't know. They have these really weird, nonsensical names that are all in caps lock. That's how you know it's a Chinese factory that's behind it.

Jackson Wightman: It's funny. It's very funny. But yeah, this is, look there, there's money in that. I think one of the things that's been interesting for us is a lot of, and I'm generalizing here and I wanna be careful because I'm generalizing a lot of. Chinese companies talk, think about products, and they think about sales. And those are the two things that each CEO is focused on. They're often very product focused companies, which that can be a very good thing, but sometimes some of these sort of less bottom of funnel marketing. Elements. And when I say last bottom of funnel, I'm talking about things like pr. I'm talking about things like AI search. I'm talking about things like outdoor billboards, whatever it is, things at the top of the funnel that are awareness plays. They don't think about those so much. They don't like spending on those things. And those are things that I think a lot of people know are required and you have to spend on those things often for a long, long time. To build a brand and to build brand equity, and they're not something that your performance marketing team can go into a grid and go this did that. It's often more nebulous and so not necessarily here to counsel people on how to compete, but consumer facing companies, consumer facing startups who are worried about competition from overseas, be that from China or be that elsewhere. May do well to understand that sometimes these overseas competitors don't have a full grasp of full funnel marketing spend, that they really tend to focus on the bottom of the funnel and that they really tend to focus on performance marketing because performance marketing is, uh, generally fairly easy to attribute ROI to.

Sean Weisbrot: I, I used to serve Chinese startups when I was living in China. I used to help them raise, uh, money from investors, but I also helped them with like their white papers. You know, they, they were done in Chinese or the, their marketing contents, their community building was all done in Chinese, and they wanted access to a Western audience, but they didn't have any ability to create something in English and trust that it was correct. And so I made a lot of money helping them to do that many years ago.

Jackson Wightman: I'm sure it's one of these things that, and I know you have a startup audience, and it's something we tell startups a lot. We tell, maybe we tell mature companies this a lot. If you want to come into a market, especially if you're coming in with something that's even mid price or, or certainly premium. The assets around the products matter as much as the products. So if I wanna come in and I've got, I dunno, a Bluetooth speaker that's gonna sell for, you know, over $350 because it has nice sound, or over $500, whatever the threshold is, I'm going to need to make sure that the speaker sounds great. Of course. I'm going to definitely need to make sure that the instruction manual is written in English. That doesn't sound like a kindergarten kid wrote it, and isn't RIFed with dramatical and spelling mistakes. And a lot of companies, particularly from certain parts of the world, when they come in and they say, okay, we're gonna be premium. They don't like spending on these things, these sort of peripheral things that are not the product, and that ends up being a bit of a problem. When certain types of people, particularly journalists, certain kinds of influencers, certain members of the public get their hands on the product and go, well, okay, I paid 500 bucks for this Bluetooth speaker, but I really don't appreciate that the instruction manual is incomprehensible or something.

Sean Weisbrot: I just noticed this recently actually, with the Chinese made video game. They, so like I, I play PlayStation five, I play, uh, steam on PC sometimes. I watched a few people on YouTube that talk about games and game releases, especially from like Japan. This one guy that I watch, he was talking about this game and it looked amazing. It's one of these, uh, I don't know how much gaming, you know, but basically it, it felt like a spiritual successor of this game that like I grew up playing, that everyone has been desperate for, like a successor for, but the company, while the, the IP exists and the team exists, they refuse to basically make a, a, a second. We don't know why. It doesn't make sense. So this Chinese company came in and they basically decided to do it under its own brand, and they made it just different enough that it's their own ip, which is fine. Beautiful looking game, beautiful looking sound, the story, everything looks amazing. But the guy that I like to watch, he I guess got access to some video of it, and he said it looks like a five-year-old wrote the English translation. He's like, I'm worried about the game now. He said I was really excited for it and now I'm not sure. And he is got a hundred thousand followers, so it doesn't sound like much, but these are highly engaged fans and audience members of his community.

Jackson Wightman: Yeah.

Sean Weisbrot: And if he says, I'm not gonna buy this game, like it could potentially sway my decision to buy that cake. So while you know, it sounds like is a Chinese company that was highly focused on the product, but forgot. The foreign audience that's supposed to be playing it 'cause the Chinese are really not good with translation.

Jackson Wightman: The trust comes across many fronts and trust for the modern consumer goes beyond product. Trust is the box. Trust is the customer. Service trust is that the shipping show up on time. Trust is a range of things that we're sort of talking about here and. I think it's very easy for companies to forget that, particularly new companies, particularly companies that might be on their first, second, third product who are so focused on making a great product as they should be, but these peripheral elements can really cost you if you get wrong. And you know, your example is a very good one. It's something that we have seen more times than I would, than I wish I had because it's, it's all too common, frankly.

Sean Weisbrot: So you've been doing this, so I imagine for a long time, long enough to understand the business well. 'cause a lot of people I've spoken to said, you need to be doing this business at least 10 years before you have a, an inkling of an idea of how it works, what have you. What's the most important thing you've learned from doing this business?

Jackson Wightman: The most important thing that I have learned about running my own company. Is to run it by numbers. So like a lot of PR people, math was not my favorite subject in high school was now on my competency lay. I had other passions and things including words, but running an agency business by the numbers is absolutely critical. We get, and this might be overkill, I'm not saying people should model this, but. I get a p and l updated every week because we wanna keep a very close eye, not only on financial metrics, but you also wanna keep a very close eye if you're running an agency on some of those agency metrics, like utilization rate, like how your staff is tracking time, all of that. So running the business by the numbers is absolutely the biggest thing I've learned internally in terms of external advice that I would have for people about how to do pr. Just don't over promise, under promise, and over deliver, and you will not run into trouble. But if you try to sell, you know, if you try to put a. Pontiac chassis on a Cadillac as GM once tried to do, I believe you will get into plenty of trouble, and there is no way that any brilliant PR person can save you in that instance from the hellfire that will come to you from media influencers, the public. So just under promise and you will be fine.

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