No One Hits 7 Figures Alone: Behind the Scenes of How We Scaled Our PR Agency

By: Caitlin Copple Masingill and Holly Conti

Last September, a dream came true when Rachel Rodgers, our business coach, author of We Should All Be Millionaires, and the host of the podcast, Hello Seven, invited us to her ranch to be guests on her show. Even though it was recorded in the fall, we couldn’t say much about it until it dropped a couple of weeks ago!??

Rachel Rodgers is quickly becoming a household name, but if you don’t know already, Rachel is a sought-after lawyer-turned-executive coach who helps those from historically marginalized communities –?including BIPOC, queer, disabled, and women – build wealth by starting and scaling small businesses.

By sharing her own experience running what is now an eight-figure business, becoming a successful author, and being featured in numerous top-tier media outlets, Rachel shows people who never saw themselves as entrepreneurs that it is possible for us too. Through working with Rachel and her team, we’re part of a movement to change the abysmal statistic that only 2%? of women-owned businesses hit the million-dollar revenue milestone.

It’s awkward to talk about money, we get it, but we’re going to keep doing it. Women are 35% more likely to experience poverty than men. Systemic oppression, including the way women are conditioned not to talk about money or ask for what they are worth contributes to economic disparities. Until we talk honestly about what it takes to hit seven figures and show the world more examples of “regular” people building thriving, inclusive, values-driven businesses, nothing will change. You can’t be what you can’t see, and we are grateful to Hello Seven for providing a community of folks like us who are building wealth and using the power of business to create a more inclusive world.

When we worked together at a different agency, Caitlin had a hunch Holly was underpaid, which rubbed her the wrong way for many reasons, including that Holly was far and away the best account executive in the place. Holly didn’t know how her salary stacked up, so Caitlin made it her mission to ask her colleagues, who were happy to share.? Holly discovered that she was being paid $15,000 less than coworkers who were doing the same exact job, and in some cases, for less time than she had.

When underrepresented leaders don’t talk about their financial goals and accomplishments, others don’t know that reaching those major milestones is achievable for them too.

Deciding to scale Full Swing to $1 million and beyond, is aligned with our values and the legacy we want to leave behind. Money = power and power = more opportunities to change the world. We want to see different people in charge of our companies and our communities. We hope that talking about hitting seven figures promotes the idea that BIPOC, queer, female, and other underrepresented folks can become leaders, and damn good leaders at that. We aspire to help create a world in which young women are never told the same messages we received: “You’re not ambitious enough” or “You’re too ambitious.”

Being part of the Hello Seven mastermind for the past year has taught us to lean into our ambition and be fearless about disrupting business norms to chart our own course. Here are our favorite moments from our conversation with Rachel. We’ve included timestamps so you can follow along on Spotify, Apple, or the Hello 7 website. If you’re in a hurry, scrub through to find the topics that spark your interest. Thank you for listening!

0:13 - 2:43 | Surround yourself with people who set big goals and can help you grow.

“Coming from Idaho, I don't think I ever had a Black teacher. And I think that that is a travesty and is not reflective of the America that we live in or the world that we want to create. And so, being in rooms where it is majority women of color is so valuable to me as somebody who aspires to be anti-racist in my business and in my life.” – Caitlin

“We've now found in three years, going on four years in business, that every time we take a step forward that's scary, we always end up growing and we always see the return, either in knowledge or money.” – Holly

2:45 - 4:02 | On being transparent.

“I think more folks who are underrepresented need to share their numbers because that's how we learn about the inequity and start to correct the economy that we live in. And so we did $656,000 last year and $1.1 million this year and we're on track to do $2.3 in 2023.” – Caitlin

4:59 - 9:29 | Networking authentically.

“[Caitlin] wasn't [networking] because she thought she was going to start a business. She was doing it because she wanted to be connected, be in the community, cared, wanted to be around people who were doing cool things.” – Holly

“I encourage people to look at what works for them because me taking someone out to lunch every week would not work for me. But before I had a business, I was taking courses about entrepreneurship, I was reading, taking Facebook ads courses, and listening to all the podcasts, even though I didn't know that I was going to start a business.” – Holly

15:48 - 18:07 | We need more diverse perspectives in the media.

“[Not having women, people of color, and LGBTQ leaders in the news] doesn't reflect our community, it's not good for our democracy, clearly. We need to have different people in charge and that starts with making sure other people have the platform that they can really use to make change.” – Caitlin

18:10 - 19:22 | How scaling our business is connected to our values.

“The only reason I want to scale is to prove that I can do it. My new feminist challenge to grow a business... I never took a business class in college. … I'm so glad that I did it. And it's nice to be able to hopefully inspire other people to do it, too.” – Caitlin

“I think we're fed the story that trying to get more money is greedy or why do you need to do that? Why is more what you go after? And it's like, well, money is power, as you always talk about it.” – Holly

19:26 -? 24:00 | The challenges of making seven figures and what we learned.

“... getting yourself out of the day-to-day allows you to be up here so you can see, oh, here's where we're going. I can see what's shifting in the marketplace, I can see what our clients are needing, here's the next move we need to make.” – Rachel

26:12 - 29:24 | You don’t have to be “famous” to be worthy of being seen.

“They say, "I don't want to be a star, I don't want to be famous." And you can be famous in your own space, in your own universe… And you can decide where you want to shine, but you have to shine somewhere in order to make your business grow.” – Holly

33:42 - 40:24 |? The outcomes of hitting our 2022 goal.

“I think you gain confidence when you hit your goals. And I think that if you can make a million dollars in this climate and what we've all gone through in the past four years, you can certainly make more than a million dollars … it really does help with some of the imposter syndrome.” – Caitlin

40:33 - 41:28 | Our advice to you.

“Nobody's going to tell you that you have the green light and everything's going to go perfectly. We all want that guarantee; we all want to be guaranteed success and nobody's going to give that to you except for yourself … Just keep going and keep trying because if it's failing, you're learning from that failure and you'll win on the other side.” – Holly

Did something we say resonate with you? Please DM us, we’d love to hear from you!