Intentional Words with Rakia Reynolds

now commerce is kind of unbound. It should have no boundaries at this point, and that's really where we're getting to. And it's interesting, like if you think about commerce not having any boundaries of format, the fact that you could buy anything anywhere and that you should have the ability to do that as a as a consumer, it's really exciting. And then what conversely does that do to advertising? Is

it a podcast? Is it an audio instruction manual? It's like an audio catalog from the standpoint of it's trying to story tell and help you visualize rooms in the catalog, like what they would actually be showing in the catalog. But I think the big point is this idea that you should be able to buy from audio content. Content should be commerce period, full stop well and also new and interesting ways to literate or build on and keep

a consumer engaged. Right, what's really exciting is creation. Commerce, an asset, right, or artifact or thing that's created are coming together in a way that I don't think we've ever experienced, not something that's been accessible like this. What does the world look like where campaigns become open sourced.

Let's just say I Ka puts that for our catalog down, and you and I have the ability to come in and say, actually we should drop a meditation here, and then you can submit that back to a brand, not in the form of social media feedback, truly having the opportunity and open source campaign to be able as a fan, consumer, etcetera, to contribute, influence, contribute. I don't want to just be a fan of your company or your brand or your product. I want to own a part of it. In a

different way. I want to own part of that. I p that fiduciary relationship means we have a completely entirely different relationship that we haven't even been able to imagine with our consumer that we trust them enough if they are fans to represent that brand, shareholders in the business, yes, and create on it. But at the end of the day, that all comes back to community. You're talking about trust in the consumer. Yes, how well do you know your community? Yes?

And the thing Laura, totally and the thing that has been on my mind. A lot of brand owners, a lot of brand stewards not even gonna call them marketers because it's beyond the marketing organization or the marketing role, talk about having community, that they've built a community or

that they're part of a community. And that may be true, but more often than not, brands and people at brands are talking about their community as buyers, as buyers transaction transaction I have, we have we have people that like us, we have people that buy us, they like this product. We have this community of buyers and that they're like community of buyers. That's a sales force breadsheet. We're going to talk to for Kia about this, but I think that it behooves us to start to really unpack, like

what makes up a community. I think that right now is a really good time for marketers to be thoughtful about some of the new structure and new kind of points of power, as I would say, that are coming to life in the world. There's an army of natural born marketers who are rising, and they know how to sell and probably in some cases are better product marketers

and brand marketers then marketers. You've got a major institutionalized companies, you know, big corporates, and so if you think about that, it starts to become depending on where you stand, is either really exciting or maybe a little bit scary. We'll be right back and we are back on the mic with Rikiya Reynolds, founder and executive officer of sky Blue Media. Sky Blue is a multimedia strategic communications firm focus on people, products and places. Rikia, we have waited so long to

say this. Welcome to Atlantia. Welcome Rikia. Oh my gosh, thank you so much, y'all. This is such a long time coming, Like for real, I'm excited to be here. You're just celebrating your tenure anniversary, recently named to Forbes one thousand like last week. Congratulationslations to you, thank you, thank you. Working with some of the biggest talent and brands in the industry. Tell us about the origin story of how sky Blue came to be. Oh, I love you know, I love a good origin story. I like

to call it the story behind the glory. Um. I recently actually on Instagram recently recap the last decade because we're in our celebratory tenth year at sky Blue Media. So I broke it down into sort of business growth stages or the stages of business, so like zero to three and then four to six and what did that look like? Um, So, I will say the story behind this glory is that I started sky Blue Media. I

was a former TV producer. I worked in magazines. I had a five year stint in working in higher education for a large university, working on I was actually pursuing my degree in counseling psychology, working with students who were suffering from you know, going to college and what it meant. So I was advising a lot of students as as a counselor. So I worked for five years in higher education,

then went onto TV, then went onto magazines. And working in TV, y'all, it was more than an emotional roller coaster because in the world of TV, you're on, you're off, your you have a hiatus, you go dark and I was like, I can't keep doing this. But one day they called us into the office and I was like, oh my gosh, this is so exciting. They were like, okay, we're having a special meeting and they said special, but I took it as like they're giving us like something exciting.

They brought us in they had envelopes for everyone, and I was like, oh my gosh, bring getting a bonus right when I needed this bonus. It was like super exciting. And so we opened the bonus and it was like an additional check and I was like, oh my gosh, like we've done such a great job. I was working on all of these shows and they were like, okay, so this is the last check for everyone. We're laying everybody off. And I was like, oh, I'm sorry, this

is not a work bonus that we're getting. So I was I was pregnant with our second child, my husband was just finishing greadful. I mean, when I tell you, I was like trying to figure out like are we gonna have old meal for dinner or tuna fish sandwiches for dinner? Like it was it was that like my friends are like we like to say, like a struggle sandwich. It was like a struggle sandwich. And so at that point I was like, I don't really have anything to lose.

I've always been a risk taker. Why don't I sort of jump off this cliff of entrepreneurship, start my own company, take all of the things that I've learned from, you know, from TV and magazines and counseling, psychology and studying all of these amazing people, and sort of disrupt the traditional

model of public relations. And then I started my own agency taking all of the things that I had learned in TV, you know, producing traditional pr psychology, and then formed my own digital communications multimedia coms agency like you just imagined it forward. And what I think is interesting what you told us off Mike, and I want to actually ask you about, is that you don't call yourself

a CEO. You can call yourself a chief, which is probably aligned to your philosophy and your ethos and your values. Tell us why you don't call yourself a CEO? Right, So, I think we need to analyze words more. We need to look at the etymology of words, We need to look at the origin of words. And there are a

lot of culture vultures out there, people appropriating. There's so much miseducation, and so when I get to the point where I feel like I am educated completely, fully and amazingly or acutely aware of my surroundings and the words and why we use them, then I may incorporate them

back into my lexicon. But for now, with the foundation that I have been taught, with the history that I was taught as a child and then as a and as an adolescent and as an adult, I don't think that I was educated to the point where I should be using any of the language that was delivered to me. We're very intentional with what we say, Like we don't

say things like oh, that's tone deaf. Instead of saying like that's tone deaf, we may say, well, it lacks the nuance needed to inform the conversation, so we won't say or it's a blind spot. Will say, hey, you know what, let's make sure that we cover all parameters. So for us, it's really about the intentionality of words.

I've actually had a client that is of the deaf and heart of hearing community, So in terms of being informed and sometimes for folks, there's I think that there is like personal empathy and collective empathy, and once we get to a space of collective empathy where we can like put our thoughts aside and really be intentional. Um. I noticed that on calls I will take a little bit of time or process my thoughts, But with words, I really tried to slow it down to say, why

are we using these words? What will it mean to someone else, and how will it impact someone who may hear this or experience this later on down the line. So we typically will look at all of our words, but no chief, no chief in this executive officer over here. As you were introducing sky Blue at the top of the conversation, you said you were going back through chapters right where there are points along the way that shaped

or evolved the way you approached your work. Yeah. I think there were two pivotal moments in my sort of sky Blue media career or history. One was sort of midpoint, maybe three or four years in. I was faced with so many different challenges where I was not hiring people, I wasn't hiring the right people, and so I had the wrong people surrounding me. I had someone steal mail,

steal money, all of these things. It was like a compounded stressor for me, and what I learned was how to respond to things during a crisis because I was in a constant crisis. Constant I mean with employees, with news, with all of these things that were just happening to me. It was a compounded stress moment. So for me, it was a pivotal moment to learn how to maneuver through

chaos and crisis. And then I will say sort of bad us forward when we really started at the beginning of my career, people because I'm a black woman, would say, we want you to work on all of our black marketing, or we want you to work on this, or we want you to work on that. And it became like this multicultural marketing way of bringing us into companies like, oh, you know, larger corporations would be like and I would say, you don't just bring someone in because of the way

they look. It's their expertise. Let me build this a little more. So it's not just you know, the black market, but it's the indigenous cultures market. It is the Latin X market, it is the l g B t q i A market, it is the Asian American and Pacific Islanders market. So I started doing a lot of research, bringing in people that had their PhD in sociology, bringing in people that were experts in their field to do think tanks, workshops, professional development to inform our teams in

order to effectively communicate. And then we started bringing those folks in as consultants to have brand extensions to our work because I don't think that everyone out there should be doing the work that they're doing because they're not an expert in their field. Just because you did one project or um, you have one case study, I don't think that you should. You know, you can be doing the work. I think when people become seasoned in their fields,

that's when you can put it on your website. That's when you should say this is you know what we do. So I think for me getting into the space of like research and expertise and really sort of refining what are offerings are and were we were able to go beyond the lens of marketing, public relations, social media, and digital media. I think there have been all of these

pivotal learning moments in my career. UM and then the work that we get to do, and then the people that I've sort of surrounded myself with and the folks that are running the company in a way that I never thought would run. You talk about and Laura's told me about this, but I want to get into it more. People, products, places. That's what you do well, and that's how you think about your business. Can you explain that a bit more? Yeah, I love you know, like alliteration, and and I have

to when I'm remembering things. But on the people's side, um, I think really early on and Laura knows this, really early on, we were able to work with Ashley Graham for the first five years of her business and build her brand and you know, work with her on what she or her presence in how she was entering the world.

So from a people's standpoint, we worked with Serena Williams on her apparel brand for HSN and then when she went independently, we still, you know, we still have the honor to work with people such as you know, icons like Serena Williams. We work with people such as m Night Shamalan, and people such as Marley Dais who started hashtag one thousand black girl books, social activists like Alicia Garza, authors like Glenn and Doyle and love You a gi Ye.

So like, you know, we look from a people standpoint, We've got some amazing people that we get to work with on and I'm honored and privileged that we get to learn from them and work with them. On the product side. That p is getting to work with larger tech companies like Dell. UM we work with soft Bank, we work with Airbnb, UM, and I'm like forgetting a couple of folks, but I'll just leave it at that. And then on the place space, I think you leave it like soft Bank Airbnb, you pretty much got it

locked up. You're good. And let me be specific, the soft Bank SB Opportunity Fund, that's what we work on UM. And then yeah, on the places space. So just I worked with cities like Memphis and their storytelling. Cities like Philadelphia hired us, you know years ago on o hey, we have all of this research, how do we distill this and make it into a great story. So cities from a place ending standpoint have hired us on storytelling

for them. What are the signments, projects, opportunities, challenges people are calling with right now? And then what you project over the next you know, twelve to eighteen months. What are the areas within comms um that we really need to be thinking about as an industry and just sort of trends and signals you're picking up based on your conversations. Yeah, I think I would say a lot of people call on us now, and I want to be clear, all

of our clients have been with us for years. We we don't typically take on projects, and I always tell folks, you know, we're in it for the long term, in the long run. You know, some of our clients have been on our board for five years because we don't believe in you know, coming in for a sixty day project or a six month project. I think right now we've actually had to say no to a lot of

companies because they are calling us. They see our clients perfectly position in the marketplace on what to say and how to say it. So it's one of the things that it pains me sometimes because I'm like, if we had, you know, a larger team, or if I wanted to take on more clients, that would help said corporation or help dead person. But we've closed the door, you know, sadly enough to to a lot of folks just saying hey,

we are we're not taking on any more clients. And so what we did start to do was we created this monthly tool kit on effective communications. So every month we put out this tool kid, like, here's what you should be saying, here's how you should say it. Here the words that you should refrain from. And we we give it to companies that were unable to work with right now due to our capacity um so that they can use it as an internal learning tool with their

comms and marketing teams. What's been the reaction to them and are there things that you know, you're you're seeing clients maybe not be aware of and saying like, this

is something I'm to be implementing as a result. Oh goodness, I mean so many you know, they're you know, large corporations that have come to us and said, hey, we didn't know that we should be you know, considering or looking at Indigenous People's Day instead of Thanksgiving, or you know, not being super overt with our messages around July fourth because not all black people were free and you know, this is how we are looking at Juneteenth, or this

is how we're looking at the word feminist, because typically the word feminist is assist, gendered, white woman and not inclusive of all communities, or this is how we're thinking of the world. I mean, there's there's so many. So we put one out for Women's History Month and said, this is how people are going to be acknowledging it. Make sure you are careful around this language. Not every woman looks at, you know, sort of Women's Month in

this way because not all folks were included. So when you look from a lens of historical irrelevance going back, you have to really really go back and say where did it start? What is the origin? Right we talked about origin, what is the origin story? And how did this come about? And did it include all people? And if it didn't include all people, let's sort of remix the vocabulary a little bit and say this is how we're going to be approaching it now. Not all companies

have to do that. I mean not all companies serve all communities. I mean, I can't speak for everyone, but I would think that where we are in one, you know, we should be more on the gender list side because of the way that you know, folks identify. We should be thinking about every single word that we're putting on an email because you don't know how it will impact someone I think we're beyond diversity and inclusion and we're at the space of belonging and mattering. Do people feel

like they belong in your space? Like, do they feel like they should be there? I think I read a great research a poor a while ago and it said that not belonging, not feeling like you belong inside of a company or space is akin to physical pain. So pay attention to the people that call out of work. It's not and it is akin to physical pain. So I think we just have to be It just goes

back to that intentionality. I have a question, Rikia, like we're in this time where we're in massive social upheaval. Still millions and millions of people just in this country out of jobs, you know, health crisis like we've never seen in the history of the world, in the history of the world and the history of the I mean think about right. My daughter by the way side now asked me the other night, um what I did when I was a little kid during the virus and I said, oh, honey,

we don't have the virus. And I had a moment like I was like, WHOA. So I guess the question to come back to is we're in unprecedented times like everyone has said too much and instead of brands going backwards in terms of kind of reverting into fear and non communication, not talking about things, not addressing things, not kind of driving their reputation forward and their perspective for it. How do they imagine it forward like you did in your own career. How do you both be bold and

empathetic at a time like this. I do think in my field, in the world of communications, I think folks need to pause and hit the breaks. Um they're people, are, you know, scrambling and trying their best. I see it and it's like, Wow, you'all are really trying. Let's get the right people in and that's good. You know, was the year of words and beyond should be the year

and years of the works? What is the work that you're doing so you set all those things in T twenty, What is the work that you're putting in, you know, in one What does it look like? What councils have you formed? What does it look like in terms of your employee hiring, your employee resource groups, the comms people that you've brought on, the marketing people. Who are the people that really do have the seat at the table. Who are the decision makers? Who is scanning your language?

Who is helping you to inform your decisions. If I'm sitting here typing an email to you in Google automates and finishes it, am I really going to be intentional? Am I really gonna go and click more keys? Or am I gonna scroll that little arrow over, finish the sentence and put a period? Most of the time scroll it over and put a period. Can you tell us about some of the other projects, including the AI platform

that you're working on. And I'm actually building an ethical intelligence platform as a product of all of the work that we've done in the equity and communications space with sky Blue Media UH to help marketers and communicators make more informed decisions when they're writing and marketing. So that will launch sometime later this year. Who are you building that? So girl, listen, I'm actually building my advisory board now. So are brought on two advisors who are advising me.

And I just secured my first angel investment, so I know I'm not supposed to thank you, But he is the vs knees okay, Like he's invested in a lot of companies. When I pitched him over the phone without a deck. He was like, Rakia, the world needs this. I don't make investments like this. I've not done this in three years, but this is what the world needs.

And then with a media company, a big media entity, um, I am building a community of women who are not quite forty yet but not they can't be on the under thirty list. I noticed in the market space, we have all of these like milestones lists right like it's I'm on the under thirty lists, I'm on the over fifty list, But what about the people that are right in between, like I'm i might not be forty, I'm thirty seven, I'm getting there, or I might be a

little over forty. And so I found that that there was a good market space and place for people that were in this forty issue. There they you know, they figured it out. However, they still have questions. They still need a community. There's someone's mentor, but they need a mentor. They've sponsored people, they've done all the things, but they still need someone to do all the things for them.

So I think in the world of micro communities and the trend of micro communities, where it's the kitchen table is where we need to be focusing. What do you think the future of talent is when you start to actually invest in micro communities. I think in terms of talent as it relates to community, there are folks that will crumble because they've not built the community before they needed the community. And so people are scrambling now to make sure that they've built some sort of community and

they built it when they needed the community. So build communities before you need the community. Built community because you want community, because you value community, because you want to foster community. Don't build the community as you need it. What would be your advice to just get started in that capacity? So if there are creators listening or brands who want to build community, how do you get started?

So I think there are a couple of ways to answer that, but I would start with folks that are in the nano influencer space. A SOS very early on started working with nano influencers, and they were working with like really nano influencers, folks that had like five hundred and six hundred followers on Instagram. And they did that because they saw the spike in the engagement, because their

communities really trusted them. So I tend to look at folks is lower followings because I do know that it's in organic following, So looking at their messages, how they're posting,

how their people are commenting. You could have someone that has a thousand followers and they get three hundred likes or engagements, and I know we don't measure it on that, but just sort of for an optics standpoint, I sort of like will go in just to just kind of look, and then you could have someone with like ten thousand followers with three hundred likes, and you can easily sort of deduce that these folks don't have a really engaged audience,

or they have fake followers, or their people don't really care what they're posting. And you have to understand because of algorithmic changes frequently and the rug can be pulled out of under your foot at any given time. Build a trusted community that and that's really that's really just it. Build a trusted community. Asked the people, like, if you're in, if you're into you know, sort of influencer and you want to build a community, ask your people why they

are following you? Post a photo? Why are you following me? Someone might say to me, I might think that people are following me because of business. Hey, rich kid, we're following you because you give business advice. And they don't give two shakes a ship about my business advice. They might just say we follow you because we like your blue glasses. And when you post yourself wearing different color sneakers, so then it's like, oh, they like what I'm wearing,

So I need to serve the audience. Can we talk about story creation? How do you think about building from ground zero? The story and the story are like the strategic story of a brand, a person, a place, a product. How does your team do that differently? I think it for us starting the stories, it depends on the person. There's no cut, copy and paste answer to that. But I think what we like to do is start from the beginning. We're huge fans of like historically, what does

this mean? I like to break things down. I also like to understand the way that our brains work. Our brains work in stories. Everything is the beginning, middle, and end. There's a one to three, there's an ABC. So how do you do that with the storytelling? What is the beginning? What do you want to say? How do you want to attract people? Why do they care um. We used to say in the office all of the time. You know, there's no new news. If you don't have any new news,

you don't need to tell a story. Or you know, all marketers will say, what is that they're there. We firmly believe in that. Like, if you want to go out to market with the story and you want to, you know, proclaim it to the world, make sure you have it. They're there. Make sure you know your why before you start to tell other folks. Make sure make sure you understand the importance of the impact that you're

going to sort of extend out to the world. I think all of us are rushing to tell a story because we're like, we want to get a message out. We or for people that are influencers, we want to get followers, we want we want to attract people. But do you believe your own story? Do you believe it? Like, do you believe it? Can you nurture that one story? You don't have to talk just to talk, you know, save it for you know, save it for something else, for the group chat, and save it for the group chat.

Hype your girls up in your group Chad, do it? Don't know WhatsApp that's why, that's why I am. I love the idea of people in micro communities because the conversations are a little more closed off in their slag channels, you know, their slag groups. You know, I have a list of what'sapp groups that I'm involved in, or telegram groups or um now you know people are taking it off of What's happen and starting their own apps. What is the most effective channel for creators or talent today?

But I think you work with what works best for you, and it goes back to meeting your audience where they are and how they're consuming media. It's not how you want to tell your story, it's how are people receiving your story, consuming your story and relating to your story. Okay, Rikia, before you go, we need to do our game. I'm gonna be really intentional about our words. What would you get rid of in the world could be anything. What would you buy, what would you acquire? And what would

you do yourself? What I would get rid of is clutter. I keep a lot of stuff, y'all. So that's my first thing. My husband would be so proud. Um. I would get rid of a lot of stuff in my closet, things that this girl cannot fit in anymore. I fit into anymore and still dreams to fit into. Let girl, you are not a six. Throw the clothes out. Forty ish was for ish and four ish is about seven sizes away. Yeah, I'm girl, you are not going to

be a six again. And stop dreaming. Get in that good tin and you're gonna be Okay, what would you buy? I would love to acquire other companies. They're right at the cusp of doing the things that they're supposed to do in the right way, so that we could work with him on doing the right things in the way that they should do them for the future. Give us an example. I can't do that because I am trying to.

I'm actually trying to acquire a few companies. Okay, but you'll you'll come back and tell us once acquire Yes, okay, And what would you do yourself that you're not already doing. I'm a good vacation lady, Like I mean tears y'all because I don't get to go on vacation. Um, but is that like a thing like you're all saying, like what would I do? I would go on at vacation. I would go on some sort of sort of vacation to recharge and center myself at least every other month.

What's the first place we're going somewhere? Oh my gosh, I would love to go to mad I do want to do I'm in I like my families from the Islands, so I'd love to just do something like I'd love to go to St. Thomas. Um. I need the sand and the water, like that's who I am. But then I want to do I want to do a camping trip. I'm afraid of the woods, Like I don't like snakes, I don't like any of that kind of stuff. But I want to like get myself to do like a

camping trip, just to say, Rickia, you did the camping trip. Um. I want to go to the desert. I want to tree in a lake. Yes, I want to go to Joshua Tree. We have so many things to do. We'll do that. I'm like, I just want to go to dinner with the both of you, but I'll do it any of those places. I love that. We were like what would you do yourself? And it became what are we gonna do? You just tell us where we go? Where are we going? Rickia? Because we'll be there, Rickia Reynolds.

If people want to get in touch with you, learn more about sky Blue, do business with you. How do they get in touch with you? Um, you can just follow me on Instagram, Rickia Reynolds, because that's the easiest place to find me at Rikia Reynolds are a k I A Reynolds like the rep love it Rickia. Rickia, you are like a breath of fresh air. And uh wow, I hope the industry gets a lot more of you. And I'm so excited about your ethical language AI technology.

Just one last parting thought, what about an eyewear line, Rickia. You know what someone said that before, I would love I've been wearing glasses since the kindergarten, so it's a no brain to be continued, Rickia Reynold, Sky Media. Okay, so big, thank you Rickia Reynolds for coming by Atlandia. So many important things for us to consider and think

about as marketers and communicators. I love what she said that before was the year of words, not works, and now we are moving into works, which is really the call to action to the industry. More of out what are you gonna what are you gonna do? Not just say I think that it is more important not just as people, but as people who are building companies, building agencies, building brands, building products that we are intentional in the

language that we use. And what I love that she said that I think can be easily passed by it was, UM, the trend that I'm all in for is micro or nano influencers at the kitchen table. And the point there was these are intimate conversations. The more brands and marketers take some time and maybe even take some budget to really invest in the works into communities and doing it in a meaningful, truly meaningful way to those communities. UM, there's some exciting things that will come out of that.

And I think real long term partnership can come out of that, UM where potentially these are co collaborators in your product, in your brand. Well. And as I think about coming back to the top of this episode and talking about shareholder, really thinking about sitting around a table having influence because you have expertise, you have understanding, your your thought leader in what it is that you're bringing

to the table that is what shape's decisions. This is a really interesting provocation to think about as marketers is it really about one to a million, or is about one to four? And I think we'll find that it's one to four over and over and over and over and over again. Laura hit it with the list of all of our friends and family I heart who have been so good to us and helped us get back on air. Big thank you to Bob Connal, Carter, Andy, Eric Gayle Val, Michael Jen. We appreciate you. Thank you

so much for this opportunity. We'll see in two weeks. M