When Things Go Sideways: Managing a Communications Crisis

Brandi Starr [00:00:34]:
Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to another episode of Revenue Rehab. I am your host, Brandi Starr, and we have another amazing episode for you today. I am joined by John David. John brings decades of experience representing companies both large and small. His expertise in crisis communications encompasses a wide spectrum from managing media scrutiny both earned and undeserved, to navigating sensitive situations like workplace violence and financial scams. John is also the author of how to protect or destroy your reputation online. Welcome to Revenue Rehab. Your session begins now.

John David [00:01:17]:
Thanks so much for having me, Brandi. I appreciate it.

Brandi Starr [00:01:20]:
I am excited to talk to you today, but before we jump into our topic, I like to break the ice with a little woosah moments that I call buzzword banishment. So tell me, what industry buzzword would you like to get rid of forever?

John David [00:01:37]:
Well, actually, I have a. I have a lot. I had an employee a few years ago who created a file, you know, kind of on our main server that was titled words John hates. And so I. And there's a, there's a lot of them out there, but one that's just, I think for ever and ever, I just, I'll never understand, is facilitate. I'm a big. I'm not big on euphemisms, and to me, you know, facilitate means assist. Facilitate means help facilitate me.

John David [00:02:08]:
There's. There's all these things that it means that are better than that word. So, you know, why. Why, you know, why spend eight, four syllables when you can do it in two? Why, you know, why use a big, big word when you can use a simple word? And as a writer and a communicator, and as someone who went to journalism school, I've always just been, we're using it. We're using these words that just, there's so many better options than that. And that's one of my big ones.

Brandi Starr [00:02:40]:
Yeah, I would agree. It is a word that I can't say. I use a lot, but I definitely use, and I do think a lot of these overuse words. It's like someone starts using it, and then everybody starts using it, and I don't know that anybody ever really knows why. Like, why did that become a popular word? Because you're right. It is a longer word, and there are so many more better ways to say it. So I can promise that I won't try to facilitate anything today.

John David [00:03:13]:
Please don't. Please don't facilitate me today. I really, I can just not, can't handle it today.

Brandi Starr [00:03:20]:
As I say, I am curious how many of the ones on your list I probably overuse, because I do recognize that I tend to be a violator of the buzzwords.

John David [00:03:31]:
There's a few. I mean, that I just, like, I've never, I've never really liked, it's like, empower is another one. I just, like, I think, like, gets overused a lot. You know, there's a lot of, you know, things. Systems get deployed. You know, everything's getting deployed. Like, we're all going off to war. You know, there's just a lot of them.

John David [00:03:50]:
There's a lot of them like that, which I just, I, you know that when, you know, when you sort of run your own consulting business and you're the head of the, you know, you're the, you're the leader of the style police, you get to pick a few ones they like. I just don't like that word. I don't want to use that word. So there's, I have a few, and it's, you know, it's my own quirk as much as anything else.

Brandi Starr [00:04:06]:
Well, awesome. Now that we have gotten that off our chest, tell me, what brings you to revenue rehab?

John David [00:04:12]:
Well, we're in an interesting time, you know, where we've seen a lot in the recent days and weeks and months and years of communications crisis, where crises where companies get into, have issues that can really do incredible damage to their business. And I specialize in crisis communications, and I've worked with companies, both large and small, in handling communications issues that could severely impact, in a negative way, their business. Uh, so I, I work with, with companies of, of all different shapes and sizes to prepare for as best we can and then manage, uh, communications crisis crises. And so, and it can be anything from, you know, I like to say you kind of go from the, the, you know, from the sort of simple and seemingly benign to existential, you know, and so a communications crisis can, can, can cause you your business. It can slowly erode at your, erode, your bottom line. It can destroy your reputation. And it's something that most managers will deal with, something like this. Most communications professionals will deal with something like this.

John David [00:05:29]:
Marketing managers, cmos, they're going to have, something's going to happen where, that they have to know how to communicate during a crisis situation. And that's the type of work that we like to do.

Brandi Starr [00:05:40]:
Okay. Yeah. It is one of those things that you hope to never have to encounter, but it is better to be prepared and know how best to handle it. And so I'm really looking forward to this discussion because it's definitely something that I know I don't personally feel prepared for, and I thankfully have not had to handle it this far in my career. But before we dive in, I believe in setting intentions. It gives us focus. It gives us purpose, important. It gives our audience an understanding of what they should expect from our conversation today.

Brandi Starr [00:06:18]:
And so I'd love to hear, what's your intention? What would you like people to take away?

John David [00:06:24]:
I think that my main intention is that you can prepare for a communications crisis. That you should prepare for a communications crisis. You don't necessarily have to figure out every last detail, but there's a lot of, like, fundamental things you can do in advance to prepare yourself, your company, and your team so that you're better, better aware, better prepared to manage a situation when it hits, be able to identify it, be able to triage it and craft a response. That, that's my main, my main mantra.

Brandi Starr [00:07:08]:
Okay. And before I know those fundamentals is the key place that I want to dive in with you. But before we get to that, I do want to just talk about, you know, we see, I mean, we're coming on the heels. Like, the crowd strike situation wasn't, you know, too, in too far distant past, and that was a big one because, you know, you had issues with the company itself and their crisis communications. But then even I look at companies like Delta Airlines, like, I am loyal to Delta. They were impacted far beyond other people. You know, when other airlines and banks and everything had recovered because of the system that went down with the pilots and flight attendants, you know, it was a good bit of time after everyone else had recovered that they're still, you know, in crisis mode. And so I know that there's, you know, a lot of ways where some companies handle it right or well.

Brandi Starr [00:08:09]:
And, you know, from listening to other people, many feel like crowdstrike handled it well. And then there's other companies that don't. They totally hashtag fail. And so I'd love to start with some of your thoughts around what do you think makes the difference between an organization that is able to lean in, handle these things, and come out all right on the other end versus those companies that just kind of fall apart?

John David [00:08:40]:
Right. Well, I think in the crowdstrike story is interesting because I think what crowdstrike did. Right. They obviously, they had the problem. It was their problem. It was a software update. There was some issue with it, whatever it was, but they took ownership of it immediately. It happened, you know, for those of us in the US, it happened kind of overnight initially.

John David [00:09:03]:
And so they were, you know, their response, you know, that we sort of, you know, in the, on the, in the, uh, in the US, we got the response first thing in the morning. So they looked as though they were responding quickly when they basically probably had a little bit of an advantage and that most of us were asleep when it first hit. Um, but they took ownership of the, of the, of the issue, and I think that was why they came out a little bit better. I mean, they also, they're, I mean, they've got big problems. I mean, I'm not a lawyer, but I mean, they've got big problems at all. They've crashed all their customers, causing, you know, probably, you know, billions of dollars in losses and issues and everything. So they have bigger, bigger problems. But from a communication standpoint, they did a good job and that they took ownership of it.

John David [00:09:47]:
And they said, this is us. This is not a terrorist act. This is not a cyber attack. This is us. We did this. And then it filters down from there, and then you have the other companies that were impacted by it, and the airlines are a really good example. The airlines are pretty well schooled in what to do when a crisis hits. They probably had, you know, the best crisis plans going because, you know, planes unfortunately crash sometimes and, and there's weather delays and things like that.

John David [00:10:21]:
And, and I think that the, I think it's very difficult to, for those organizations that are so big, that have so many customers for them to properly communicate and they, they do the best they can, but it's just, it's almost like an overwhelming crisis. There's nothing they can do. I mean, I was stuck in a few years back, there was a storm, and I got, ended up getting stuck in New York City for a couple of days. And I had, and I was on Delta and I had to call. I was trying to get a new flight. And you'd call and it would say your approximate wait time is 6 hours and 37 minutes. And he's like, wait what? I mean, it's like, I thought, do you mean six minutes and 37 seconds or you mean 6 hours? And so there's certain things when it's, these crises are just overwhelming and they kind of have to do the best that they can. And while I was really upset with Delta over that I realized that a lot of this wasn't in their control, but they could always do better at communicating it.

John David [00:11:27]:
And that's what I think is, that's where I think there's opportunity for every company to put things in place to better communicate when something goes wrong, whether it's, you know, a text messaging system or it's through their, it's through their app or something, that, where you can actually communicate what's going on so that you don't have everyone, you know, completely livid with you.

Brandi Starr [00:11:52]:
Okay. And, yeah, I think, I do think that that's sort of that what you were talking about in preparation of, like, having an actual plan, because, you know, it's also like, what if, you know, what if texting goes down? What's your avenue if email goes down? You know, it's like having that, that multifaceted plan. And so let's, let's jump in. You hinted about the fundamentals. You talked about being able to identify, triage, and craft a response. So, you know, let us in on what we should be preparing for. What are some of those fundamentals?

John David [00:12:26]:
Well, so the first thing, the most important thing when you're dealing with a crisis is to get the facts as best you can. Oftentimes, you know, misinformation kind of rules the day, you know, that you get whatever comes out first. And so it's getting all your facts aligned to and then, and then determining, um, you know, determining your kind of met, your messaging strategy. And the first thing, like, I always believe, is that you should have simple things for, for a company. They should be able to reach out to have a meet something, and a means to reach out to all their employees or a means to reach out to their customers and, um, and stakeholders. And then the, um. And that's something as simple as just making sure you have everybody's phone number. You know, you have the top people in the company have all their phone numbers, you know, where they are, and then having the.

John David [00:13:19]:
Being able to come up with some basic messaging from, for when dealing with, if there's a media call, you know, you always want to, you know, you don't want to. No comment. The media, but you can always tell the media, listen, I don't have a comment right this second, but I'll, can I get back to you in half an hour? Can I get back to you in 45 minutes? We want to talk to you. We want to tell you what's going on, but we want to make sure we know we have an answer that makes sense. For you. So, having that basic plan in place, who's our spokesperson going to be if there's a crisis, who's our team that's going to help with the messaging? Who do we call? How do we respond if there's a media inquiry? And do you have a media policy in place? A lot of companies do, and some of them don't. Media policy is simply a document. You can tuck it into your employee manual that says, here's what happens if the media calls you.

John David [00:14:11]:
You know, you're not a sphere. You're an employee. You're not a spokesperson for the company. If you, someone reaches out to you, forward them to this person in communications or this external consultant or both or your boss or your supervisor or whatever it is, and having this just sort of plan in place so that if something happens, at least you're, you know, you're not, like, 100% flat footed. And that's like, step. Step number one. And then the next step is to really to triage the situation and, you know, kind of get a lay of, okay, here. What happened, how many people are impacted, and how do we best communicate our position of what happened to this group? Um, and that's, you know, and maybe that's through, you know, a direct communication to.

John David [00:14:58]:
To clients, maybe, which we shared with the media. Maybe it's through social. A social media post. You have to come up with your message and then how you just distribute it, and. And then you have to manage, you know, the questions and the follow up and the. And the inevitable things that are going to happen, like social media coverage and, you know, whatever crazy memes and everything that comes after that. And there's some of it. Some of it is.

John David [00:15:20]:
Some of it is you have to sort of just, you know, take your medicine and other things you have to, you know, you have to respond to. So it's all about triaging the situation, understanding, you know, understanding what the. What. What's going on. So you get all your facts straight and then communicating out in a clear way.

Brandi Starr [00:15:38]:
Okay? And, you know, this, like, I think a lot of times we think about the big companies. Like, when something happens with a large company, you know, Crowdstrike, Delta, like, all these big companies, there is a lot more attention on it, there's a lot more media, all these sorts of things. And I feel like smaller organizations can almost get a little too comfortable because, you know, it's one of those things, like, if something happens with our 25 person consultancy, I don't know that CNN or Fox News is, you know, going to be banging down our doors. And so how do we think about this? Or, you know, differently, or do we think about this differently if we are at a smaller organization versus a larger one?

John David [00:16:28]:
Well, I think, I think that your, I think your premise is a really good talking point, but the reality is that I think smaller businesses could be even at more risk, and it's because you don't need a newspaper or media, at least need one of these, right? So if somebody's, if something happens at your small business and somebody, so, you know, you can make somebody, a customer can take a video of what happens at your business, and it can be on the Internet in seconds, right through, via, via Twitter, slash, X or, you know, Facebook or whatever and any social media platforms. So everybody has a camera in their hand. You know, everybody has a way of, of communicating with the whole planet in their hand. So there's, there's a lot of risk associated with that. And I, and I think that we, we, you know, I like to give the example of, you know, imagine that, you know, in your local fast food restaurant, whatever. It's McDonald's, it's Burger King, whatever it is, you know, and, you know, somebody sees, you know, a mouse run across the dining room floor, right? Well, there's. For McDonald's or Burger King or whatever, one of these big companies. That's embarrassing, right? It's a problem.

John David [00:17:42]:
You may lose a little bit of market share in that area because people are going to go, oh, my God, there was a mouse at the McDonald's on Main street. But that's not going to impact that company's brand. It's going to be one instance in one place. But if you have a local restaurant, that's mom and pop, and that happens, that's existential, that could shut them down. Most businesses are not run week to week, month to month kind of thing. And if all of a sudden you lose all your regulars at a restaurant because there's a perceived issue with cleanliness or whatever, the type of thing happens that, listen, my wife's never going there. Right? So, like, when those things happen, you could have an existential crisis, that is with a small business that would just be kind of another day at the office for a big business. So I think you always have to be prepared for any of those things.

John David [00:18:42]:
And because you have, it's so easy to put a review on Yelp, it's so easy to write a post on Facebook. And so it's almost as more important to be vigilant and be prepared as a small business.

Brandi Starr [00:18:59]:
Yeah. And, you know, I think the, what I take away from that is being small doesn't mean that you don't have to prepare for big impact. Like it, it scales, essentially.

John David [00:19:12]:
Yeah. I mean, we have in, so I'm in, I'm in south Florida and, you know, we're in the hurricane zone, right. So we have these disruptions that happened and there's sort of like, you know, there's a rhythm to them. You know, it's like all of a sudden you get a hurricane warning and that means, okay, and you might have a hurricane force winds in 48 hours. And, like, the marketplace sort of knows how to respond to that. And so you sort of, you can, you can look at things like that and say, okay, yeah, here's what we would, here's what we do when there's hurricane. Here's what we do when there's a snowstorm. Here's what we do if there's, you know, some weather, weather thing that impacts our business and just think in terms of, you know, what else could happen.

John David [00:19:50]:
What else, what could, you know, game it out a little bit. Like, what's my worst case scenario and for my business, that could, that could really cause me a lot of pain and, and, you know, prepare for it as much as you can. You know, I'm not, you know, you don't have to spend, you know, a thousand hours preparing for it, but to be prepared to. So here's what I'm going to do. If this, if something happens that's, that's, you know, that, that's, that has the potential to bring down my business. And that's, listen, it's all, it's all, it's not just like natural disasters or cyber outages. I mean, you have, every business is vulnerable to things like, you know, embezzlement issues at, you know, there's, there's, it happens all the time. You know, there's issues of workplace violence.

John David [00:20:34]:
There's issues of, you know, other types of, you know, kind of criminal things that happened at companies. You know, there's sexual harassment claims. I mean, those are, you know, there's succession issues. If you're, you know, if you're, if you lose your, if you lose your top executive, what's going to happen? There's issues of when someone, when you lose an employee to a competitor, those, to me, those are all crisis situations. It doesn't have to be, you know, you know, it doesn't have to be that, that. There's some, there's some, something that's makes you know, makes the national news. It's, there's all these situations where you have to be prepared and you have to know how to communicate with your audience. Otherwise you could be in, you know, your business could be in big trouble.

Brandi Starr [00:21:18]:
Yeah. And I think that's a really, really good point. It sort of broadens my perspective in what I think about as crisis, because there's things that you listed that initially I would not have just thought of as a crisis, but I, you know, even, like, with someone leaving or succession planning or, you know, I remember talking to a friend. She was at a b2b company, but they were fairly small, 100, 150 people, and their CEO passed away suddenly. And it's like, you know, now I'm thinking about that. Like, that is crisis. Crisis communicate, you know, so, so many things like that I don't necessarily think of as crisis, because I'm used to thinking of, like, these big, you know, national things that happen.

John David [00:22:08]:
Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, there's a lot of businesses that they are. The founder is the, is the, is the company, or he's perceived to be the company. And then if that founder, something happens to that person, if that person passes away, that person becomes incapacitated, that person, whatever gets, you know, something happens to them. And then, listen, we're in a, it's dog eat dog world out there, man. We got, there's, there's folks who say, why would you want to be with this company when you should be with us? Because we're not. We're stable. They're not, you know, there's all those things where those communications are absolutely, absolutely critical.

John David [00:22:43]:
It doesn't just have to be, I mean, listen, when something happens and it has the potential for, like, to be like a national news story, that's the type of situation that I work on frequently. And it's fast paced and it's exciting and it's high stakes and all that. But like I said, it's all relative. One businesses, simple thing can be another existential crisis. And so you have to be prepared for everything if you can be okay.

Brandi Starr [00:23:20]:
And I want to shift topics just a little bit because one of the things, you know, one of the questions that always comes up for me. So, you know, I, back when scandal was on tv, I used to love that show, loved Olivia Pope. And, you know, that was, like, my example of, you know, crisis management, which, you know, I know is overblown. But one of the things that I think about that was always a big thing on that show that I know that companies struggle with is that balance of controlling the narrative to protect the company's reputation, balanced with, like, being honest with what actually happened. Because, you know, the whole premise of that show was they were never honest. It was all about the spin. And I know, or I assume that, you know, in real life, that's not what's happening. But I can see where an organization can struggle with trying to balance, you know, just being transparent, being honest about what's happening, taking accountability, but also trying to, you know, control the narrative and protect the company's reputation.

Brandi Starr [00:24:32]:
So how do you strike that balance? Or how do you advise people to strike that balance?

John David [00:24:36]:
Yeah, believe me, it actually comes up. I mean, probably not in as dramatically as is on scandal, but when, you know, there's certain things that, you know, and this oftentimes when there's a controversy of some kind and maybe there's a legal argument happening or something like that, and then there's the legal side, then there's the, there's the pr side. There's, you know, how much a lot of times the general public wants information from a privately held entity, right? So, for example, you know, there's, if it's a company that's, that's doing a government related project or they're doing something and there's some type of tie in to local government and, you know, they, the public, maybe they don't like it. I deal with a lot of, like, real estate projects where there's neighbors don't want the, don't want a building going up next door to them, and they start to, you know, well, you know, how much are you investing in this? And what did you pay this and who did you do this for? And, you know, a lot of, it's kind of none of your business, right? I mean, like, in other words, what a private company does is their business. It's not the public's business. So sometimes you get into a situation where it is kind of like that, where you saying, okay, here's really what's going on, and here's what we're going to say. We're not going to tell that. We're not going to tell the whole world everything that's going on inside our company.

John David [00:26:02]:
We're not going to, we're not going to show them our dirty laundry or our clean laundry. We're just going to show, we're just going to tell them what we, what's going on. And sometimes the answer is we're not going to say anything. You know, I mean, sometimes you, you know, there's no. Uh, you know, you can, I'm not a believer in, like, no commenting things, but I'm also a believer in sort of the statement that acknowledges something's going on. But we're not going to tell you everything. Um, because a lot of times when you're dealing with business, it's, you know, listen, this is commerce. There's, you know, somebody may have, you know, invested millions of dollars to purchase a piece of land, and they want to develop it.

John David [00:26:36]:
They own it. They have, you know, they have the deed. They are paying, they're paying for it. They've got financing for it. Now, just because the neighbors don't like it doesn't mean that, you know, we have to open up and acknowledge every little thing that they say or get into a, you know, a deep argument with them. It's like, you know, we have kind of our rights, too. And so I think that we have that sometimes you have to push back against media attention and not be afraid to say to them, listen, we're, you know, I'm gonna, we're gonna help you and help you. We know you wanna write a story about this.

John David [00:27:07]:
We wanna participate, but, you know, listen, we're not, we're not, we're not showing you all our cards. You know, it's not gonna happen.

Brandi Starr [00:27:14]:
Yeah. And I think that is a hard, you know, a hard thing, especially when it's another organization that sort of puts you in the bind. You know, kind of like the crowdstrike Delta situation where it's like we didn't do anything.

John David [00:27:32]:
Right? Right. Yeah. I mean, ultimately you have, there, there's, there's, you know, that's, you know, the best you can do, you know, you can only blame the other guy so long. Right. Eventually they say, well, how, you know, you don't have redundancy at Delta. You know, I mean, you could, there's a million things. You could go after them, but, yeah, it's important that you have, it's, it's okay to push back sometimes, you know, I think a lot of people think they have to, like, roll over for, for a media outlet. You know, you don't have to, I mean, it's better to part, it's better to have a cordial relationship, but you don't have to do everything they tell you.

Brandi Starr [00:28:00]:
Yeah, and that, that's a really good point. And I think where I've seen a lot of companies struggle is when whatever the crisis is is something that did actually happen. Like, I know of an organization where they did have a situation with sexual harassment. And it was, you know, a particular executive and there were multiple people. And it was like, this is a thing that did happen. So, you know, and it was a crime, but at the same time, it was not a, like, widespread, you know, company wide sort of challenge. Like, it wasn't like the company was just accepting that this was happening.

John David [00:28:44]:
Right, right.

Brandi Starr [00:28:45]:
It was a very, this person.

John David [00:28:47]:
Yeah.

Brandi Starr [00:28:48]:
Yeah. Was doing this. And so I know, and, you know, I was having this conversation with someone, like, after this whole thing had happened and settled down, and it was a real struggle for them to strike that balance of, we got to protect the company's reputation, you know, we got to be able to hire, you know, we don't want people leaving or overreacting or whatever. But at the same time, like, this is a thing that did happen here. And so you can't, you know, it's like, to a certain degree, you can't have no commented or, you know, and I don't know if they got media attention, but it's like, it has to be addressed. But you really have to strike that balance.

John David [00:29:32]:
Absolutely. I mean, I think the big thing, and I've been in situations like that in the past where, you know, something happens and you essentially, what you're trying to say is this was a one time thing. This was not systemic. And the most important thing is that that be true. Right. So the, the worth, the worst thing that can happen is that you say you're, you're, you're essentially communicating that this is not a systemic thing. And then somebody else comes out, you know, 2 hours later and says, well, that happened to me, too. You know, when I were, I worked there two years ago and it's the same thing.

John David [00:30:05]:
And I filed a lawsuit against them, too. And so then, then your credibility shot. And then you're in an existential, then you have an existential problem. So you could go from something that is just kind of embarrassing or difficult or exasperating or whatever to existential. You could find your way going down, you know, going the wrong way on the curve. So it's really, it's critical when you, for, for that you're the person who is communicating for, you knows everything that's going on so that they can answer things, you know, that they can answer, they can answer properly, that they won't, you know, stand up there. And essentially, if you know someone, your communication, your spokesperson inadvertently lies, you know, they don't, they're, they say what they think is true and it's not true, then, you know, again, you're then, then your credibility shot and you know, you're gonna start taking fire from all different, all different directions after that.

Brandi Starr [00:31:00]:
Yeah. And that, I think that is also the hard part as well because, you know, it almost feels like sometimes the person called to be the face in those, you know, media situations almost seems like they are always the ones that never have the full story. But I won't go down a rabbit hole of what I see on tv or what I see on the news. I, you know, one question that I always like to ask, especially when I, when it's a topic that is not my strength, is there's always a little bit of, I don't know what I don't know. And so is there anything that I haven't thought to ask you about that you feel important for cmos and heads of marketing to know, to better prepare them for how they can manage communication crisis effectively?

John David [00:31:51]:
I think we covered a lot, but I think the biggest overarching message is to try to plan as much as you can, to try to look at your, look at what your vulnerabilities are, and to have at least the basics of a plan in place so that you know who to communicate with, that you, you know, you have a way of a means of reaching all of your key people, of designated, a spokesperson, of communicating to your employees. And then again, sort of game out. Okay, here's what we would do if this type of situation happened. Here's what we would do if this type of situation happened to. Here are the people that need to know that kind of scenario. I think that's the most. To me, that's the biggest single thing. And then know when to get help and know when to bring in somebody who has some experience or who can help as a third party.

John David [00:32:47]:
I think that's another key aspect of this, because there's some advantages to having a third party person help you with, you know, because they have experience doing it. They also have a different, a little bit different positioning with, with the media. So.

Brandi Starr [00:33:05]:
Ah, that's, that's a great point. Um, well, John, talking about our challenges is just the first step, and nothing changes if nothing changes. And so in traditional therapy, the therapist gives the clients some homework. But here at revenue rehab, we like to flip that on its head and ask you to give us some homework. And so for those listening who, you know, are feeling like they are unprepared, you know, should a crisis hit, what's the first step? What's their one thing that they should take away and do?

John David [00:33:36]:
I think having, going through the process of creating a media policy for their company if they don't already have one, and developing the main kind of means of communication to communicate with your entire organization. So it's easy to do and also just make sure that you have a way to reach all your key people in a centralized way and not have that rest on one person's head. In other words, if so and so in human resources, you know, accidentally drops her phone in the ocean, does that mean we can't contact anybody? So we have to make sure that we have the ability to reach out to our, our group. And it's, you know, it's the old, my last thing is that it's, you know, again, maybe it's, maybe it's, it's not really buzzword, but maybe it's euphemism or whatever. But, you know, if you, if you, if you fail the plan, you plan to fail, you know, like, you can't, you have to, you have to, you have to, you have to prepare, you know, do some fundamental things, and then that'll make the, it'll make, it'll make these situations a lot easier in the, in the future.

Brandi Starr [00:34:48]:
Awesome. Well, John, I have enjoyed our discussion, but that's our time for today. But before we go, tell us how our audience can connect with you and also, you know, if they find themselves in crisis and need to reach out, like, what is it that you offer? Like, give us the shameless plugs.

John David [00:35:08]:
Sure. My website is the best way to reach me. Davidpr.com so. Www.davidpr.com my phone numbers on my website. There's also forms and calendar forums and all that stuff. I mean, pretty easy to get in touch with. And I answer my phone all the time because I deal with crises, crises all the time. And if you're trying, if you're in a situation where you're just not sure what to do or if you're doing the right thing, I'm, gimme a call.

John David [00:35:39]:
I mean, I, this is, you know, this is my, my business. This is something I've been doing for decades. I love doing it. I find it fascinating and interesting and every situation is different. And I also, you know, I'll talk to anybody, so if you want to, you know, you can call me and, you know, when you're in, and I'll give you the best advice I can give you on what, what your next step ought to be, you know, and, and so I'm always happy to sort of like, you know, help out in any way I can if you find yourself in a in a tricky situation.

Brandi Starr [00:36:11]:
Well, awesome. We will make sure to link to David PR in the show notes. So wherever you are listening or watching this podcast, check the show notes so that you can connect with John. John, I've definitely taken away some action items that I will be sending to my team right after this conversation. That's great, because I know there are a number of places where I don't feel prepared, so I definitely appreciate that. I think my favorite part of hosting this podcast is what I learned from all of my guests. So thanks so much for joining me.

John David [00:36:45]:
My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Brandi Starr [00:36:47]:
Awesome. And thanks everyone for joining us. I hope you have enjoyed my discussion with John. I can't believe we're at the end. We'll see you next time. Bye bye.