Heroes in Business - Dan Hill, CEO founder of Hill Impact is interviewed by David Cogan host of the Eliances Heroes show

Episode Date: August 30, 2024

"Timing and strategy is everything in crisis management" Dan Hill, CEO founder of Hill Impact is interviewed by David Cogan host of the Eliances Heroes show broadcast on am and fm network channels and syndicated online and internet radio.  www.hillimpact.com

Welcome back to Alliances Heroes, where heroes in business align. To be part of our super community and find out more about Alliances, visit www.alliances.com. Now, back to our super host, David Kogan, founder of Alliances. Our super host, David Kogan, founder of Alliances. Well, well, well, well, I'm so happy to be back. I mean, we just had the founding member of Origami Owl, those living lockets that you see everywhere. Later on in the show, we're going to have the number one undefeated women's boxing champ that is a client of our next hero, who is Dan Hill, owner of Hill Impact. Now, with how fast news travels nowadays, cameras watching your every move, and that anyone can write anything on you or your business, true or not, can be a challenge to manage.

So where do you turn? Well, our next hero has over 20 years of experience, has advised a variety of clients, including professional athletes, sport teams, universities, public figures, public and private sector organizations around the world. And that's why we've got Dan Hill again, president of Hill Impact. Dan, what is the most in-demand service you would say that you offer? Well, thanks for having me. I would say the most requested services for crisis management.

And crisis management can be a variety of things. It can be a nonprofit that has a problem with the Department of Justice. It could be a global brand that has had a recall, or it could be a high-profile person who is under attack. And all of those require unique skills, and it's basically protecting and defending someone's reputation. How do you do that, though? I mean, here's the thing. With the way news travels, the owner could be sleeping, wake up in the morning, suddenly they've got 100,000 texts and emails and telephone calls of something drastic going on. How do you manage that for them? Well, it's gotten a lot harder. I have to admit,

when I first started, the 24-hour news cycle didn't exist. Blogs didn't exist. Twitter didn't exist. So it's changed a lot. If there's anything good for a brand that's going through a crisis, it's that these crises tend to have a shorter shelf life. So they're much shorter in duration. And with all these platforms, we focus on the negative, which is a lot more people looking at you and exposing any kind of misstep. But those same platforms also give you more resources to respond. And so our best advice and the things that we help people do is to not spin but to handle things with authenticity. We're a forgiving society, and making a mistake isn't the problem. It's always how it's handled. And, you know, unfortunately, a lot of times the

people who come to us have already not only made the mistake, but also made the first few mistakes in responding to it. And that's where it gets especially tricky. And I got to imagine they got to be crying at the time before they contact you just going nuts. Some of the most known and respected brands turn to you when the stakes are high and the challenges are great. But explain maybe when the best time to engage with your services. You just mentioned that there are already some of them are responding beforehand, making things worse. So when is the best time to engage your services? Well, I would say before you have a crisis because there's a lot you can do to prepare.

You can make sure you have the right policies and procedures. You can make sure you have the right information on your website. You have the right monitoring tools. And you can also make sure that your top people are trained in how to respond. So I would say that's the first thing. But if you're a brand, either an individual or organization that's facing a challenge, I think the best thing to do is to stay calm and to not just rush out a response based on initial information, because it's when you have to start backtracking and correcting previous statements that it gets really tricky. And so

what you want to do is be sure that you get all the information first. And I would say it's okay to talk about process. While you're going to have a lot of pressure on you to give answers, say you had an accident and people want to know exactly what the fallout is, it's okay to say we're sorting through that, but let us tell you how we're doing it. And that's a little step that's lost on a lot of people. I don't want to give away all the secrets, but that's one of them for sure. And we're talking with Dan Hill of hillimpact.com, defends reputations of high profile clients, and you're listening to Alliance's Heroes. Be a hero. Go to where entrepreneurs align. Be part of the community with me, David Kogan, your host. That's E-L-I-A-N-C-E-S dot com. We'll also have Dan's information on our website.

Your portfolio includes multi-billion dollar international acquisitions, litigation and criminal investigations of Fortune 100 companies, defending the reputations of high profile individuals. But what brought you to start doing this type of business? profile individuals, but what brought you to start doing this type of business? Well, it really started when I was in college. I needed to do some volunteer work, and the closest place to the college was a fire station. And so I went over there, volunteered, not realizing that volunteering meant they wanted me to be a firemanman or that's what I was signing up for. I was just offering to sweep floors and wash trucks. But I became a volunteer fireman and started doing some training in firefighting and mass casualty.

And all of that gave me the tools to learn how to handle these kind of situations. And so then I went and developed my writing and speaking skills. And over time, it just kind of happened. It's not what I chose. It chose me. What makes me nervous out there is, again, the spread of it, but also, too, is those, you know, that are going after children. OK. And, you know, they're bashing their reputation and doing everything. I mean, what advice do you have for parents who want to protect their children's reputation online or otherwise? Is there any kind of tips or anything that they could do now? Should they be the ones engaging your services now?

Well, I'm so glad you brought that up because that's one of my personal passions. And obviously, there's not a revenue source for us in doing that. But I actually wrote a piece on cyberbullying for parents for Huffington Post. You can find it on my Daniel Hill Huffington Post contributors page. But one of the things that happens is when a kid is under attack online, it feels like the walls are coming in on them and it's crushing them. And parents not knowing what to do often will say, well, let's get our kid into therapy or let's go see a counselor. But that can take days or weeks sometimes when what they really need is firefighting. How do I deal with this today? How do I confront my bully? How do I

repair this stuff online? And there are some practical tips that parents should know, and I do include some of those in the piece I wrote for Huffington Post. That's excellent. Tell me about one of your maybe most or one of your most memorable clients and what you did for them. Maybe the story of what was going on, the short story, and then to what you did to help them. Well, I've seen so much and there's so many that are memorable. One that most people will know of that I was very involved with is Arthur Anderson during Enron. And during the Enron crisis, Arthur Anderson at the time thought this was an event that may pass within a matter of months. And the story, as you know, goes that in a little more than a year, the firm was practically out of business. And what's amazing about that is they were one of the most reputable organizations in the U.S. They had prominent people in every community in the country, and yet they went out of business.

And they went out of business because their reputation could not weather the crisis of Enron. And then there were a few little ones that happened afterwards. And I use that as a cautionary tale that it doesn't matter how big you are, how old you are, how powerful your brand is. If you make the wrong steps or you get caught up in the perfect storm, it can be catastrophic. I mean, that is amazing. Amazing. And you have a special note on your website that I'm looking at here now to high profile individuals about overcoming challenges. In fact, I love it. Clients can call you 24-7 to guide them through any situation. Explain that message, Dan, and how you help them. I mean, they can call you anytime here

in an emergency if they're your client? Well, even if they're not my client. And it's really, it almost makes me tear up because my passion is in suicide prevention. I mean, that's what I, so much of what I do, I feel like is getting at, especially with individuals. And when your reputation is under attack, it can really feel devastating. And like, there's just no hope. And what I, I don't want to see are CEOs take their life because they're embarrassed by making a mistake or spouses who got caught doing something wrong, taking their life or doing something devastating because they made a mistake. And so I just want to offer to people that in those moments when you feel like there's no hope, that there are people who will have your back and help you make the right moves to, you know, handle the situation.

Nothing is too big to overcome. That is the best, Dan. Keep doing what you're doing. And next, we're going to have the number one undefeated women's boxing champ, Heather Hardy, who, guess what, is also a client of dan hill dan you are in business to protect others you work hard to shield them from ongoing adversity and challenges