The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Crisis Averted: PR Strategies to Protect Your Reputation and the Bottom Line by Evan Nierman, Red Banyan Founder/CEO

Episode Date: August 12, 2021

Crisis Averted: PR Strategies to Protect Your Reputation and the Bottom Line by Evan Nierman, Red Banyan Founder/CEO When Facing a Crisis HOW SHOULD YOU RESPOND? If you want to protect the things that matter most in your life, then Crisis Averted was written for YOU. • Can you spot the inevitable threat that could bankrupt your business? • Have you adopted the two core practices that will make your social media bulletproof? • Are you willing to act today to guarantee success tomorrow? The answers to these key questions could mean the difference between surviving or thriving. Crisis Averted explores the unpredictable world of crisis management and the decisions that make or break a company’s future. A no-nonsense playbook offering practical guidance, applying its principles and strategies will empower you to approach potential challenges with confidence and competence. The lessons are universal and cut across every industry, meaning all organizations can use Crisis Averted to safeguard their single most important asset: their reputation.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain now here's your host chris voss hi folks boss here from the chris voss show.com the chris voss show.com hey we're coming here with a great podcast we certainly appreciate you coming by the show today and visiting with us. Yeah, I know you had that long drive over to the radio box there. The radio box? What era are we living

in, Chris? It's a podcast. We just picked up our cell phone. What's the beauty of that? You got to love it. So you know what you should do with that cell phone? You should tell your friends, neighbors, relatives, dogs, cats, everyone. Get them to listen to the Chris Foss Show. Tell them, have you found the light in your life, the Chris Foss Show? The people who don't judge you, but they're like your family. Anyway, guys, go to iTunes and all the different places. We're syndicated all over, like, many different places. Pandora, Deezer, you name it, you can find us.

We're even on Amazon and Audible. So if you like listening to Audible books, the Chris Foss Show is over there. It's, like, really official and stuff on the Amazon, their channel. Also go to all of our stuff on goodreads.com, Forge.s.chrisfoss. See all of our different groups on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok. It's all over the place where all the kids are at, they like to say these days. Anyway, today we're going to be interviewing a most brilliant author and mind. He's going to be wonderful to talk to. He is the author of the book Crisis Averted, PR Strategies to Protect Your Reputation and the Bottom Line. This just barely came out July 27, 2021. You can order it

up where refined books are sold. His name is Evan Nerman, and he's going to be on the show to talk to us about his book, his experience, and his knowledge and impart that to us. He is the founder and CEO of Red Banyan, which provides strategic communications counsel, crisis management, and media training to senior business leaders, government office officials, and private individuals. Evan and his team advise and represent corporations and nonprofit organizations across a wide range of industries, offering, guiding them through high stakes, complex situations, and conceptualizing and executing executive communications campaigns. He has a radio contributed to various top publications, including Entrepreneur, Fast Company, and Forbes, and the author of the new book, as we mentioned, Crisis Averted. Welcome to the show. How are you, Evan?

Chris, I am fantastic. I'm super excited to be with you today. Thanks for having me on. And we're super excited to have you.'m jealous of your background man look at that background it's really cool those of you who are listening on the podcast go go watch the youtube video he's got he looks like he's in on anchor desk almost he's got the whole you know world cnn npr thing going on the background that's awesome it says in fact red banyan global impact and so it has this montage a map of the, and then it has the outlets from all across the world, a bunch of the outlets that we're in touch with. So that was the idea behind it. That is awesome, man. That is awesome. It really looks official. I feel jealous. Maybe we should

get something like that in the background. Note to self-engineers. Anyway. Hey, you can hire our graphic designer. She can come to your studio and do it for you. I don't know how she did it, but it looks amazing. So I'm glad we have it. But maybe we'll do one for you as well. There you go. We'll see how the interview goes first. And then we have his book in the background.

So give us your plugs, Evan, where people can find you on the interwebs and get to know you better. Yeah, you can find me at evannierman.com. I for E except after C on Nearman. You can check us out at redbanyan.com, and we're on a variety of social media. We're on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, TikTok even, cross generations. What can I say?

You got to go where the kids are. That's what we always say around here. Give us some of your background, your history, what got you into this field. Tell us a little bit about yourself, if you would. Sure. So I'm one of those weird creatures who actually studied the thing that they're now working in. So unlike most of my team members who came to PR later in their careers, they were either journalists who decided to cross over to the proverbial dark side, or they were business people who had nothing to do with communications, but now they're doing it. I studied communications. I was interested in communications. That was all

I really ever saw myself doing. I went to school at George Washington University in Washington, DC. So being in DC was a great place to kick off both my education and then my career because it put me at the crossroads of politics and policy and communications. And that's what my business does. So it makes sense. Washington, it's all about that PR. But that's really good, though. I studied ballet and now I'm a podcaster. So I don't know how that worked out. But how long ago did you guys start Red Banyan and what made you want to do it? Yeah. So the business was started about 10 and a half years ago. I've been doing this kind of work for the past, dare I say, nearly quarter century. Don't let the youthful looks fool you. I'm much older than I

appear. 25 years doing communications, but 10 and a half, 11 years doing it in the context of Red Banyan. And the reason I started the firm was one, I had seen the power of communications done. I'd seen good organizations that found themselves in bad situations and worked with crisis communications consultants who really came in and helped them protect themselves and ensure that they were able to quickly deal with the situation and then move past it. So I was very interested in getting into crisis PR as a subset of communications. And I wanted to have a business where I got to decide who are the clients we work with, who are the ones we choose not to work with. I was looking also for a certain culture and a mindset, which I couldn't find in any of the

other agencies that I was looking at. And I thought, if it doesn't exist, then I need to create it. And so if I start my own business, I start my own firm specializing in high stakes and crisis PR, I get to pick and choose the clients. We get to focus where we want to focus. And I get to surround myself with men and women who reflect my values and the ethos of the company. And so I'm very grateful and appreciative. It's been 11 years. We're well out of that startup phase. We're an established business. We're starting to really come into our own in terms of being recognized on a national and a global scale for the quality of our work and just the talent of my colleagues. And it's been really the most rewarding experience for

more rewarding than pretty much everything with the exception of getting married and having kids. And I got to put that in there just in case my wife happens to come across this. And I want to make sure I'm covered. You should always strive to create peace and understanding and excellent communication in your home, not just in your business. Yeah, family is everything. For those who are the layman in the industry, what is crisis PR? It's a great question. So crisis PR is a subset of communications or PR. Let me put it to you this way. This will maybe help you understand the difference between general PR and crisis PR. Most of the time, if you're talking

about general PR, the goal is get me in the media. And if you're engaging the services of a crisis PR firm, it's get me the hell out of the media and do it now. So that's a broad strokes way of looking at it. Does that illustrate it perhaps? Yeah, that's a perfect analogy. That just makes me laugh. Get me the hell out of the media. You said all the time in the press, it's individuals, it's corporations, nonprofits. It doesn't matter what industry we're talking about. You have good companies that find themselves in challenging or complex situations, and they're either getting bad press or there's a narrative out there that describes them in a certain way. And it's not the way that is factual and it's not the narrative or the storyline that they want.

So they'll engage the services of a firm like Red Banyan or another crisis PR firm for us to come in and really help them deal with a high stakes situation where there's really no room for mistakes and to step in and guide them through the tumult that comes with being in a crisis situation. I've seen a few friends and companies that have had to hire firms like yours. And sometimes they decided to not listen to the PR advice that they were given from their crisis agent. And they're like, I'm just going to, I'm just going to, I'm just going to wing it and do my own. And that just makes it worse. It's like throwing a water on a grease fire. It goes next level. And I've seen that where you're just like, yeah, I don't think you should not be listening to the crisis PR guy

because you're, that's what you're, I'll see, Hey, we're going to put this out. And I'm like, I don't know, that's a good idea. And I'm not a crisis PR agent. I just, I think you're going to turn that next level and it goes next level. And they're like, and what's funny is it lives in infamy. I've had a few friends that when they did the, I'm not going to listen to them and I'm just going to do my own thing and try and fix it. People will remember that they went next level and instead of just shutting up and shutting down or listening to their PR agent, they just went full grease fire. And people remember that they went the next level. Yeah, unfortunately, like you said, in the age of the internet, it lasts forever. And with PR consultants or really any consultants, if they're worth their salt, then they're getting paid to give you really good advice based on their expertise. And at the end of the day, I view our role as providing that advice and that guidance. Now, it's our job to supply that to the client,

not to enforce it or make sure that he or she heeds that advice. I would say for the vast majority of the time, thankfully, our clients do listen to us and they're able to recognize they're a little out of their comfort zone. We have an expertise in this area. We've been through it time and time again. We've guided literally dozens and dozens of companies of various sizes through it. So we know what to expect. We know how to navigate it. And the other thing to keep in mind is when you're in a crisis, it is a deeply personal experience because you're either being impugned, you personally or the business that you've created. And for business owners who are out there, they understand when you create a company,

you create a business, you pour your heart and soul into it. And when you find that being attacked or treated unfairly, it is a deeply personal experience. And being in that high pressure cooker makes it very hard sometimes to divorce the emotion from the rationale and having a dispassionate third party, someone who at the same time, they can understand what you're going through, can say, listen, from an outsider's perspective, from someone who deals with crises on a day-to-day basis. Here's some best practices. Here's what I recommend. Here's how I'm going to help you. And like you said, at the end of the day, people are going to make their decision as to whether they heed the advice or not. But I view

our role at Red Banyan is to make sure that we supply it and to have really the courage to tell the client if he's wrong, if she's wrong. And to me, it's one of our core values, which you can't see it behind me in this beautiful backdrop, but it's on the pillar that's on the other side of the room. But one of our core values as a company is integrity. And what I explain to people, our definition of integrity is not necessarily doing things the right way. Don't be a cheater, a liar and a thief. That to me willing to tell you if we think you're going down a dangerous road, not to be a yes man for you and to embolden or empower you if we think that what you're about to do is going to make things worse. Because as you wisely pointed out, Chris, a time when you're in crisis, that's the worst time to be doing things on the fly because all it takes is a misstep and then you're in deeper crisis and it happens very quickly yeah in fact my friends that didn't listen and set

themselves on fire to the next level that's what people actually remember like i've met people five years later that are like yeah your friend set himself on fire the night the second the second round and and went next level with it and that's what they actually remember they don't even remember the they remember the first thing but yeah and and then you're not thinking clearly through these things because you can't when the internet turns against you and you wake up and i never had the internet turn against me but there's sometimes where i posted something and i'll have five or ten people angry with me. It's happened over 13 years of being on the internet, on Twitter and stuff. And sometimes

maybe I had a little too many vodkas back in the day and posted something. It was a little- Hey, come on. Don't drink and post. It's- Don't drink and post. Recipe for disaster. Or anything else for that matter. But no, and sometimes it was usually something that I thought it communicated well, but it didn't. And maybe some people interpret it as something else. And I've gotten those five or ten angry comments or you don't understand this or you don't understand what you're talking about. And yeah, you don't think straight through these things.

And you need people. You and I just got done writing books you need those like those editors who look at your stuff and go no dude we're on the outside we can see what's going on and we can try and help you and guide you but yeah people really need this stuff because i've seen the ugliness of it between me too and just all sorts of meltdowns multiple marketing companies always have some sort of crisis, usually eventually it seems. When the internet turns against you and the media and suddenly your name's up in bright lights in the New York Times, yeah, you need to call people like yourself. Yeah, it's tough. And like you said, it happens fast. And unfortunately, it's happening more than

ever before. I believe that right now is probably the most dangerous time to be a business owner or an executive at a company in the history of business because of the speed at which the internet moves, the interconnectedness, the idea that what's posted there lasts forever. And we're coming off of a really stressful time where we've got this almost perfect storm of elements that are making things really tough for businesses. You've got Me Too movement. You've got real discussions that are taking place at an escalated level related to racial inequality in this country. You've got all sorts of political tumult. You've got vaccinations vaccinations you name it

you've got athletes who are taking a stand all we're living in a hyper political time and we're living in a time where people default to outrage yeah and what that means is they don't even have to be like you chris sitting at home with one one or two or five vodkas too many before they post. They may just get excited about something and say, you know what, I'm going to speak out about this. And the next thing they know, they make one post. All it takes is literally one tweet, one Instagram image, one comment on Facebook, and you can find yourself fighting for your proverbial life. And in fact, we've been helping a lot of people over the last year and a half who literally have been fighting for their lives. They've had people based on comments that they made online, threatening to

hunt them down, to murder them in their beds, to kill their family members. The level of outrage and discourse in this country has just reached the fever pitch and it's very dangerous. And it's dangerous for people, for brands. Big companies have in-house marketing people. They have folks who can respond. They have a social media team, but to the average business owner who's out there or the average small company, and they're doing a lot of this themselves, it is a very scary time. And being in crisis PR is very different than standard PR. What are some of the applications or approaches that are very different, would you say? It's different. I would describe it as it's PR on steroids.

It's PR in a pressure cooker. So in the course of normal business, if you're plodding along as a communications person or you're working in-house at a place, the pace tends to be more relaxed. You're thinking long-term about your strategy. You're executing against that strategy. You have time to try different things, to get adventuresome from time, to run things up the flagpole in terms of review and approvals and get people's input. with speed, but also skill. And the margin for error can be slim to none. And everything that you do during a crisis, you're under a microscope. So in normal day-to-day business, the biggest challenge that companies have is that no one's listening. No one cares what they're selling. No one cares about your stupid story. No one cares about your industry. You're trying to break through a cluttered universe of everyone who's saying, I've got something to say. I've got something to say.

The inverse happens with a crisis. Everyone's paying attention. They're hanging on every word and they're ready to hang you if you utter the wrong word. So it is a completely different animal. And that's why a lot of times companies don't know to whom they should turn in a time of crisis. And one of the things that's most important is actually identifying ahead of time, who is the crisis firm that we might want to work with when we need them. You want to be vetting these people and you want to be checking them out. You need to

have your lawyer on speed dial in case you need him or you need her. The time to be interviewing lawyers is not when you've already been arrested and you got your one phone call from jail and you're trying to figure out who's going to help you. You need to have a plan in advance. And crisis PR is very similar. So the time to actually create a crisis plan and to engage a crisis firm is before you even have a crisis. That's part of how you ensure that you're not going to end up canceled. Put Evan's business card on your fridge. You have the clinic emergency number. Put that one up there too. One of the famous stories I remember, and the problem with this is usually by the time you realize that you're in deep doo-doo,

it's been 8, 10 hours. It's run deep. And then your friends start calling you and going, hey, did you know that you're really popular right now? You're trending. And you're like, I'm trending? Is it that really cool post i have my puppy that i posted no like it's not it's the opposite of that and i remember that was that famous story that young lady who worked for actually a pr agency and she gets on

a plane to go to south africa and she says racist stuff and then she's in the air blacked out and people are just going after her. And then it becomes almost a meme or a viral meme where people are like, wait till she lands. And sure enough, she lands and then she makes it worse. I think if I remember correctly. Why did you write the book Crisis Averted? And tell us a little bit about the book, please. Yeah, absolutely. I wrote the book. It's similar to the advice you just gave is good one about having our forget my business card. Just remember the name Red Banyan and know that if and when you need us, you can reach out to us and we make it very easy on our social media and also on our website for you to get in touch with us. And things happen so quickly. It's not uncommon for us to get a phone call at 11. And then at 1115, we've signed a contract. And by

1130, our team is already working with the executives and we're getting after it. So that's how quickly things happen. The reason I wrote the book, frankly, is because people don't know what they need to be doing now in order to prepare. And they don't know what to do if they find themselves under fire. And so what I wanted to do with this book was to create some best practices to capture them based on my years of experience doing this work. And you can learn from the missteps of many of our clients. You can also learn from many of our clients who have done the right thing in a time of crisis and they've acted with speed and they've done it smartly and they've been able to actually flip it and turn a crisis into an

opportunity. And so the book contains, I'm not a big fan of an academic approach to crisis PR. Frankly, I've been at a number of conferences where people are getting up and they're talking through looking historically at different crisis scenarios and assessing them from a clinical perspective and based on this communications accommodation theory, this is not that kind of book. So if you want that, not to disparage or speak ill of the academics out there, because there is certainly a lot to be learned from them. This is a real world guide. This is based on actual events. Every single scenario that's explored in the book is the truth.

I'm not able to give all the names of the companies and the individuals for obvious reason. They were in crisis. They don't want to be in crisis again. And they don't really want to let people know that this happened because in most cases, we've been able to help them move past it. And it's almost an afterthought at this point. But I thought it was really important. People don't understand how the press works. They don't understand how stories are made. And they don't

understand how reputations are created over years and destroyed in seconds. And so what I've done with Crisis Averted is really tried to empower people because there are a lot of good people out there and good businesses who are treated unfairly or their reputation is being smeared, they're being attacked, they've got disgruntled former employees who are making their lives hell. And so I provide a lot of very specific, actionable advice, how to avoid a crisis in the first place, and then what to do if, unfortunately, you do find yourself in a tough situation. And what I will say is this, it is not a matter of if, it is when. Every individual and every business in every single industry, at some point, is going to face a challenge. How you prepare for it can make

the difference whether it's a blip and it's a nothing and you move right past it, or if it comes to define you and ultimately takes you down. And that's the sad part about it is if you don't do it right, a lot of people, that's what they remember you by. I always remember United to this day, I think this is 15 years old now or 10 years old or something. To this day, I still remember the guitar in United of United Airlines crushing the dude's guitar and he made a song about it, about how they didn't care. Like to this day, if you say United Airlines, I remember that story. I equate that story with that thing. So it's really important. What impact has cancel culture had on the business and how has media really changed in recent years to amplify that?

Yeah, cancel culture is part of what I was describing in this perfect storm that makes business in America right now so dangerous. Cancel culture, I know that there have been folks on the right who have tried to blame the left for creating cancel culture or promoting cancel culture. But what I can tell you as the leader of a bipartisan firm, a nonpartisan firm that works both with Democrats and Republicans, works with organizations, right of center, left of center, is cancel culture is universal. And folks are doing it on the right and they're doing it on the left. Neither party and neither political philosophy has the right to say that the other is doing cancel culture because cancel culture is something

that it's happening on both sides of the aisle. And the impact of cancel culture is it's frankly, it's nine times out of 10, it's wrong. There are instances, again, I think this is one of those cases where sometimes the cure is worse than what ailed you in the first place. And so I do believe that there are people out there who, for legitimate reasons, went after organizations that had done really bad things or people and outed them for bad behavior. And that does happen sometimes. So what we would call cancel culture now has actually been going on a very long time, I would argue. There have been people who've been leaking stories in the press about their competitors. There have been people who have calling for boycotts, people who are holding demonstrations. Isn't a rally against

a company cancel culture? Isn't a press conference to expose bad behavior and to target another company? Isn't that cancel culture? I would say yes. The difference today is cancel culture is on rocket fuel thanks to the power and pervasiveness of the Internet. So the stories move faster and you've got a bigger audience than you could ever have before. And things are just accelerated by this interconnected nature of the world in which we live. But cancel culture, unfortunately, we've seen the number of cases

coming into us just really skyrocketing over the last 18 months. It really has transformed our business because we now have members of our team who specialize in cancel culture and guide public people and influencers and brands in what to do when they're targeted. And unfortunately, like I said, there are instances where bad folks are exposed and people who were powerless in the past, maybe had no good avenue in which to tell their story, can use the power of the press and the have someone who has an ax to grind and they're upset because they got let go by the company or they were a contractor and their contract was terminated or it ran its course and the company decided not to renew. So what do they do? They go online and they accuse the business of all these dastardly deeds and they say that they've done X or they've done Y and they're a bad company. They've got a toxic workplace. They are racists.

You name it, that they're intolerant towards LGBTQ community. There's any number of ways that they can go with it, but it becomes very dangerous. So this is what we're talking about. You can have one employee who's disgruntled. He writes a blog post on a slow news day, and suddenly your corporation's on fire. I've got a couple questions that are coming in if you want to take a couple of them. Is this a service that small business owners use and can afford, or are you targeted towards larger companies? Yeah, it's a great question. So most

of our clients are what I would describe as small or medium businesses. While we have worked with a number of larger companies, really our sweet spot is not representing Fortune 500 companies. It's more small and medium-sized businesses. And unlike a lot of other firms, we actually work with private individuals. So there are opportunities to work with our firm for smaller businesses. One of the things that we've created in recent months in order to make some of our services accessible, because let's face it, not everybody can pay for ongoing counsel at a high hourly rate if they're a smaller business. But what we've done is we've created actually a series of ways that people can retain us to create crisis plans for them. So rather than keeping us on

standby or utilizing us day to day, they can actually, I'm just making these numbers up here, but rather than paying $10,000 over the course, $10,000 a month, $20,000 a month for three months, they can pay $10,000 once and get a crisis communications plan that they can use to prevent crises and that will get them 80 or 90% of the way there should they have an issue. And then they can utilize that for the whole year. And then periodically, you need to update your crisis plan the same way that you need to update the batteries in your smoke detector, et cetera.

But creating these plans is something that we were reacting to the marketplace. We had a number of private individuals or small companies that said, listen, I can't afford your services, but we know we need what you offer. Is there a way that you can work with us or maybe build a plan for us? And so we've seen the need growing in that arena. And so it's something new that we're offering. So that is an opportunity for smaller businesses or private individuals to work with Red Banyan. That's awesome. Thanks, Matthew, for that question. And that kind of leads us into my next question. You were talking about having people have a crisis plan, something set up so they're just not scrambling. What can people do to protect their businesses?

Yeah, so there's a lot of steps that you can take ahead of time so that you're prepared if and when the levy breaks and the floodwaters are coming. You can decide in advance who comprises your crisis PR team. Who are the individuals? Do you need someone from marketing? Do you need the CEO sitting on that? Do you need in-house legal counsel? Do you need external counsel? You can also prepare a process by which you funnel media

requests quickly to the right people. You can determine who is the right person. Do we have anyone who should really be talking to a reporter in the case of a crisis? Or should we be utilizing our crisis PR firm or our crisis PR consultant as our spokesperson. And we can help you determine what are the pluses and the minuses of going that route. You can hear some misconception that people have about crisis, which is really interesting. Most people think a crisis comes out of nowhere. It's like a bolt of lightning. You're just sailing along, everything's fine. And then boom, something happens. And all of a bolt of lightning. You're just sailing along, everything's fine, and then boom, something happens and all of a sudden you're in serious trouble. That's usually not the case.

There's either practices that are going on at a business that you can predict eventually this is going to catch up to you, or you've got cultural problems at an institution or based on the industry, what kind of crisis they are likely to face. So if you're a pet care facility and you can predict with a high level what kind of crisis you're going to have. So a crisis communications firm like ours would come in and say, OK, so, Chris, congratulations, by the way, on your new pet grooming facility. I think it's great. Here are the types of things that you want to be on guard against because these are the things that are most likely to happen. You're going to hurt a dog or, God forbid, you're going to kill somebody's dog. What then?

What if the chemicals are used in your shampoo blind, the dog suffers an injury? Is there a possibility that you're going to face a negative review from some dog owner who believes or ascribes something with their pet to you? They are going to blame you for it. If they, and by the way, it may have nothing to do with you, but it's human nature. We look for someone to blame. There's a high likelihood that someone's not going to like the haircut that you guys gave to their dog. And they're going to go on and they are going to rip you online.

They're going to write a terrible review. They're going to tell everybody, their friends and their mom's friends, don't go to them. They made my dog look terrible. Look at this picture of my dog. Doesn't she look terrible? I can't believe, you know, these guys claim to be able to groom. I could have done better myself. Stay away. And then they're going to try to encourage people not to patronize your business. Those are the types of things you can expect. Is it possible also that you need to safeguard against an active shooter scenario or a data breach? Possible, but not as likely as some of the other scenarios that I was pointing out to you.

So part of the value of engaging a crisis communications firm is we go in and we're able to look at the specific industry you're in and help give you an idea. We obviously can't know every single thing that could ever go wrong. You could be running your pet grooming business, and the building has termite damage and the roof collapses and a beam falls down and it injures one of your workers. Possible? Sure. We can't account for that scenario, but we can help you put a point on or shine a light on what you're most likely to face and then give you an idea of how you can and should deal with it before you're in the middle of dealing with it. I agree. Having someone come in and look around your business and stuff. Fortunately, I've had a lot of friends that were attorneys, and we had our share of shakedown lawsuits when we got rich and successful corporations. The shakedown lawsuits just come. It's just crazy. And employees sue you over every disgruntled thing. Sometimes you're

suing them over stuff they stole or did at your corporation, bezel funds, et cetera, et cetera. And then it's just crazy, the stuff that can happen to you. And I've learned to look at businesses like an attorney. So anytime with my corporation, I walk into somebody else's company, I'm just like looking at everything that you can get sued by. I'm like, yeah, that's, that's going to fall on someone's head. I'm always unfortunate. Like you said, the lawsuits are inevitable and unfortunately legal legal and incurring legal expenses has just become a cost of doing business in America right now. And it stinks, but it's inevitable. And every business is going to have to deal with a legal issue at some point.

Yeah. Like I'm always looking at something like someone's going to trip over that cable. That should be fixed. The same with your business where you need to look around and go, what are the things? Like one of the, and I'm not political because I actually like the way Governor Cuomo handled the, of New York, handled the coronavirus. I'm not on either side with him. But watching, like I've been watching that whole PR thing play out with him. And I'm like, wait, after Me Too, you're still kissing and hugging people?

Like, I would have stopped that. I'm just really surprised. He seems like a really smart guy, especially the way he handled the coronavirus and the PR for it. People were like, hey, he's going all the way to the White House. But seeing the, and here's a guy who, I understand what he's going through because here's a guy who's old world. He's coming out of a marriage. He's becoming single again. I know what that's like for guys, especially from an old world aspect. He should have been put like someone on a stash has been like, we need to put you in some extra,

uh, what do they call those things? The inclusivity trainings or the sexual harassment trainings. Like you just came out of a marriage and you're a little raw because most people are when they come out of a divorce. And, uh, there's some new rules about you know and no touching stay away far away and and i'm just really surprised i'm just really dude you should know he's even kissing guys on the cheek and i hate the whole italian thing and i love italians and i and is the mayor of new york and new york's kind of a little different but i'm like dude after me too you you cannot get near me to kiss me i won't even let dates kiss me without signing some sort of disclose. Just kidding.

But it's really surprising to me. It's like someone should have sat down and done something. Just so you know, you're right. And there's actually a lot to unpack as relates to Cuomo and his damage control. In fact, over the last few days, I've had a lot of discussions with both friends and colleagues and also members of the media who have been taking a hard look at what his reaction was and looking at, did Cuomo do his own crisis PR? Did someone actually advise him to do those things? I actually had a reporter say say do you think someone got paid to tell him he

should put up a bunch of pictures of him kissing all these people and i i honestly don't know the answer as to whether or not he paid for that advice or if he just decided he thought it was a good idea and hey if i kiss everybody i'm a sexual harasser yeah if i show that I'm a sexual harasser. Yeah, if I show that I'm a serial kisser, a serial hugger, thereby they're going to conclude, yeah, he probably hugged and kissed people, but he does that to everyone. Therefore, it's not a big deal. I don't think it was an advisable tactic personally. It's not what I would have recommended. I think – look, let me start with the good. He did some good things. And this is not, I'm not getting into the whole discussion of

is Cuomo a good governor? Is he a bad governor? Is he on the good side of the ledger that he handled coronavirus very well and he became this sex symbol in America because the women were swooning over him and men too, I should point out, over his handling of the briefings during coronavirus versus the other side saying he actually there's a whole scandal related to the nursing homes. So I'm not wading into that one at all. I'm only going to look at what he did once he found himself under fire from a PR perspective. And he released a long video that he shared over Twitter, which was basically him hours after the attorney general in New York had said, we've found there was a toxic workplace, that it was systematic, that it was a pattern of behavior. It wasn't a one-off, that he was a sexual harasser.

And what did he do? He released this video. And I'll start with the positive. The good things, he did have a line in there where he was very definitive. I never inappropriately touched or kissed anyone. I never sexually harassed anybody inappropriately. So it was an ironclad denial, which was very clear.

Now, whether or not that's true, you can ask some questions. I think his overall demeanor in the video was what I would have advised from a PR perspective. He was measured. He was professional. He seemed very calm. He was collected. He did not come unglued.

He wasn't unhinged. He wasn't lashing out at the press. Those were all the positive things. The other thing that was positive, and I think this was actually quite clever, was he pre-recorded his own statement. So in years past, in a different era where it wasn't so easy to turn a camera on, record it, and then upload it minutes later, he would have had to call a press conference. And then that would have been and then upload it minutes later, he would have had to call a press conference. And then that would have been a whole different ball of wax

because he would have gone to a press conference. He would have walked out to the podium. He would have given his statement. And then the reporters would have jumped all over him and asked him tough questions. And then he would have either had to field the questions where he's going to look bad, or he's going to have to walk off the stage

which also looks bad because he's there by avoiding the questions and the tough questions looks like you're running away so from the on the good side of the ledger his his overall presentation was quite good but honestly you'd expect that from a politician and someone who's very high in a high profile has spent their life professionally in the public eye is the governor of new york you expect him to to present okay on the negative side i think he did and said a few things that were not advisable how's that for a gentle very diplomatic way of framing it i think his spending time one he spoke about one of his accusers by name yeah i think a lot of people took offense to and didn't think was right and that could trigger

her it just puts her back in in the spotlight but the truth be told she was already in the spotlight and she herself went on good morning america America after his apology video to say his statement means nothing. So she's already out there. But the way that he described the interactions with her, that he was talking to her about her dating life and asking her if she was dating men and whatnot because he'd had a family member who went through sexual trauma and knows how hard it is to get back on the horse. And therefore he was trying to help this young lady. That doesn't really pass the smell test. Yeah, I agree. And I think it really politicians hugging and kissing people.

Because I think the average American draws a distinction between accusations that someone stuck his hand out a woman's blouse and groped her breast versus President George W. Bush giving a comforting hug to someone who lost their home in Hurricane Katrina. Those two things are not equal. And one hug doesn't necessarily provide a counterbalance to the kind of behaviors that he was accused of. So I think that was also not advisable. And last but not least, I'll just give you the top three here, was he made a comment, went on this aside where he was talking about women in the workplace and a double standard of women who are tough as managers, judged differently and called names, whereas if a man is a tough manager, he's a good leader and he's decisive. Okay.

If you've just been accused of maintaining a toxic environment where women are not treated, not just not treated equally, but they're actually being sexually harassed, you have really given up the opportunity to position yourself as a chief advocate for fair and equal treatment of women in the workplace. And I just think that really didn't sit well with not just women, but other observers as well. So that's my hot take on Cuomo for you since you went there. Yeah, I analyze this stuff. That's why I watch it all. Because I like to watch, I'm not in the PR business, but I'm in marketing. But I like to watch the spin or I'm like, okay. And it's the chess game that I like to see. Okay. Where are they going with this? What are they trying to do? Is this going to work? Is this not going to work? I like to collect what works and what doesn't work and avoid the don't work stuff. So that's important why people should hire your firm. But yeah,

the collage thing, I just went, yeah, that's not right. That's like basically saying that's like being Phil Spector or Bill Cosby. And you're like, I gave drinks to every girl. I don't mean to make light of any of that. That's a good point. It would be like, to run with your analogy, it would be like if Bill Cosby, when he was accused of drugging women, he would have people talking about medication and being like, yes, I use this medication. I was trying to help them.

Everybody's using drugs. Yeah, everyone's using drugs. It's the thing nowadays. I was trying to help. He could have, I would say an unsavory or an unethical PR person probably could have advised Cosby to go down that road. He could have been like, yeah, I thought she,

I sensed that she was unhappy. I wanted her to forget about her, the things that were causing her stress. So I gave her roofies to help her forget the pain. I don't think a highly credible or a respectable communications professional would do something like that in all seriousness. And I think it was not advisable for Cuomo to go down that road. I think it ended up, we've gone for full circle now. One of the earliest points that you made was when you're under fire or you're in a crisis, it's the missteps that sometimes get remembered even more. Mark my words, what people are going to remember after Cuomo eventually is forced to resign, which I think is probably going to happen, is when we talk about Cuomo a year from now, it's going to be,

Oh yeah, he was accused of sexual harassment and then he came out with his hug of defense. That's what we're going to be talking about. The hug of fun defense. And I don't laugh. I don't laugh to me. I'm Italian.

I say, ciao Bella. I, yeah, I touch people and kiss them. We're going to remember. And the thing is too, like at one point in it, he says, and we'll get off this, but at one point he says, I take responsibility for what I did or I acknowledge I screwed up. And you're like, wait, did you do it or not?

Like you've been all there's 50 things in there. It's all over the place. And maybe it was meant to be like a shotgun approach and just bury it. But yeah, there's there are parts of it. I take responsibility. I made mistakes at the same time. I say, ciao, Bella. I'm Italian.

We kiss, we touch. It's a symbol of warmth. You can't have it both. You should have used the picture of the godfather touching, touching one of his kids too, you know. And played the music. Anyway, in the 90s, in the late 90s, I was writing up my sales officers for touching employees. I remember one came up, and I think it was similar to what Como was accused of, rubbing the ribs

or putting the arm around the stomach of a woman, just being a little too, woo, in there. And that was in the 90s. And so that's why it really surprised me. I'm like, seriously, dude, I knew not to do this in the nineties, man. It's been like 20 years or 30 years. Moving on, Evan, really insightful to have you on the show. Give us your plugs to the people and find you on the interwebs. Yeah. Look, I wrote the book to help people. Those who think that what we're talking about

is interesting or has application to their lives, I encourage you to pick up a copy of the book. You can go to evannearman.com. You can go to Amazon, wherever books are sold, you can find Crisis Averted. And the other thing I would say is we give away a lot of free advice on our website because not everybody is going to be, while everybody in the world can benefit from some of the messages that we're putting out there and the tips and tricks that we're putting out into the world, we're giving away a lot of it for free. So check out our website, redbanion.com. Check out our social media. Follow us.

And I have no doubt that you'll find things of value that you can use in your own life and in your business to really help you along. At the end of the day, I say in the book, if this book, writing this book prevents one good person or one good company from making it worse and helps them preserve their reputation and protect their business, it's worth the effort. And I really believe that and feel that. And so for me, it was a lot of work to do the book. But if I'm able to help good people and they're able to benefit and they're able to push back against people who are falsely accusing them and they're able to defend themselves and press the truth as opposed to letting others define them, then I feel good about the work that I've done here. That's definitely important. Thanks, Evan, for coming on the show and sharing all the wonderful knowledge.

Great discussion on the Kumo thing. That was really interesting and topical. Yeah, for sure. Thanks so much for having me. And in case you haven't noticed, I'm passionate about this topic and communication. So I feel really fortunate because what I'm most interested in is also my livelihood.

And so for me, I learned from my grandfather, who was a stockbroker and was in the market for 60 plus years and was basically working up until a few months before he got really sick and passed away. And the lesson I learned from my grandfather was he always encouraged my brothers and my cousins and me, find your passion. And if you work in something that you care about and you find that passion, you enjoy every day. It doesn't feel like drudgery. It doesn't feel like a job. And so I would just to everyone who's out there, this is not crisis PR

related. It's just life related. If there's something that inspires you and gets you excited and it's really where you love spending your time and it elevates you as a person, take the time to find out what that is and explore it and give it a shot because life is way too short to have a job or a lifestyle that sucks. That's very true. That's very true. Those are wise words, my friend. So thank you for being on the show, Evan. Thanks for tuning in. Be sure to pick up the book, Crisis Averted, PR Strategies to Protect Your Reputation. And the bottom line, this is really important. In fact, I just noticed on the Amazon page, it says to spot the inevitable threats to get bankrupt your business. So think about that. You don't want to end up in bankruptcy. Go to goodreads.com for just Chris Fossey. We're reading and reviewing over there. Go to all of our groups on Facebook,

LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, all of those places those kids are at, those crazy kids. Go to youtube.com for just Chris Fossey at the bell notification. We love you. Be good to each other and we'll see you guys next time.