I just bought a microphone, so I'm trying to...
Yeah, right?
Trying to get it working and figuring it all out
and all that jazz, so.
Yeah, all good.
You sound great, so.
Cool, good.
Microphone's working.
Excellent, appreciate that.
Normally I give a couple minutes
just in case they're a little late jumping in
and then I'll send a phone call or something
to make sure everything's all right,
but you made it in just before the bell rang for me.
Right, just before I got on the,
I was in it before I got in the dog house, yeah.
Yeah, right?
So how did you find this podcast?
Through PodMatch.
Yeah, PodMatch is great for us right now.
I think two weeks ago we ended up getting
over 100 applicants and it's been right around there
since then, so we're moving and grooving
and it is good to see a podcast taken off
like we are right now.
Good for you, no, it's great.
I mean, I've just started kind of doing the guest role
and I did a podcast last week
where the guy was a lot more sophisticated than me
and he was telling me that my sound wasn't great
out of my old Logitech, you know, whatever,
circa 2007 headset and so I went and I got the microphone.
And I've been trying to do the,
I've been doing PodMatch for a while
and I've booked a lot of,
I've actually kind of slowed down
because I didn't want to go so far out in advance
and I was traveling and stuff too, so.
Yeah, totally.
So how long ago did you plan this one, do you know?
I'd have to go back and check for you,
be honest with you, I'm not sure.
It was probably a couple of weeks,
at least a couple of weeks,
because I just did, I was on vacation and then I had,
and I got back and then I got, I was sick this week.
So it's been at least a month.
June 11th it looks like.
Okay, there you go.
So at least a month, so that's at least a month.
Yeah, just over a month.
So yeah, you booked it out a ways in advance.
That's awesome though.
I like the ability to do that
because then you can work your schedule around it
and sometimes things just don't.
I think it looks like a great platform
for the podcast host because they, you know,
you can schedule people and it's organized
and I've had, I have some that are scheduled way out.
Like, I want to say I've got one that's in like,
that might be in 2025, I don't even know why.
I actually, they only gave me 2025.
I clicked on it just for laughs.
I said like, I'm just going to do this
just because it's funny to me.
Like I don't, I can't, I'll be shocked
if it ends up happening,
but I'll just put it on my calendar anyway.
Like you're that organized or you're that set
or whatever you got.
You can plan for next year.
Yeah, and you're not, yeah, there's no,
nothing in your industry is going to change enough
that you should be worried about, you know,
I'm going to come in here and start talking about
Plato and Tonka trucks or something.
I don't know.
That's funny.
Anyway, it's funny.
So we'll see.
So today, I know we've been sending emails
about how this is a pre-show
and like qualifying for the main show,
but really this has turned into its own podcast.
We're trying to phase out all of the phrasing
for a pre-show and whatnot,
but I'm going to ask you a bunch of questions
and they're all going to pop up below me
just in case you trail off.
So are we going live or is this a pre-show?
You've got, I'm confused.
This is a recorded,
we're going to record this whole thing.
And then the questions that are asked will be little clips,
little mini segments for a podcast.
Okay.
We'll just post those questions a minute,
roughly a minute, each question will go up
and we'll just make those like mini segments that we post.
Mini segments.
So we're not going to talk again after this.
We can, yeah.
We, it's either, there's two routes that we normally take.
It's either we ask some of the questions today
and then we'll get you back on
and we'll do a whole nother session
because we don't want to go past our 20 minutes that we have
or I can push you onto our live show
if we like how everything sounds and how-
Perfect. So yeah, whatever.
I'm down, whatever you want to do.
Okay.
So we're going to ask you questions that pop up below me,
same questions, like tell me about your vision.
Some of them are broad or kind of vague
and they're written that way
so you can take what's top of mind for you and run with it.
Sound good?
Sure. Sure.
Absolutely.
Is this now for, give me a little bit of your,
of what your audience is looking for and how,
so I want to make sure I give you the right-
Yeah.
Our audience is all about entrepreneurship
and visionary leaders.
So it's people that are trying to figure out
what their next steps are
or how you got to where you're at now.
We'll talk about how you got there and your backstory
and it's just people that are looking for what,
I guess, clarification in their own life
and where they're going with their podcast
or their business or their-
Right, okay.
Big topic.
It's kind of broad, yeah.
Let's see.
Do you want to have, like I'll under my name,
it says founder of Magic Production, that's my company.
Do you want to have yours, the David PR group
under your name?
Yeah, it's David PR group.
No V, just David PR group.
It's fine.
Wow, there you go.
There we go.
I had it ready just in case you said yes.
Like magics.
Yeah, exactly.
So any questions, any other questions for me?
I think I'm okay.
I'm still coming off of a little bit of a cold,
so I'm a little bit nasally today,
but otherwise I'm good.
Sure.
All right, I'm gonna do a little intro
and then I'll ask you, John David,
to tell me about your vision
and then we'll just go into questions from there.
Okay.
All right.
Here today with John David on the Vision Pros podcast.
Please, John, tell me about your vision.
Thanks so much for having me on your show.
My vision focuses on working with businesses
to help them through their trickiest times.
I've been in my career as a publicist for several decades,
and we were largely with my clients playing offense,
trying to get media coverage, things like that.
And today we're really looking on the defensive side.
When something happens to a business
and they're dealing with a crisis,
dealing with something that happened,
how do you weather that storm
from a communications objective,
from a communications perspective?
And my vision is to grow my business,
to become more of a go-to person
to help companies that are dealing with difficult situations.
Okay.
So I know in your bio, you talked about
fail to plan equals plan to fail.
And that one really struck a chord with me.
Would you mind going deeper into that?
Sure.
Sometimes it's a bit of a trope, right?
To be quite honest with you,
but it does read really well.
When it comes to dealing with a crisis situation,
you don't have to know exactly what's going to happen.
You can't predict when something's gonna go wrong.
And you know, in every crisis situation
is a little bit different,
but you can lay the foundation
so that you can respond appropriately
when the time comes.
And that's simple things like having
a media policy in place with your business.
So if media outlet calls,
and your employees know what to do,
that you have everybody's contact information available,
simple and easy,
that you can reach out and reach all your people.
And then that you also kind of game out
what the worst case scenario is.
And that could be, you know, apropos for today,
where we're talking, you know,
on a day of a massive cyber outage
in the United States.
What's your plan?
Do you have a plan for if you have a cyber outage
like happened, you know, on today,
and how do you communicate with your customers?
What's your worst case scenario?
Those are actually, it's actually a really,
typical thing that's happening lately,
these cyber outages.
You know, what happens if there's
some type of corporate malfeasance in your company?
What happens if there's some type of litigation
against your company?
What happens if your CEO
or a high level employee leaves
either on purpose or accidentally?
So there's a lot of things that you can do to plan.
So you're better prepared
if you have to deal with the communications crisis.
Yeah, it's unfortunate that things like that
have to be prepared for,
but in today's society,
it's almost necessary to keep those in frame of mind,
just in case something bad happens to have a plan.
So I'm curious about getting into PR
and communications,
and what's the best way to do that?
Getting into PR and communications like you are,
how did you get there?
Where did your vision come from?
So I began my career,
I studied journalism in college,
and I started in the public relations business.
I worked for a PR agency right out of college,
and have been serving as a consultant for 30 years.
And I've found what's happened
in the traditional PR industry is,
well, the internet shifted the earth, right?
And so everything, it's been shifting
and it's continues to shift,
and now it's AI is shifting the earth.
And it was the internet,
it was social media shifting, everything.
It's in a constant state of change.
And so for me, what I realized I had to do with my business
and what as a consultant is
I have to provide services that are fairly unique to me,
and that cannot be, is simply commoditized.
In other words, I would love to be a copywriter, right?
But it's right now,
there's no living in being a copywriter,
at least not in my field, for example.
And the AI is changing that even more so.
But I love to write strategic messaging,
and you can't, AI can't do that, at least not yet.
And the other thing is that having experience
in the communications world is a good thing.
So knowing how to deal with situations,
having seen some stuff,
that's the other thing that's important
is I've been around the block
and I've seen different things happen.
And I've had one of my clients was,
a Ponzi schemer tried to take over
one of my clients' businesses.
I've seen where there were instances
where there was litigation
that could end up destroying a business,
dealt with workplace violence,
dealt with just all manners of things.
And a crisis is relative.
So one company's, I kind of say there's like,
one company's sort of nothing situation,
it could be an existential thing for another business.
So it's all relative.
And so I've tried to build my business
so that I can, that my vision is that my,
I'm offering services that are not easily commoditized.
Understood.
So looking at a business that is mainly revolving
around crisis, what gets you out of bed every morning
to keep doing this type of thing?
What is your why behind doing it every day?
I think the, it's my why,
and one of my clients says,
you love this stuff.
And I don't, obviously I don't love seeing my clients
in crisis, but I, to me,
I'm looking at a situation
and seeing how it's going to play out
and trying to figure out the best way,
the best path forward, you know,
to me it's very exciting to deal with that
because it's a fluid situation, it's brand new,
it's different.
And so you have to have, you know,
you have to have a plan that makes,
you have to have, there's be prepared things
to think these things all the way through.
And so, you know, they typically, you know,
move fast and that, and it's exciting, you know,
so that's what gets me, you know, gets me going about this.
Sometimes, some people are kind of terrified of this
and rightly so, you know, for me,
I mean, part of what makes it interesting for me is that,
you know, most of my clients, I have relationships with them,
but I'm not in their building and I'm not,
it's not my, you know, it's,
I can be objective and I can give them, you know,
sound advice because I'm not in the building,
I'm not worrying about my job,
I'm not worrying about, you know,
how I'm going to pay my rent or if I lose my job
or if this happens, if that happens,
or if I'm culpable for something,
I'm just trying to help them get, you know,
do a better job with their business.
That's what gets me going.
It's interesting because similar to what I do,
I produce podcasts, so I'm always behind the scenes.
It feels like your job is also somewhere in that same vein
where if we don't hear from John,
that's a good day type situation, you know what I mean?
Well, yeah, no, I mean, obviously if you don't,
if I'm not, if things are okay, if I'm not involved, right?
So yeah, there's certainly,
there's some no news is good news there for sure, for sure.
I mean, I typically do not,
I mean, I can sort of take that sort of forward roll
and serve as a spokesperson and I've done that before.
But, you know, part of what I'm trying to do is,
in many cases, I'm trying to make a crisis situation
kind of make it go away.
Sometimes there's information that gets out,
something happening with a business and it's just not true.
And so, but somebody's jumped on it and somebody's,
you know, a reporter listened to somebody, to a person
and that person said something that's sort of true,
but it's not completely true.
And, you know, that you, you know,
and that's actually one of the more, most rewarding things
and for me is kind of killing a negative story.
And, you know, those are sort of,
those are like really kind of harsh kind of terms,
but killing a story, it's just this industry term.
But, you know, getting a media outlet to realize
there's no news here, this is not what you think it is.
You think you're onto, you know, the next great,
you know, Watergate type of thing, it's not.
And let me explain to you why.
And we kind of make the problem go away
and that's the best.
Best case scenario is you make,
you bring the truth to light about the story,
not being real, I guess, is the best case scenario for you,
is showing the good guy being the good guy.
Yeah, I mean, in some cases, there's just like a lot of times,
you know, cause information moves quickly.
Sometimes there's misinformation moves really fast.
And so someone will, so you reach out to a reporter
and the reporter will say, well, this happened, this happened,
no, no, no, slow down, slow down, slow down.
Yes, you're right, this happened, this happened, this happened.
But let me explain to you why this happened, you know,
and it's not necessarily as bad as it sounds.
And it's not as bad as you think it is,
and it's going to get resolved in very short order.
And there will be, no one will be harmed.
And so it's really not a news story in that regard.
Now, if you want to make it a news story,
we'll still try to help you,
but it's not what you think it is.
Yeah, essentially we're, okay,
we try to keep this thing to 20 minutes
out of respect for everyone's time.
We have reached that 20 minute mark, it is 10 20,
but I'm not done with all of my questions yet,
and I love your answers.
Would you be all right coming back on on another date
and finishing up the rest of these questions
that I have for you?
Sure, sure.
I mean, I have more time now if you want,
so it's up to you,
but I know you probably sounds like you don't,
so that's fine.
I know I have another call coming up soon.
So to be respectful of everyone's time.
Yeah, I know, that's absolutely.
I'll get you on the schedule again.
Okay, cool.
Yeah, I'll send you that reschedule link.
And I think that's all I really have.
Do you have any questions for me before we just depart?
No, I think we're good.
Yeah, I know, love to talk to you again.
That'd be great.
Okay, absolutely, man.
We'll be in touch soon.
Great, thanks, Peyton.
Have a great day. Thanks.
Enjoy your weekend.
You as well, yeah.
I mean, it's Friday.
That's right.
Didn't even know.
See you later.
Yeah, bye.
It's weird to end it like that.
Like it doesn't feel like I've finished.
We are at 10.20, the time is over.
I am sorry, but I do wanna get them back in.
Hmm.