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.
You can't, 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
are 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 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, you know, what's happened
in the traditional PR industry is, well, you know,
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, you know, 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, you know, AI is changing that even more so.
But I love to write strategic messaging and you can't,
you know, 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, you know, one of my clients was,
you know, a Ponzi schemer tried to take over
one of my clients' businesses.
I've seen, you know, where there were instances
where there was litigation
that could end up destroying a business,
dealt with, you know, workplace violence,
dealt with just all manners of things.
And a crisis is relative.
So, you know, one company's, you know,
I kind of say there's like a,
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 on, you know,
so that I can, that my vision is that my,
I'm offering services that are not like
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, you know, it's,
it's my why and one of my clients says, you know,
says, you know, you love this stuff.
And I don't, you know, 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,
that you have to have, just be prepared to think these,
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,
it's, I can be objective and I can give them, you know,
sound advice, cause 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 my, 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, with their business.
That's what gets me, 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, I know.
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 role
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 the, 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 typically just this industry term.
But, you know, the getting the, 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, you know, we kind of make the problem go away
and that's the best.
Thank you for being here today.
I'm really happy that you tuned in to Vision Pros Live.
I'm looking forward to seeing your reactions
as these episodes continue to move forward.
This is gonna get more and more fun.
We'll have more and more engagement as well.
We'll invite people to participate in the show
and thank you for giving us your time and attention.
Have an excellent time building out your vision
and becoming a Vision Pro yourself.