John Corcoran 10:57
Yeah, it’ll bite you in the butt. So let’s talk about giving different messages to different stakeholders, whether it’s donors, employees, customers, investors, if you’re giving different messages to these different communities. Isn’t there also a risk that that message is going to trickle out to a different stakeholder group? And that stakeholder, Hey, why did you tell investors this, you told us the employees something else.
Eden Gillott 11:25
So it is, you never want to tell completely different facts that people some facts are going to be more important to other groups than they are like your employees are going to want to know a different set of things than necessarily your investors, might you never want to say, you know, this color is red, and then this color is blue. And then you’re going to go well, wait a second, which one is it? You’re going to go? You know, well, you might actually find that this is the most interesting aspect, like for example, with employees, right? Employees are always looking at it. Well, everyone’s always looking at it. How does this impact me? Usually employees are like, Well, how’s it going to impact my job? What’s going on? How does my role within the organization change? Am I going to continue to have a job like what’s going on? From an employee standpoint, investors are gonna go, you know, is my investment still safe? What’s going on from that perspective? So it’s just going, here are all of my facts? How am I going to filter it through the lens of who the recipient is?
John Corcoran 12:18
Yeah. Now,
Eden Gillott 12:19
I know a lot, I also have to assume that they’re all going to talk to each other, by the way,
John Corcoran 12:24
Just have to assume that that’s gonna happen. And I mean, any anything
Eden Gillott 12:27
you put in the writing anything that you say this assume that someone else is gonna go, Wait a second, that’s not what I
John Corcoran 12:32
heard. Right, right. Talk a little bit about the different ways in which the different types of clients you work with law firms, boards, business owners, how they’re different, how they handle crises differently, or how you approach it differently.
Eden Gillott 12:52
So working with the attorneys, it’s very much, very much based on the facts, and they’re trying to figure out like, what’s going on, they’re always looking at the legality of things, which makes sense, right? And so they’re very much more on the conservative protecting side, then you have the business owners who are like, Oh, my God, everything is just burning down cameras to fix this quickly. Like, this is my baby, you know, Ah, he’s a little bit more frazzled. And then the nonprofit’s are like, I had no idea that I was even doing anything wrong. Can someone please help me, like walk me through it, like the board members. And nonprofits really want to be walked through the entire process. They want to understand how they got there, and hopefully never have it happen. Again, the business does or likes to stop the bleeding. Now, I don’t really care how you do it, just do the thing. Maybe you can tell me about it later. And the attorneys are like, well, let’s protect ourselves legally. How are we going forward with this?
John Corcoran 13:44
Right, right. Now, if I’m a business owner listening to this, you know, the obvious advice is kind of be on the straight and narrow, right? Like, don’t do anything that you wouldn’t want to do. I remember when I got to work at the White House, I remember, this was the advice they gave us. When I first interned there was don’t ever write or say or do anything that you wouldn’t want to see in the front page in the New York Times. Now, it’s kind of good advice that I have been following my entire career. Beyond that, you know, is there anything else that, you know, business owners listening to this should be thinking about just to prepare themselves for, perhaps, you know, getting caught up in a confluence of events? If they do, if that does happen to them what they should, you know, do other than call you, of course, but
Eden Gillott 14:34
before anything bad happens, like the proactive side of it is, you know, finding advisors that are going to help you set up your organization or your business in a way that will limit like, talk to your attorneys, talk to your accountants and tax people like make sure like the HR aspect that’s like, Don’t skimp on the advisors, setting up your organization because those other things are going to come back and bite you in the butt. That’s how people end up landing on my endorsements. A lot of times people are like, Oh, I just like, I didn’t think this would ever happen to me. Like, oh, I knew I should have done this. But I didn’t think that was a good investment back in the day. And now, yeah, so a lot of times and the attorneys and the whole other host of people that kind of clean up the matter after the
John Corcoran 15:16
fact. So a lot of times they had an inkling that they should have done something a different way. Yeah, like,
Eden Gillott 15:24
For example, something that I see quite often is with books and numbers, right? So you have one person who’s receiving the check is also the same person that’s writing out the check, money magically goes missing, right, like, make sure that you, you know, put separate checks and balances, you know, practice processes and procedures in place that will stop the bad things from happening in the first place. And as a business owner, like, you don’t have to know all these things, but at least understand how you can go to an advisor? Who can tell you about these insights? Who can go oh, you know, like, of course, here’s a list of like, 100 things you can do. But here are like, the top three are the top five things that we’ll catch, you know that the 8020 rule? Like? What are the few things that you can do now that are going to protect you the most, give you the best chances of not having to then call me?
John Corcoran 16:08
I’m curious, how often do you get calls where it’s a little bit too late? And how often do you get calls where it’s like, okay, you called me at the right time, before this thing broke.
Eden Gillott 16:22
Most people wait, it’s kind of like going to the doctor, you’re like, oh, like, it’s kind of like a pain, I don’t really know, I think I’m going to get better. And then it gets to that point where you’re like, oh, no, and you end up in the ER, most of the time, clients will come to me and they are like something bad has already happened or something that is like starting to happen, they knew it was going to be happening or like, we were kind of hoping the tide wouldn’t turn too much. But now it’s getting to the point where we’re like, we really don’t handle this properly. right this second oftenly it and how often I say they’re really busy.
John Corcoran 16:54
I imagine we had a board member who was picked to do a lot of those on Mondays. Did and then how often do you? Do you get pushback from people who are like, Oh, we can’t hire a crisis communications person, because that’s gonna, that’s gonna make it worse.
Eden Gillott 17:14
I feel it’s too much pushback. But one of the interesting things about hiring a crisis communications person is a lot of times like I am hiding behind the scenes, people have no idea what my round is except for, you know, the attorney that I’m working with. And then you know, the board that hired me whoever’s, like, in that inner circle, because the last thing you want to do is cc me on email, when you’re trying to say, there’s nothing really here. I Yeah, there was, there was something that I was gonna like to joke about with people. And then I had explained to everyone that I was working with my inner circle team, right, we’re working with the attorney. And then they passed along the talking points for a reporter. And I ended up being CC’D on something to The Hollywood Reporter. And I’m like, you know who I am? Why am I CC’D on this email?
John Corcoran 17:57
It’s funny, you know, you were saying beforehand, before we started this interview, that you’ve had clients where, you know, they call up and they say, like, the media is outside of my house, what should I do? And your advice is rather practical, it’s don’t go home, don’t walk through that throng of people up to your doorstep, especially after he did a night in jail, or whatever it is that happened to them. And you know, and then this advice, you know, like BCC me don’t see me.
Eden Gillott 18:29
So they don’t know, don’t even BCC me. Just let me forward the thing later, or just feel like it was done.
John Corcoran 18:34
Thank you. Yeah. So how often is it? You know, does that come up? Where it’s, the advice is really pragmatic and practical. It’s, like the, you know, don’t show up at home. Don’t BCC me to take these practical steps.
Eden Gillott 18:51
I think Well, it’s interesting, because I grew up with a certain set of skills that were ingrained in me because my father taught me these skills. And I just kind of assumed that everyone has this knowledge. And apparently, what I think is practical is not practical for a lot of other people. But even though you might think it’s common sense today, you know, it’s a crisis. It’s tomorrow, your brain just is all over the place. So all the things that you like may have been what you would have normally considered in a time of crisis. I mean, all hell breaks loose. You can’t count on, you know, anything other people forget to breathe sometimes, right? A lot of times for crisis related stuff. I’m like, don’t run out and just start saying a bunch of things. Take a moment, take a breath, just calm yourself down before you start doing a bunch of
John Corcoran 19:35
bang. Yeah. Oh, come sometimes, if you forget. I mean, oftentimes, I think we forget about this. But, you know, to give a really old example from about 20 years ago, before 911 happened, which obviously the biggest story of last 20 years or so, but the summer before that was the the Gary Condit scandal and that and people remember that because he was a member of Congress and and Is this huge news story. And it was like all people were focusing on it, you know, and then and then it went away, because obviously some, you know, a much bigger important world event happened. But you frequently see that where there is one news story that dominates the headlines, and then something else happens. And then that one is kind of forgotten about. So is that for you often the case where you’re advising your clients, give it a little time, or something else will come along, and it’ll go away, if you give it some time.
Eden Gillott 20:37
There is some advising about like, just give it some time. But generally, the advice is, you know, figure out who’s the most important people or person to you and like, make sure you tell your side of the story, you talk to them, like pick up the phone and call them, don’t email them, if you don’t have to, and have a conversation with them, even if it’s like, you know, briefly to explain what happened and say, Do you have any questions? You know, in terms of like the media cycle, it is, you know, after you, you know, if you’ve done something wrong, like after you acknowledge that, you know, you did something wrong, you are sorry, I just what you’re doing to fix it, you know, sometimes you do have to display low, and you know, if it is in the media, hopefully things will this kind of died down after a while somebody else would do something that will draw attention away from you. But even if it’s not in the media, I mean, you know, if we’re working with some individuals or companies, like for example, we were working with a company and their biggest client was Disney. And yes, it did hit the news a little bit. But I was like, I don’t even care if this is a one and done story. If your biggest client is Disney, I’m like, you pick up the phone and you call your rep at Disney and you explain to them, we understand what’s going on. This is what we’re doing to fix it. This is how we’re gonna make sure it never happens again, like what can we do to make sure that you Disney are protected. And it was actually interesting, cuz we actually got on a big zoom call with all the people and the head of the communications department at that department. And Disney was like Eden, you did an excellent job. Like, thank you so much for making my job at Disney easier by protecting and looking out for us.
John Corcoran 22:13
That’s great. Yeah, that’s great feedback. What about social media? How is that changing the game these days? You know, it’s, it’s easier than ever for somebody that bubbles up, goes viral, so to speak. It’s also easier for people to respond to stories because they can tweet something out. You can record a video and upload that to YouTube. How’s social media affecting crisis communications?
Eden Gillott 22:38
Oh, man, it really sped up everything. And one of the big things that I’ve noticed, is it makes it so much easier for reporters to find people within a company and pick off employees and go, Hey, do you have any comments about this or what’s going on? And there are employees who will love their 15 minutes of fame. And if you don’t explain to the organization, you know, all of your employees the importance of a unified message, they will pay for on and off and they will talk to reporters, and usually reporters will find them on social media.
John Corcoran 23:09
Yeah. Wow. Any other ramifications of social media? I mean, social media,
Eden Gillott 23:17
texting emails, people love to put stuff in writing insanely. And that is the stuff that will just come back and bite you in the butt.
John Corcoran 23:27
Yeah. And it’s crazy for you to know, sometimes it could be a really large company that has 1000s of employees. And completely on the anticipated they hire a new I don’t know, CFO, new CEO. And it turns out three years ago, they tweeted some, you know, derogatory comment that in today’s you know, landscape is now viewed in a different light, that sort of thing. You see that a lot in the news these days?
Eden Gillott 23:53
Yeah. So also just talking about this with somebody else in my industry, it’s like, well, what are we doing? I think everyone, I think, at some point has done something that doesn’t really look great or didn’t age very well. So how do you manage that? So as for an organization, right, like if the person or people that you’re hiring are going to be visible enough, right? Do some betting, like, look into what they’ve done? And maybe, you know, maybe there are no perfect people out there, but at least go well, here’s something that might be an issue later. So at least you are aware of it so that you’re not completely blindsided by something.
John Corcoran 24:29
There’s a service I imagine someone’s doing that is combing through all the social media trails for anyone who might have said something, or in our podcast, right, I mean that we were recording this in September 2021. And they hired and fired the executive director, a whole new host of jeopardy for something he said on a podcast a couple of years earlier.
Eden Gillott 24:51
Yep. I was actually talking to a reporter at The Associated Press about that. It was like before it actually was like right after he knew after the podcast. hasn’t been discovered before they removed him as a host. And Lynn was like, well, like, what do you think about this? And I was like, Whoa, from Sony’s perspective, like, these are the things that they need to consider. And then he was removed from being in the house. And I was like, well, he’s still executive producer. But what do you think about this? And I’m like, he’s perceived as damaged goods at this point. I mean, I think it’s gonna affect not only the show, but the people that weren’t that thing. They waited so long that it started impacting not only the audience, but the people that actually worked on the show.
John Corcoran 25:28
Yeah, I mean, I didn’t call it to close it, but I met it. Yeah, culturally, these people probably were really dismayed by it. I don’t know if there were people that were walking out or quitting in the interim. But I guess the learnings from that situation then
Eden Gillott 25:44
make your decisions quickly.
John Corcoran 25:46
Yeah. Yeah.
Eden Gillott 25:48
I mean, yes, they should be based on fact, you shouldn’t be acting hastily.
John Corcoran 25:51
But yeah, yeah. Make your decisions quickly. That’s great. All right. Wrapping things up. You know, I’m a big fan of gratitude. I’m a big fan of expressing gratitude, especially to peers and contemporaries. others in your industry, you’ve mentioned a few of them there. You mentioned your father. Who do you respect, who you admire that’s out there doing good work?
Eden Gillott 26:13
Yeah. So this is I was thinking about that, actually,
John Corcoran 26:16
I wrote a long list of people. Wow, there’s a lot of names on that list.
Eden Gillott 26:20
And some of these things are like organizations that encapsulate a bunch of different people. It’s like a love letter to EO. We were talking to the Entrepreneurs’ Organization, like I just love being surrounded by other entrepreneurs and business owners. They are amazing. I love other people that are in the field of public relations, whether it’s on the crisis side or on the marketing side, who just understand what’s going on. And I love attorneys, which is, I just, you know, I was when I was little, I was like, Well, you know, if I didn’t do this for a living, I was like, I wanted to be an attorney. I just love the way that their minds work.
John Corcoran 27:00
Yeah, cool. Eden, this has been great. Where can people go to connect with you and learn more about the work that you do?
Eden Gillott 27:07
On LinkedIn, that is the best place to find me. I am constantly posting content that is valuable and insightful for other people. You know, I have three different books, one for lawyers, one for board members and one for business owners. So my content is whether you’re a lawyer or a board member or a business owner, maybe you could be all three actually, you have content that will speak to you.
John Corcoran 27:30
Excellent. Alright, thanks so much.
Outro 27:34
Thank you for listening to the Smart Business Revolution Podcast with John Corcoran. Find out more at smartbusinessrevolution.com, and while you’re there, sign up for our email list and join the revolution. And be listening for the next episode of the Smart Business Revolution Podcast.