143: How One Email Brutally Destroyed a Business Overnight: The Ava Lane Boutique TikTok Takedown

So there I was late at night on TikTok and I saw this video and doh. I scrolled past it, which was such a mistake because the fallout was straight out of my book Indestructible.

I applied for this job as a brand representative to a company called Ava Lane and their motto is beauty through confidence. And this is an email I accidentally got sent from the vp. Enjoy.

Not that cute.

Not that cute. Okay, okay, okay.

Enjoy it. Well, the owners of the Michigan based Ava Lane Boutique clearly did not enjoy the notoriety because that email nearly destroyed the their business in a matter of one day. Welcome to the Confident Communications podcast, where we help communicators create the right response at the right time and deliver it in the right place on the podcast. A mistake, honestly, one that every single one of us has made at some point in our lifetime. Well, since they've had email, and that is sending an errant email or text to the wrong person. So what are you gonna do? The simple answer, not what VP Chuck De Grandale did. We all make mistakes, so I won't focus on that portion, but the fallout and the response that Chuck and his wife Lori made. That needs attention. Because everyone could benefit from learning how to respond when something bad happens to a business instantaneously and when it happens online. Because truly, every business is only one TikTok away from being destroyed. That TikTok video sent by rejected job applicant Gracie Laurens. And she is at G G G M O N E Y Y Y Y. So let's give Gracie her due because that TikTok of hers amassed at the time of this recording. 2.3 million views. Listen to that number again. 2.3 million views. And one of them was mine. Sort of. In this episode, the timeline of a TikTok takedown. What happened and what should not have happened in the response. In the end, I'll share with you three takeaways ways to save you from a viral disaster if it happens to you. Now I know what you may be thinking. I don't own a boutique. I don't sell clothes online. Doesn't matter. Anyone who runs a business, manages a business, owns a business. Anyone who's a part of any organization right now that has some front face to it is at risk of going viral for any reason. It could be homegrown, it could be from inside the building. It could be from an employee. Employee. It could be from an owner, but it also could be from a customer, which is not what happened in this case. It was from a job applicant. Now, this story I tell you, it really did. It left me slapping my head because there I was on TikTok, as I want to do at, at night. I happen to do that at night to wind down, which breaks every rule in the book that you should never be on TikTok. But I saw it, but and I just saw this girl with the green screen with the, with the email behind her. So patience, I guess is definitely a virtue on tick tock. Had I stay a little longer, I would have been treated to the kind of crisis, a business crisis that impacts the owner's reputation spiraling out of control due to that viral video. I would have connected the dots quickly. But you know what, it wasn't a grabber right away, but it had all the earmarks of a molly crisis. It was a viral video on social. It was a viral video on the social platform TikTok, which I consider a bit of the wild wild west. Software programs can manage what happens on TikTok. If you have TikTok, if you have firms that you work with right now that have the software to follow the media mentions to follow the social media sentiment values of what's happening out there, you can get a read on it. But most businesses, at least from my perspective, do not invest in social media monitoring themselves or, or have outside groups or firms working with them that do that because there's a lot of small to mid sized businesses out there that don't invest in this. So so many of you are at risk for this. Also, it's Gen Z versus okay Boomer, which I have to say Chuck and his wife are clearly Gen X but they had that kind of okay Boomer vibe to them. Also the attempt at recovery, the attempt from a horrible recovery, the news picking up the story, the Internet picking the story, the viral video story going viral and the lessons, the lessons and the lessons. Now if you know me, you know that I never ever want to see anyone self combust from a mistake that really we could all make that mistake at any point. I want to help people and if someone can learn from a mistake, I'm all in. After all I wrote the book on it. And that book, how to survive a media Crisis and regain Control is really about what is happening to this online boutique. Now the story of Ava Lane, what happened? Why did they go into crisis? What went wrong? Could they have fixed it at any point during the bad response? Now the Ava Lane problem can be distilled down to one problem, one mistake. Someone, Chuck did not use the reply correctly on an email from a job Applicant. That's what he did wrong. He didn't reply correctly. Now there's more, but that's the crux of it. Now here's what he did. So the vp, Chuck, Husband Chuck, he's husband of the owner, Laura. So it appears that the email in the TikTok was clearly meant for someone else handling the recruiting process, which we come to learn later. He says that there is an HR person who knows. But the email said, this girl is fresh out of college. And it also said, and this was the kicker, she's not that cute. Are you sure you want me to interview her? So that email goes back to Gracie. If you haven't used TikTok, TikTok has a feature. It has like a green screen feature. You can upload any, you know, any document, any jpeg. So now in the opening clip, you heard Gracie speak and she was pointing to the email behind her. So you can read it. Now, what happened to Ava Lane is they were in control at one point when they were running their business, then there was a lack of control due to chaos. When a business is in chaos, that means a business is in crisis. And that means when you are out of control, when business operations cease or they're interrupted because you all hands on deck to manage some type of crisis that is out of your control, that's a crisis. And when the response is bad, it creates an even bigger crisis. And that's what they did here. Now, I know many of you have not heard of this story. Many of you had. I heard about it on Twitter when thankfully, Stephanie, she's been on the podcast before, back when we talked about COVID I'll include a link in the show notes. But she had tweeted it. And as soon as she tweeted it and she tagged me on the tweet, as soon as I saw it, I went, oh, that's the tweet I saw last night. My goodness, she's so good that she got that. But anyway. But why would anyone care about a bad day that a husband has at the online boutique when their business goes kablooey? You could swap an online clothing retailer for a bank, a school, a utility, a business, you know, any store. Add any person who hit send on the wrong reply and the next thing you know, you could have a viral news story and you'll be a viral laughingstock. So now let's dive into their story and I want to share a little nugget that I picked up on TikTok after the fact about the couple. It came out a couple days later, which is why I love TikTok. So I'm going to say. I'm going to say that at the end. All right, so what they did after that video went viral points to them. So green checks. What they did is they responded right away like they were on it. They did not dismiss it. At least it appears that they knew the severity and the weight of what was happening, so they did something right away. Now, the things that they did wrong is they shut down. They shut down their social. And it's understandable because they were getting so many bad comments. People were leaving them negative reviews on Google. They were lowering their star rating. So now their rating system was being destroyed. Their Instagram, their Facebook page was just inundated with negative comments. So the first mistake that they made is they shut that down. But what they did do is they created a Facebook Live video. So they went to Instagram first, I believe, and I have to be honest, I can't find it. But based on what I watch and what I've heard, that's where they went first. And then they went to Facebook and they did a Facebook Live video. Now, that tactic, if you're a listener to this podcast, you know, I love the Facebook Live video for response. It's fabulous. In the right hands. Okay. In the right hands. So here we are. What went wrong? Did Chuck in his live video follow my indestructible PR framework? Okay, well, so first, number one, let's start with the problems here. What went wrong? Well, one, the email obs. You know, Chuck hit reply instead of forward. Innocent enough mistake. So there, by the grace of God go I. You know, as I said, we've all been there. Many people would have let it go. Many, many people. Gen Z, people who know how to manage social media, they're likely not to let it go. And this is where generation matters. If someone, if a baby boomer got that email, if a Gen Xer got that email, I don't know if my first reaction would be to go viral, because I know I'm then putting my reputation at risk. But Gen Z, they are wired for this. Not negativity, not attack, but they are wired to share life, how it happens to them. And that's exactly what Gracie did. Two, as I stated, they shut down their social channels. Not surprised that they did that. They claimed they were getting death threats. The kids were getting threatened. And as a small business owner myself and I have kids, I can't fault them for that instinctive reaction. But when your business is your Livelihood. Every move you make could cost you. And like I always say, there is a cost to a poor reputation. When you shut down social, you are shutting down your response channel. So keep the doors open. Yes. You're letting all the soldiers come in and fight you all. They're in their horses. They have their arrows. They have their bows and arrows. They have their spears and their swords. You're letting them in the gates, but you can fight them. You can handle it. Okay. Number three. They decided to go all in, only on one channel in particular. It's like they shut everything else down, and they just focused on that Facebook Live, which meant they were channeling all of the ugliness now into one place. People could see that everything else was shut down. So that's why all the knives were out when they went on Facebook Live. So let's break down why this was such. Oh, let's call it a pathetic and inadequate apology that they did on Facebook Live. So first, let me set the picture for you. If you haven't seen the video, you have Chuck in a chair. Chuck. Like I said, late Gen xer. So he's 40s, maybe. Looks like a baseball dad, but looks like the baseball dad on the sidelines, or the coach who's yelling and screaming, or the coach who keeps his kid in the whole time. You know what I mean? He's like that guy. Like, you can tell he's that guy in the video. It looks to be like they're in their headquarters, which could be their living room. I have no idea. But he's sitting on a chair rather uncomfortably in a chair. So let's start with the video right from the beginning.

My name's Chuck. I wanted to talk to everybody for a brief moment here. Apologize to somebody for something I did yesterday. That was very inappropriate, very unprofessional, just downright stupid.

The shake in the voice. It's so effective. Ugh. If you can't write remorse, then I will emphasize it with my shaky voice.

We currently have a job posting for a sales model or brand ambassador position, kind of like what Laura does.

And.

We had an applicant yesterday that submitted her application.

She.

She submitted her application, submitted photos through email.

Whoa. Details. Lots and lots and lots of details. And by the way, if you watch the live video, right at the time he was saying this comment, a comment comes on the live stream that says, you are only apologizing because you got canceled. See? Oh, my gosh, the perils of live video. Okay, let's keep going.

Laura saw the. The email, and our Typical HR person who would handle this stuff is out this week. So Laura forwarded the email to me and I was trying to fill in.

All right, long time listeners of the Confident Communications podcast, what red flag is waving right now? What tactic did Chuck just use there? Was it blame? Oh, yes, it was. So I'll go on a bit here to show how awkward it continues to be. I.

I reviewed the email, I reviewed the application, I downloaded the. The resume, and I sent a reply back to Laura that said. That she was a recent college grad.

Oh, I mean, oh, breaking into those tears. Honestly, you cannot watch this without laughing. You're gonna grimace and then you just have to start laughing because the comments, the comments coming on, some said crying, but no tears. Lmao. Laugh my ass off. Nice acting, Chuck. Breathe. And then, oh, boo hoo. Look at how hard you are trying to cry. I mean, brutal. Let's keep going.

And I didn't feel that she was that cute. So I wasn't sure if we wanted to proceed with an interview.

I mean, this is painful. It is pure painful. Back to the commentary, you weirdo. Judging college girls. God, it's such a great video. Okay, let me move forward a bit because this video goes over 10 minutes long. Let's look for that flag again. Here we go.

I sent the email back to Laura. It was about 1 o' clock yesterday. I left to go home at 5, 5:30. I was driving one of our kids to soccer and Laura called me and said that we received an email from the candidate. To our customer service.

Oy. They. Details. Blame. Excuses. Details. Blame. Excuses. The mark of a manipulator. Blame. Excuse. Details. When you hear the blaming, the excuses and the details, that means they are deflecting and they want to deflect you and manipulate you away from the cause of the problem, which is that person. It's all manipulation. All right, let's move off of Chuck for a bit. Let's give Chuck a breather and let's move on to Laura, his wife. Let's hear what she has to say. Now that she takes the stage or the chair in the living room, she gets pretty emotional.

We appreciate your support. We're gonna call it a day. Our phone numbers are out there. Our address is out there. Our children have been threatened. I'm pretty sure the girl.

Chuck has.

Apologized to, who didn't mean when she asked her followers to contact us to threaten our family, the families who work here. I'm pretty sure that was not her intention.

Okay, here's. Yeah, here's the problem again, it's buried under the tears of a stressed out business owner. I feel you. And a stressed out business owner with. And a mom. Protective mom. I hear you. I hear you. But did you hear what she said? Here, let me play it again.

I'm pretty sure the girl who Chuck has apologized to didn't mean when she asked her followers to contact us.

Whoa. Flag red. Blame and gaslighting for good measure. Accusing Gracie, the applicant. Nice, Laura. The commenters let her have it too. Quote, the girl Chuck apologized to. How about the girl he degraded? Someone correctly pointed out that she, Gracie, never, ever asked anyone to contact them or to harass them. She didn't tell anyone. Anyone to threaten anyone. And that's what another commenter said. She did not tell anyone to threaten anyone. Everything these commenters are saying, it's all true. Now, how about bringing in one more gaslight for good measure? Don't know what gaslighting is. Well, it sounds something like this.

It is okay for people to come on. They can talk about my appearance all day long. Hurtful comments. Again, I don't actually think that was her intention. To talk about how horrible and hideous I am and everything that I do. That's okay. We can move on from that. But it's when you start threatening children, that's where we kind of have to draw the line.

Right, Laura? Because she never said it. That's what happens when you make a reprehensible mistake. You do not take accountability for it. Then people will call you out for it. Cause reaction. Gracie, the applicant did not cause this reaction. The email did. And your response? Ugh, these people. Now you've heard my indestructible PR response framework. Own it, explain it, Promise it. Guess what? So did Chuck.

He made a mistake and he owns it.

This is 100% my fault. I want to make that clear. My response to world war was not prompted. It was my response. So I'm sorry.

Yeah, Chuck, me too. But too little, too late. Wait, what was that? Did Laura. Did Laura continue to gaslight Gracie? Is that what you're asking? Hmm. Let's see. So far we've had it in my notes. Blame, details. Blame tears. Blame tears. Tears. Fake tears. Fake tears, Fake tears. Excuses. Gaslight. Gaslight. Oh, yeah, right there. Right here at the end. At the 10 minute mark. Here we go.

I am fairly certain that this girl did not mean for it to threaten families and threaten children. I would hope that wouldn't be her intentions.

No, Laurie, it wasn't her intention, nor did she ever say it nice touch there. In the end, gaslighting the worst. Now, you may hear genuine remorse in that apology. And some of the commentators on Facebook Live, they were sending prayer emojis and saying, we feel for you. They were getting their fans or maybe family or friends. But all I heard was manipulation and desperation. Now, listening to parts of that video, you may hear genuine remorse. Me, I hear nothing but manipulation and desperation. Because remember in the very beginning, what is this all about? It's about Chuck stating in an email that this girl, this college graduate, was not that cute. Oh, and by the way, if you haven't seen the video, Chuck, in my opinion, is not that cute. Also, the tears. Oh my goodness, the anguish. This is what they're doing. It's a classic narcissistic tactic. Not to say that they are, but it's a tactic that narcissists use. It's the anguish of, see how upset you made me feel, Gracie, you fresh faced college student. A classic narcissistic tactic. Never fall for blame. Okay, he does admit to making a mistake. Chuck admitted to it. But the mistake that he's admitting to is sending the email. That's the mistake he's apologizing for. It should be. The mistake was judging an applicant for her looks. Judging a young female applicant who is applying to your job where you sell clothes to females. And not just females, young females. Now, Chuck used context straight out from the response framework. He used the context. However, he confused context with details. Detail after detail after detail. A complete mashup of details is not setting context. The context should be about why it was wrong to write that email, not the details behind why you got so busy in your day that you sent the email. And with the response framework, there were, where are the plans? Where are the promises? There were none. So they botched the framework. So now what should you do? And who knows in this environment? It could happen to you. It could happen to any of us. What should you do? All right, can you guess? Of course you can. You use the indestructible PR framework, but you use it correctly. And why? Because it works. So one, of course you own it completely. Please and thank you. What Chuck should, should have done is owned to the right mistake. Something along the lines of, and I'm winging it here. But I made a dreadful mistake that resulted in a horrible disservice to an applicant, to our company. I wrote an insensitive and incredibly rude and sexist reply to an email from a qualified applicant who deserved a job after graduating from college. And I reduced her to a thing. It was wrong, it was sexist, it was narrow minded, and I rightfully deserve all of the negative comments online and in the press. I created a mess for my family, my family's business, my wife, and our kids. I feel awful as a father and as a business owner, but as a father, I should have known better. I should have known not to diminish a person, to not diminish a person based on their looks, and especially to not diminish a young person who's just starting out in the world and base it all on her looks. If anyone bullied my kids that way, I would never want them to suffer like that. I set a horrible example, not only as a business owner, as a person in power, but even worse, as a poor role model for my sons. I hope they never, ever are treated in that manner. And even more, I hope they never treat anyone in that manner. My wife, Lori, and I have created a business from scratch. She built it in 2000, whatever, and she's grown it into the successful company that it is today. And I've supported her on that journey. For her to own her business, I'm here to support her, but I let her down. It's just the two of us in this business or our HR person, it's the three of us in this business. We do it all. We do it all from boxing to writing emails, and in my case, a very poor one. So this experience, this is step three, folks. This experience has taught me a valuable lesson about respect and taking accountability for mistakes. We extended a job offer for employment to the applicant because we want to live by our mission of helping every customer feel confident. We fell far short of that, not only in this applicant, but with every customer that we have. And for that, we are tremendously remorseful, regretful, and we are so sorry. All right, something like that. If I were doing a live video script, it would sound something like that. You own it, you put it into context. And if you notice the context, I said it was a small business. They started from scratch. We work in our living room. Whatever it is you're putting in context, that it's just two of them makes it more likely that a mistake like this could happen. Because also, they're a family owned business. I know this is a family owner. I'm doing my business one minute and then I'm down making grilled cheese, and then I'm running my business, and then I'm driving someone to soccer. Your mind is in a million different places. I can buy this if someone told me that, and then that last piece is, what are you going to do about it? What have you learned about it? Chuck and Laura, they didn't learn anything in their video. And also so again, remember to keep your social media open. Don't go dark. Remember, remember all the negative commentary, believe it or not, that can help you. I always tell my clients, if there's negative commentary on your social media pages, leave it. Because people need to see the negativity. Yes, because if it's an actual gap, then you can fix it. And you can put a response in there about how you're going to fix it. And when you have an indestructible response, you're already rehabilitating your reputation. You're fixing it right there on the spot. But if it's wrong, you can correct it. Course corrections are fabulous. That's pr. That is pr. And in this case, let's say you're getting inundated, completely inundated. You gotta ride it out. Ride it out. The sooner you respond, the likelihood that your response, your solid response becomes a part of the original negative story. Because when something happens on viral, it spikes, like immediately, okay, we're talking within that 24 hour cycle. But the news stories don't happen right away. The news stories take a tick or two to write about. They want to see the fallout. If your response is in dead center of that fallout, they're going to include it in the story. And that's what you want. You write it out. And remember to make that promise to change. And it's best that you keep that promise because people are keeping score. People like your current customers, prospective customers, the press, many of the people who are now invested in the story, the commentators, the future job applicants, and people, well, people like me, I'm watching. Now, in the beginning I mentioned something else about the story that I learned from the talk. And I'm the only one who says the talk. I want it to take off because it's, it's so much cooler than TikTok. But TikTok, something else that I saw a few days later. So I'm just going to sidetrack for a moment here. Just about TikTok. If you haven't used it before, it's fabulous. Now, I'll admit I don't use it. I'm going to be using it soon. In the next couple months, I'm going to be launching a TikTok channel and I'm going to bring you all along with me as I launch. And who knows, I'LL probably have my viral, my, my whole crisis from it. But watching it, really, I mean, it is fabulous. It's like Reddit, but with video. People share anything and everything, things that you don't think that you ever cared about. Now you do. Now you're fascinated by it. Like, for instance, it's not all stupid stuff. Like there's clean talk. I learned how to unclog my shower drain. I learn how to clean my shower. I also learned how to stop maggots from forming in my garbage bin, which happened this weekend because we had garbage in there for a couple more days than we should have. It's very ew. But I learned kosher salt and water. And where did I learn it from CleanTalk on TikTok. And then this one. If you're on TikTok, I know you've heard this before. Show me the life hack that you randomly saw one day that is now an unconscious standard practice in your life. I'll go first. The life hack. Oh my gosh, I learned so many just from that TikTok alone. The algorithm of TikTok is pure fascination. And even though I do believe that it spies on you, like it can hear your conversations because your for you page is curated based on your likes, your searches, your posts that you engage with, but also like what you say around the house. No kidding. But anything that's in your brain seems to end up on TikTok, so it makes it really, really interesting. Now, another area to tie it back into Chuck and Laura that showed up on my TikTok were stories about MLMs and the deceptive world of MLMs, which are multi level marketing companies. Now I think I got into that track on TikTok is because I was following the Rachel Hollis downfall, you remember from that podcast. I'll include the link in the show notes where I talked about Rachel Hollis's video that she had posted on that was posted to TikTok and she earned millions. Like she really got her start speaking at these MLM conferences and that's part of the past that she can't seem to shake. So MLMs right now are bad news. There's a fabulous podcast, the dream about MLMs. But what I heard about these two is there is a woman who just goes off on mlms and she's on my for you page all the time. But she said, hey, did you happen to see the story about Chuck and Laura about what happened with their brand? And she said, well Chuck, I have the scoop for you on that. I'm like, ooh I'm now watching. I'm never scrolling past the story about this. She said that they were both MLMs from the brand Lulu Row. And if you're not familiar with the brand, Lulu Row was an MLM that was selling leggings for women. And when. And again, like MLMs, that's where you have like house parties and. Or on Facebook, if you see people like, really, really trying to sell you things, like, hard, it's because they have, they have like a downline. Like if one person sells to another person and then that person sells to their customer, that means the profits go all the way to the person, you know, at the top. But it, but it's all a pyramid scheme and it's all illegal. And Lulu Row had massive problems. They turned out to be a big scam. And they were also, like, stealing their prints from other people. They were just grabbing graphic designs online. And in one case I found out on TikTok, they grabbed a design online and didn't even realize the copyright. And the woman's name who designed it showed up on the leggings like they were so they were so blatant in their grift, in their steel. It's. It's absolutely amazing. But what this MLM, or on TikTok, this out MLM outer, you know, whistleblower. What she said is that Chuck and Laura were big MLMers, that that's where they started and they learned their sales huckster ways from their MLM days at Lularoe. Isn't that fascinating? All right, so to wrap it up in the end, my hope for everyone listening is that you never, ever, ever have to deal with a situation like this. So here's your indestructible tip. If you go viral for a mistake, and it is viral with a capital V, do not shut everything down. Stay open, stay honest, stay relevant, stay responsive, and you will stay indestructible. That's all this week on the podcast. I want to hear from you, so give me your feedback and please don't blame me for anything. Head on over to my website, mollymcpherson.com podcast. Go down to the page, leave a voicemail for me or send me a comment. Comment. That's all for this week. Thanks for listening. Bye for now.