58: Critical Moments: The New Mindset of Reputation Management with special guest Bill Coletti

Hey there. Welcome to the Confident Communications podcast. I'm your host, Molly McPherson. My guest today is Bill Coletti. He founded Kith Consulting and he is a crisis communication reputation management expert. Which means you wouldn't want to sit between us at a dinner party because people like us, we like to go deep, deep, deep into the well about crisis management and we relate it to stories that are happening in the press today. And that's what we did on this conversation. So Bill has a lot working with companies, with people in high stakes crisis or issues management and media relation challenges. So Fortune 500 companies, global and local political campaigns from the Senate side. And he's also the founder of Kith, a crisis communication and reputation management firm that is its best, as he says, when it's working with established corporations that feel disrupted in, in the age of disruption. So we're going to be speaking about his books, Critical the New Mindset of Reputation Management. And Bill offers valuable advice on how to change it. So if you're a leader working for an organization and you feel like this could be a problem, there could be an issue or crisis just around the bend. Take a list. Hello, Bill, thank you for joining me today on the podcast.

Molly, it is my pleasure to join you. This is, I've been looking forward to this all week, so it should be a great conversation.

Well, I love speaking with anyone that looks forward to speak with me.

My kids don't.

So, Bill, where am I speaking to you from at the moment?

I am in Austin, Texas and my team, we've got some of our team is here in Austin with me and then we've got a little bit of a remote team. Everybody flew in yesterday and we had a team meeting yesterday and we're wrapping it up here in a couple hours. So it's been a great week for us.

Oh, now, good. Now tell me, so you run a successful reputation management crisis communication firm. Tell me about your business right now, this business model of where we are, you know, heading into 2020. I don't know if the political season has much to do with it, but what is business like for you, owning a communication business in this day and age?

Yeah, so it's so, so topical. That's what we spent the past 36 hours talking about. And so our firm's name is Kith K I T H. We do crisis and reputation management. And so, you know, I've listened to so many of your great episodes where you talk about, you know, where we get increasing phone calls and clients are either find themselves in crisis or find themselves aware of a crisis and begin the planning journey, or the need for some sort of a planning journey that's there. And so we. We balance and toggle exactly between those two places for 2020. The thing we really want to work with organizations on is we're always going to do crisis response is what we call it. We're always going to do that. But the thing we really want to do is transition from disrupting the disruption, which will resonate with you, which is what we do in crisis response. A company is being disrupted and we're trying to disrupt that, get them back to normal. We would like to do less disrupt, disrupting the disruption and really move more towards how do we transform organizations into reputation resilience? How do we make sure that they're ready from a crisis standpoint, all the normal tactics on crisis planning and readiness. But then how do we do a lot of smart thinking about risk and blend those two avenues together to create a reputation resilient organization?

It's a brilliant business model because I am pivoting into that same area, but not from a cor perspective. I deal with a lot of leaders and how they can do it, starting with their culture that they have on the inside. So it's interesting that we're both going to that same place because the whole environment is disruptive. Wouldn't you say that everyone is almost on edge and in our business we bring that calm and that presence that we. That we want to project onto our clients. Would you agree?

I absolutely agree. And just an anecdote that I love, when I think about, I think about the construct of disruption and I think about construct of transformation. And so someone shared with me this anecdote is that, you know, Mark Zuckerberg Facebook the adage that they do, they're the mantra that they live by, you know, is move fast and break things. And that has created moments for them. I call it critical moments that have created moments for them where they've had to testify in front of Congress. When Zuckerberg himself goes for a jog in the, in. In communities, he has a sort of a phalanx of about a dozen to 15 security guards around him. Hugely successful wonder platform, all those great things. But that move fast and break thing, disruptive mentality is sort of drives that culture, therefore creating crises for them that they need to manage. Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffett, they want to transform industries. They don't want to disrupt industries, they want to transform industries. And that's what he does. And so he, Warren Buffett as he travels is that he'll grab an Uber at the Chicago airport to go to a meeting or grab a car in a car service with no security, no team, and he's never testified in front of Congress. And so I want to help organizations take the best of Facebook. Creating something that is so valuable to the marketplace, but creating the long term value that Berkshire's created and what Buffett has created. And he got there through transformation. So disruption has a place, but it's really much more my mindset. I want to sell transformation. I don't want to sell disrupting the disruption.

Yeah. And Mark Zuckerberg, you bring up such a great, you know, analogy there. Like his disruption resulted in creating this, you know, billion dollar company, but when you can't be disruptive with your own reputation, it causes too much damage and you can't pick up all the pieces. And I think that's clearly what Mark Zuckerberg, you can't open the newspaper or go online without seeing a news story about him trying to adjust his reputation.

So it's a great model and why it's so important and why companies need to think about it. Is that the way I view reputation and the reason organizations need to manage reputation in a thoughtful, structured way is that you get a handful of things. And again, these are wonderful things I think you think about and talk about is that a, you get a, you're building a reservoir of goodwill so that when something bad happens, people say, well, that's not the company. I know, that's not the, that's not the relationship I have with them. So you get this benefit of the doubt with this reservoir of goodwill. But more importantly is you get this license to operate. So if, for example, Facebook wanted to get into banking, a highly regulated marketplace requires a lot of state and federal permissions in order to do that. They have significant speed bumps and so they're licensed to operate. Their strategy is to go into banking. I don't know if they plan that or not, but as an example, they, they want to, they are going to have a difficult time. And that's what that reputational impact that you just highlighted, that's the reason why it's important to grow their business.

Well, I think they are getting into the monetary biz. I mean, the cryptocurrency.

I think they're doing some crypto stuff. Yeah. And I think it's going to be a challenge. That's a weird place to be anyways. Yeah, it is.

So I have, I have a friend that just started working at Facebook So I can't wait to get intel if she can share it with me there. But great example coming from Facebook because it's always moving. Now you wear. We share a similarity again too is we both buy into a formula for managing crisis. Now I hear a lot of a lot. When I hear speakers or other people talk, they'll dismiss or poo poo the idea of a formula. They say formulas don't work. Everyone has a custom plan that they need. I kind of disagree because I have my three step formula for a crisis that I have yet it has yet to not prove correct every time I see it play out. You have won Kit's equation for crisis success and you and I love your markers in there. You have core values, which is really important, but a chain of command and tell me about that formula and how it works.

Yeah, awesome. It is based on my experience, what I've learned is one of the key differentiators between good and great crisis response is this notion of speed. Being fast to the market, filling the vacuum, having empathy, understanding what's going on. All of those are elements of speed. You have to be quick in order to do that. You can't be quick. And the way the model works, it sort of works in reverse. The way the model works is that the way you get to speed. Speed equals the sum of a crystal clear understanding of what your organization stands for, your mission and values. What are the things that are most critically important to you? Because when I find myself working with clients in crisis situations, is that there is a significant amount of delay. Figuring when there are difficult choices that need to be made, a significant delay in deciding what really matters. Is it our shareholders? Is it our employees? You know, is it the local community that was impacted? Is it regulators, the government? What are the things that really, really matter to your organization? So I think having crystal clarity around mission and values, you add that to a notion of chain of command. Too often organizations, it's the first time they find themselves in this crisis and the normal structures that CEOs and leaders have of they convene their, their, their kitchen cabinet or they convene their executive leadership team. And that there are informal structures of chain of command or there are now new outside players, such as outside litigators or outside attorneys, or there's a trade association, there's lots of different value, different players. So getting crystal clear on how decisions get made both formally and informally. So you take mission and values, add it to chain of command. That in my, based on my experience is the best recipe. The best equation in order to get speed, which is the key difference between good and great.

Now, when you talk about a chain of command, do you have, do you work with organizations that are solid in their chain of commands? Like you might have a former, you know, former military in the C suite and they understand a change of command or is it always just herding cats? Like, what do you find when you go into an organization either planning for a crisis or in the middle of a crisis?

So I don't necessarily draw a sort of, I don't, my window doesn't necessarily look at it through this military context. The way I look at it is that organizations that have either been through this or sat and thought about it either through a simulation or simply just saying what if, what if this happened to us? That's where they get the best clarity of chain of command. Organizations that are in denial and say this can't happen to me, and then the organization starts playing six year old soccer. So it is, it's the 80, 20 rule. You know, 80, 80% are, as you described, kind of not really prepared. And chain of command is the first thing to go out the window. And there's a, there's a handful, 20% of organizations, typically they're not the ones that call me, frankly. And they probably don't call you. They probably got their act together pretty well and they're managing through the situation in a thoughtful way. But that's the smaller, the smaller. That's the 20%. The 80 is definitely everybody running around chasing the ball and nobody really making decisions in a fast way. Right.

80S are money. That's where we bank.

Right.

It's the 20% though, is I find if there is someone who has experience just in emergency management or their military.

Yeah.

Or they're trained in the ICS organizational structure. Like I can spot it right away because I worked in it.

Absolutely.

So again, moving on to, you know, to another, to another concept that you've come up with, which is your four A's, reputation management. And I read about it. You have a book, I had mentioned it in the introduction, Critical moments, the new mindset of Reputation Management. And isn't that the truth? You always need to reset your mindset when it comes to reputation, crisis management, issues, management. But Talk about your 4A's that you found are critical when managing a critical.

Moment, you know, so I'll tell you a little bit of an anecdote. So I had, I was sitting with a CEO, a female CEO in New York and we had just finished going through A crisis situation together. We had done a press conference earlier the day before and we were kind of debriefing and we, the team and we were sitting there debriefing and talking about it and the, the cheeky phrase was said, well that sucked, let's never do that again. And so that was kind of the frame of the debrief conversation in a little bit more of a lighthearted way.

Did she say that or did you say that?

She, she said that. Which it did. It just saw. And it was one of those crises. Yeah, it was one of those crises. There's no, you know, physical jeopardy or harm. It was just a crappy situation that needed to be managed and we did it and it was fine, but it was, it was a crappy situation and should not have done that again. Okay. And so there was a conversation and during the course of that, this was a couple years ago, during the course of that we had a conversation where I was explaining, okay, now we need to go on a reputation management journey. We need to take your reputation and manage it and lead it. And she is an amazing systems based leader who I'm very, very fond of and she does such amazing work at her enterprise. Is that very systems based. And so she kept in a longer conversation. I'm paraphrasing. She said, so you mean something like the four P's of marketing, Price, product, place, promotion. And anybody that's gone to any semblance of a marketing class or a marketing degree or marketing exposure has heard of the. It's a vestige from the 1960s and it's the marketing mix of those four elements. Price, product, place, promotion. That was the system that she had in mind. That was the process that she had in mind. And so that challenge that she was craving for a model and that challenge when I got back on the plane is that I pulled out my notepad and a pen and I said, okay, what am I talking about? What am I talking about in reputation? And so within that course of a three hour flight home was able to create this model of the four A's of reputation management so that leaders can actually have a system. Because what's magic about the four Ps of marketing? Price product, place promotion is most major companies have a vice president of blank, a vice president of place, product promotion. That's there. They have that, they have a vice president responsible for that. The four A's. I tried to create a model to do that. So what the A's are, it starts with a foundation of awareness. Organizations have to Be self aware, understand who they are, what they stand for, and really sort of have an understanding of what they mean in the marketplace. So that's this notion of awareness.

Is that just for the company or would you give that to the leader as well, the CEO? So are there two layers to the awareness?

So I firmly believe that most major significant organizations, not necessarily brands, but just major organizations, are so leader dread or leader led. Excuse me, leader led. That it's. They run hand in glove. So I do it separately for each. But I think that notion of awareness, since that CEO voice is so critical and so important. So yeah, I do it, I do it in parallel, but they're very intertwined in that notion of awareness. How do we become aware of who we are and what we stand for? And there's that mission and values.

Okay, so awareness is your first A.

Assessment is basically, it's relative, it's, it's research. It's not overly complicated. You know, is this, where do we stand with our internal audiences, where do we stand with our external audiences? And where do we stand with sort of a third ring of kind of, not necessarily the general public, but kind of closely people close, closely affiliated stakeholders to us. So we.

Your stakeholders.

Exactly. So we do an assessment process where we try to understand our reputation and simply ask, what do you expect of us? What is your expectation of us? Because there's an amazing company, Illinois Tool Works and Walmart. I have completely different expectations of Walmart than I do of Illinois Tool Work. And Illinois Tool Work is an amazing company. Significant growth, does amazing, does amazing product design. But I have different expectations of them than I do of Walmart or Starbucks and fill in that space. So that's assessment.

Well, they, well, they fail at the awareness. I've never heard of this company. What is it? The Indiana.

Illinois Tool. Illinois Tool Works.

Illinois. Oh, Illinois Tool Works. Okay, all right. Maybe I'm out of market.

High growth, major Fortune 500 company that does amazing work, has a, has a sustainability and CSR platform that is, that's quite innovative. And the reason you don't know about them is that you don't need to know about them because you're obviously not a core stakeholder, but the people that know about them, know them and have high expectations of them, but it's in market and so they, it's a, it's a completely very, very unique and super smart model that they run. That's really great.

Well, and then let me ask you this. In terms of the assessment, is any of that scientific? Are you doing Focus groups.

Yeah, it's all, it's all that, all of those tool, all of those things are in our toolkit. Both, both employee, state employee surveys. How are we doing as you know, how are we doing as an employer? Public opinion surveys externally, focus groups online, offline. Absolutely. So we, it is really, it's somewhat budget constrained and or what resources the company already has in place, but absolutely it's a full suite of assessment services. Okay.

And now your next is one that I like to use a lot. What is your third A?

It's authority. And so you know, some people would argue that authority should be first or should be last, but I think authority is exactly perfectly positioned. So once an organization becomes aware of what they stand for, can and can't do, then they assess and they understand what people expect of them. It is then time, if you're going to, going to go on a reputation management journey, it is then time to have buy in and authority from your organization that we can actually do this. We can actually begin to turn this large battleship of a corporation. And that comes from buy in authority and understanding from your organization. We talk about creating a reputation management council which may or not, may or may not mirror the executive leadership team depends on different structures but you get the authority of the organization to actually do this. Because I have been exposed to too many well intentioned PR professionals that come up with a brilliant CSR or a brilliant, brilliant promotion plan around what we're going to do to build our reputation and the leadership and buy in and it, and it dies on the cutting room floor or it becomes hollow and not authentic. And so that's where authority comes in is that you get the buy in from your organization in the authority phase.

Oh, and you know your authority and that buy in is so critical and I usually find my, if I were doing the four A's or if I had alliteration, I do have to ask you, did you just get on the plane and settle on A. Because it was the first one you said I got to use alliteration.

And I'll just go now I just jot it down. I just, I really tried to, I tried to be somewhat disciplined of this. What are the, what are the words that I use? And I jotted down a bunch. And I think, you know, I think authority started as buy in.

Oh, okay.

I said, well that doesn't, I got two other A's. We got to find an A. Yeah, I think I did a little the source search on there, but it was really, I knew, I knew Awareness was important. Yeah.

The four J's, the four Z's. That wouldn't work, but it works.

Yeah.

So, but, but that piece about a 3 authority, I do note going into a lot of situations where the buy in or the lack of it can be the first challenge that you have to overcome is because people don't think that there's an issue. So I love that you have authority in there. How about your last day?

So there is a subtle hidden element to the pyramid that's there. And so if you're looking at a visual version and pop it up in the show notes is that there's a solid blue line between authority and the final A.

That's yes.

And that is very intentional because it has been my experience, and I'm so curious of your reaction to this. It has been my experience because you've been both an insider, a consumer of PR services and an offer of PR services, is that that blue line is the, is the agency buffer, is that there are too many consultants, strategist, agency experts that come in and immediately jump to action, which is the fourth A, without going to say, you need to do this. Let's do a better CSR program, let's recycle a little bit better. You know, let's treat our employees better and do X, Y and Z. And they immediately jump to action. And so unless an organization is aware, has done some assessment and has that authority, the blue line is intended to be a membrane or a checkpoint for leadership to say, we need to go to action. But let's pause and make sure that we're not jumping to action unless we actually know a little bit about ourselves and a little bit about the marketplace expects because otherwise we're just doing flash in the pan PR programs. And that is not sustainable. And that is not how you grow a reputation.

Oh, I like it. It's a very subtle graphic metaphor. But how important is it? Because it is like I'm working with a client right now and every so often I'll get the email or the phone call asking, I, I would like to do this, or we're forming this or we're doing this. Like, no, no, no, no, no, no. That's too reactive. You can't do it right now because we're still in the middle of planning. So that, that blue line is really the pause of reason.

Absolutely. I love that. It's a beautiful phrase. I love that coinage, you know, or. I just came from a conference and I learned what tide, the, the dish, the, the laundry detergent. I learned What Tide did post hurricane. I want to do that.

What I did post hurricane. What I thought you're going to go with Gronk.

No, Tide. Tide. Tide has just a wonderful truck or multiple trucks that they run into hurricane zones and they do laundry for people. It's a critical need and it's wonderful. Right. And so we've got a client that's in an adjacency that's like wow, we should do that. And I'm like that doesn't make any sense. But that's the kind of idea that I'm trying to pause at on the blue line. And it's exactly that, that, that pause that you're talking about. That's exactly what it is. That's one of a million examples of hey, I just came from a conference and learned this. Let's go do it.

Yeah.

And, and that's not the way it should work. That is not. And the way I get CEOs attentions on the attention on this is that reputation management deserves the same rigor as product design. One of the critical elements of any organization is how you design a product. And there is rigor and discipline. There's, there's product market fit, there's R D, there's standing up your manufacturing facility, there's distribution and pricing very well worn product development journey. There's no reason why reputation management actions shouldn't be held to a similar rigor. That's what the 4A's tries to articulate is a rigor in order to execute on actions that are actually meaningful. Just like, hey, I just came from a conference, let's introduce a new iPhone. It doesn't work that way.

Right, right. Yes.

And so that's why it's there. And so action is the final step. And that's all about, you know, it's a, it's this, I use the term leadership. Marketing is how do we sort of take the leadership positions that are informed by awareness and assessment authority that then begin to promote over the long term very sustainable to actually grow organizations reputation. And that's the notion of action.

You did mention your book and that we would be adding it in the show notes. So there will be a link to the book in the show notes where you can see on the COVID the graphic that we're talking about. And now I can't even unsee that blue line. That's brilliant, Bill. I like that.

Intentionally subtle. Yeah.

So you had spent a lot of time talking about that kind of corporate side, the marketing. So it seems like a lot of Your clients are in that like product base. But I also know that you have experience, campaign experience. So you've worked in government affairs and that political affairs. The last question I want to ask you about, and this stems from a tweet, I believe that I follow you on Twitter.

As do I follow you. You do. Excellent.

Oh, thank you. You talk about building reputation premium through leadership and I'm wondering if you could explain that and if you may want to touch on someone that could be perhaps in a not for profit compared to a for profit, if there's any distinction there about that reputation premium based on your experience.

Yeah, great question. You know, so I think reputation premium comes after you go through the journey and it is the manifest of, of action and that, that construct of, of what do we do with leadership? So you're so right on with, with the wisdom that you share about that. This is so leader driven. It's about the CEO, it's about the president, executive director, whatever, the top of the pyramid of the organization that, that is so, so critically, critically important and so growing and creating this sort of reputation premium individually led by the organization. I look at, when I look at not for profit, I take a wider, I take a wide lens and I put higher education, higher education in that as well. You know, I think that, you know, President Gee at Ohio State University, I think he has done an excellent job of managing his own brand and managing the university's brand in parallel of that of being a very thoughtful leader. And I know that they are very, very intentional. But what makes it easy for them is that it's very authentic to him and what he believes in. And so he is a contrarian on sports and the ncaa. He has somewhat of a contrarian on testing and, but, but very, very mainstream on the values and purposes of higher education. Four years, four year, you know, baccalaureate universities. And so I think those, when leaders are clear on that mission and values, he knows what he takes. He knows he takes his own counsel, but he also has a really strong team around him, chain of command that equals speed. His premium that he gets from that creates a license to operate so that they've had some scandals, they had a little bit of a football scandal with some of their coaching staff. They have all the typical faculty and facilities challenges in higher ed. And so I think if you look at that example, he has built a premium that is really, really quite strong. And so that's my broader definition out in that sort of not for profit space of sort of looping in looping in higher education.

Okay, so let me just ask you about higher education. I'm just gonna have to go back. Are you talking about Ohio State? Are you talking about the fair pay to play?

Yeah.

Okay.

I'm talking about any number of issues that are there. They've, they've had, they've had a coaching process. So it's not just one problem. It's, it's a, it's a, it's a tick tock in higher education. And I've had a, a president that I work with, he said this would be a great job if it weren't for faculty facilities and football.

Oh, oh, another more alliteration. But let me ask you this. So you're saying you're just talking about higher, a, higher education in general as.

A client, a president, a specific president.

Ah, okay, so that's interesting. So higher education right now and there is so much going on with schools and yeah, sports has a lot to do with it in California. How. Now Gavin Newcomb, he's, he's writing in a law that, that Division 1 athletes are going to be paid and then you have a course, you have incidences, you know, sexual aggressiveness and then you also have coaching. So yeah, there's a lot of scandals happening in a lot of schools. So if you're applying, do you apply that same type of formula for success that you have when you go into a client like that?

Absolutely. And it really, really starts with mission and values. And so whether you fundamentally starts is are you a private institution or a public institution? And so the mission and values of a public institution, the things that really, really matter, the, the, the DNA, the core of the organization, has a lot to do with what the legislature thinks because that's where funding comes from as opposed to a private institution which has a little bit of a different lens in order to do that. So absolutely. I think that is a, I, I use that quite often. And chain of command at a lot of universities and being collaborative, thoughtful, deliberative, decision making bodies are not good at, in crisis situations because their chain of command is very sort of a, it's a collaborative governance model at a lot of higher, a lot of schools where you've got the, you know, you got to run everything through the faculty senate and through the board of trustees to the president's office. And that is, that is not a recipe for success in true critical moments.

Right. Yeah, that's, that's interesting because I'm, I'm working with someone in a very similar situation. And so you touched on in your equation for Crisis success. Success. Success is that if, if you are a not for profit or your higher ed not for profit, you can lean on those core values a little bit harder because they're in the forefront. Okay, so that shows where your, where your model really fits there. Okay, very interesting. So Bill, any last words that you would like to share with the listener? So someone that might be running a business or working for a business where crisis planning or these critical moments, planning, not first and foremost, what advice could you give them?

So two bits. Continue listening to your podcast because there is deep, deep reservoir of content that, that you share. So I think that's, that's a one. One, but it's one. One simple tip is that you've got lots of rich content that's kind of, unfortunately the way Apple indexes is, it's buried, it's buried in the single digits. But there's great stuff down there. So that's one. But two, it's, it's, it's really quite simple, is that you don't necessarily need people like us to sit at your staff meeting, whether it's monthly, quarterly, whenever you get your leadership team together, a company's leadership team together, pull out the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, whatever, and say, what if this had happened to us? How would we respond? And I think that should be a fixed component of risk management for any organization, whether you do it weekly, monthly, whatever. But you, I guarantee you can open up any major newspaper, typically the, you know, the Journal in the Journal in the New York are kind of the leaders on this. You open them up and say, if this had happened to us, how would we react? And I think that is a simple tactic that the leaders that listen to your show should be doing to help them get crisis ready and to be sort of simply exercise their muscles around mission and value, exercise their muscles around chain of command, and then that then leads to speed. So just simply say, what if this had happened to us?

What a great exercise. I love that exercise. Now if you and I worked for the same company, I could see you and I all over that exercise once, once a week. But I don't know if you're like me, if I were to bring that in, I would say 80% of the room would show no interest whatsoever. And that goes back to your model where you'd have to get that buy in and that awareness. It's like an awareness exercise.

Absolutely. But I think that if you sit with leaders, and I, and I particularly sit with CEOs, and I don't disagree with you. But I think if you say the, if you think back, and I want to do some research and prove this hypothesis, if you think back of leaders that we know, senior CEOs that are sort of either infamous or famous, is that it is the reputation or assume it is the crisis events that shape the public's view of that individual. And wouldn't you like to more so than the amazing successes. You know, Jack Welch is a, is a, is a holdout in that context. But we really know more about different leaders in different organizations because of the challenges that they've gone through than the successes that they've had. And so I think if you sit wouldn't talk with a CEO and you say five minutes a quarter, five minutes a week, ask your team 10 minutes, whatever is realistic, ask your team what, what if. It's a very, very good, thoughtful, mature construct. And I'm, and I've, I also had the same skepticism you did, but I've been very, very gratified of the simplistic buy in of doing it periodically to say what if? What would we do?

Right. And it's a wonderful exercise and it also goes to show your strength in the business. And I think you and I share this is, we don't say and do what we do for a living because we want to. It's, we believe in it and it works. And sometimes it's a little more difficult to get that buy in. But we, we want to transform companies and to transform the, their thinking and their mindset and that's what your book does. So the Critical Moments, the new mindset of reputation management, I think is an excellent, it's, it's, it's an excellent piece of work to give to any leader or for anyone to read about why you need to think about these critical moments. So Bill Coletti, thank you so much for sharing your wisdom. So Bill, you work with kith crisis communication and reputation management. So are you always on the, the lookout for clients?

You know, typically mid, mid market to Fortune 500 is our sweet spot. That's who we spend most of our time with. So yeah, we, we are, we, we are, you know, always growing. We do have a cap on the number of clients we take on any given time and there's a very finite number that we take. And so because we believe the way we provide services is, is, is pretty intimate and long term and we don't think that there are band aid solutions because as I mentioned earlier, we like to get out of the disruption business and get into the transformation business. And those are engagements that require a lot of buy in and they also take a lot of intimacy and time from us. So we're pretty limited on the number of clients we take at any given time.

All right, well, well said. I like the idea about the transformation. And Bill, even though we're meeting online, I have a feeling I'm going to run into soon.

I hope so.

I don't know, we're going to be at some conference somewhere. But it was great chatting with you and thank you so much for sharing your stories and I look forward to hopefully meeting you again. And so everyone, the book again is Critical Moments, the New Mindset of Reputation Management. And I will have the link on the Show Notes. Thanks again, Bill.

Thank you very much and thank you for everything that you do. It's great, great content that you keep putting out there. So thank you very much.

I want to thank Bill Coletti from Kith Consulting for joining me today on the podcast. His book Critical the New Mindset of Reputation Management can be found on Amazon. I've also provided a link on the Show Notes on my website or you can also see it on your iPhone if you're using itunes, stitcher, Castbox, whatever the case may be. Thank you, Bill, for joining me on the podcast and sharing your wisdom about transforming your mindset so anyone can manage that critical moment. That's all for now. We'll talk to you next week.