533: Strategic Communication for Pet Sitters: Navigating Crises and Building Trust with Keema Echols and Lauren Cain
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Ever wondered how your business would handle a crisis or negative review? In this episode, we dive into the world of strategic communication with experts Keema Echols and Lauren Cain of Ethel Clark Services. Together, we explore how we can navigate crises, build strong client relationships, and maintain brand consistency. Keema and Lauren share actionable tips on using AI tools for effective messaging and managing negative publicity with professionalism and grace. If you're looking to strengthen your communication strategy and protect your business reputation, this episode is a must-listen!
Main topics:
Strategic communication for businesses
Crisis management and response
Building and maintaining brand trust
Effective use of AI tools
Navigating negative reviews professionally
Main takeaway: The easiest words mended are those unspoken.
About our guests:
Lauren Cain: Co-founder of Ethel Clark Services, a strategic communications firm. With a decade of experience as Vice President of The Kenaly Complement, she developed strong leadership and business management skills. Beyond her corporate role, Lauren has built a platform as a social media influencer and homeschooling expert through Crunchy Mama DFW, where she offers parents advice on homeschooling and holistic living. Her genuine passion for education and current trends has earned her a loyal following, making her a trusted authority in the field.
Lauren's diverse background enhances her role at Ethel Clark Services, where her expertise in business management and social media influence shapes effective PR strategies. Her insights into educational and parenting trends bring fresh perspectives to the firm's campaigns, while her understanding of digital marketing and audience engagement is crucial for modern PR efforts. Holding a BS in Business Management from Azusa Pacific University, Lauren is committed to delivering innovative solutions and driving growth for clients.
Keema Echols: Co-founder of Ethel Clark Services, is a seasoned PR professional with over 25 years of experience in financial aid consulting and business management. She began her career as President of The Kenaly Complement, where she led a team, managed daily operations, and ensured compliance with Title IV processing regulations. Her innovative strategies and commitment to excellence established her as a trusted leader in the industry. Today, she leverages her expertise at Ethel Clark Services to create impactful PR campaigns, nurture client relationships, and drive growth for the agency.
Keema’s dedication to excellence and ability to adapt to new challenges set her apart as a true powerhouse in strategic communications. Her passion for innovation and keen attention to detail ensure that her work leaves a lasting impact in the PR field. Holding a BS in Business Management from the University of Phoenix, Keema is committed to helping clients elevate their brands and achieve remarkable success through her expert guidance.
Links:
Ethel Clark Services Website: https://www.ethelclarkservices.com
Ethel Clark Services Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ethelclarkservices
Ethel Clark Services Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ethelclarkservices
Lauren’s Email: elcain@ethelclarkservices.com
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A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
Provided by otter.ai
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
strategic communication, crisis management, business reputation, brand consistency, customer relationships, negative reviews, press releases, social media, AI tools, brand voice, public relations, communication strategy, customer service, emotional responses, business growth
SPEAKERS
Collin, Keema E., Lauren C.
Collin 00:01
Welcome to pets that are confessional. Today, we're brought to you by our friends at time to pet and pet perennials, we are really excited to talk about a very unique topic that is actually as small business owners, we don't think a lot about we think this tends to be with big businesses only, but about strategic communication, and how do we work through crises as a business? Crises as a business, I think, is the plural form of that, and how do we handle that in a professional manner, in a correct way? And to do that, we're really, really excited to have Lauren and Keema from Ethel Clark Services on the show to talk about these and walk us through some scenarios and how we can best do these, especially as small businesses. So Lauren and Keema, I'm super excited to have you both on the show today and walk us through this. For those who aren't familiar with Ethel Clark services, can you please tell us a little bit more about what you both do and kind of all that's involved with this?
Lauren C. 00:55
I'm Lauren co owner of Ethel Clark services, and we are a strategic communications firm, and that really encompasses a lot. But when you talk about how your business communicates with the world, what your message is in any way you want to get that message out, that's where we come in, whether that's through social media, through more traditional sources, like with media relations, press releases, things like that, that's where we come in and help businesses grow and reach their goals.
Keema E. 01:28
And I'm Keema. I'm also co owner. We are a mother, daughter team, and I'm mom, and we just just to piggyback on what Lauren said. We do strategic communication. But we also do just PR in general, which includes everything it includes, like Lauren said, strategic communication, crisis management, social media management, branding. We also offer publicist services where we we have clients who are just interested in being famous, and so that's we come in with, that they're only interested in being famous, which is fine, that makes it fun. We have such a wide variety of clients that that makes it fun as well. We are named Ethel Clark. Services were named after my grandmother, Lauren's great grandmother, who was an entrepreneur, but she was a woman of noble character. She she really was, she really lived a life that was above reproach. She was a perfect of course, but she had a very, very strong sense of right and wrong, and she had a very strong sense of customer service. And so we decided that we wanted our business to encompass everything that she was. And so that's why we were called Ethel Clark services, I
Collin 02:41
love that connection, and especially the spirit that she's able to give you, both in this company and kind of this guiding principle, and especially around the strategic communication, how we talk to other people. You mentioned, you mentioned Keema there of above reproach, you know, noble character, strong sense of right and wrong. All of these are characteristics that as a business, like we, we obviously want to be presenting that side to people and to our customers and to our community and Exactly.
Keema E. 03:09
And another thing that my grandmother used to say all the time, and I say all the time now, is the easiest words mended are those unspoken. She beat us over the head with that from the time we were born. And she was big on that. She would also, she would also say, you could have lived the rest of your life without saying that if we ever said something that was inappropriate, it's like, Why? Why would you even say that? And that ties into strategic communication. You need to be strategic in what you're saying, how you're saying it, who you're saying it to, all of that.
Collin 03:42
Yeah, many times, as a business owner, I can, man, I get, I type really fast. I don't, haven't taken a typing test recently, but I can blast out some words. And you're right, one of the best things that I can do then is just hit backspace and go. But it's hard as a small business owner to because it's sometimes we're the only person in the business, or sometimes this is our blood, sweat, tears, passion, our livelihoods depended on it. It's pretty easy to get sorry, defensive about things.
Keema E. 04:13
Yeah, it sure is. It sure is. But it makes sense to take a step back and think about particularly in business, it's critical in business to take a step, step back and think about what you're saying. Think about the implications of what you're saying. Think about who you're saying it to. You have to consider all of those things before you say a word, right? Lauren,
Collin 04:35
you start off by talking a little bit about what strategic communications was. I do want to know, and from your perspective, do you consider it the same thing as marketing in our business, or is it something that's just a little bit
Lauren C. 04:49
different? It's something that's a little bit different. There are some kind of vague similarities, but marketing is more so just speaking about a product or service in general. Role and marketing that to your customers, but the Strategic Communications aspects comes into play when you talk about, how are you communicating that to your potential customers, to your potential clients, in what ways and what avenues are using to communicate that and just what the overall message should be to to those people,
Keema E. 05:21
right? What? What do you what do you want them to think when they when they hear about you, what you say to somebody that could leave an impression that will last forever, and particularly again. When it comes to business, you can ruin your business with a word, Yep, yeah.
Collin 05:39
And it's interesting, because we do, we see a lot of these kind of downfalls in the news or on social media, where we go, oh gosh, I would never say that kind of thing.
Keema E. 05:51
They don't have a publicist. They don't have tapping their shoulder saying, no,
Lauren C. 05:55
yeah. And in particular, I won't say the name of this particular business, but they what they are, quite popular, and they recently came out and took a really, really huge political stance, which you know politics really shouldn't be, shouldn't play into your strategic communication strategy,
Keema E. 06:15
unless you're willing to take that risk, and which could kill your business. Yeah,
Lauren C. 06:19
who wants to do that? But watching that play out, it was like, Oh my gosh, why would you say any of that? You know? Because it wasn't necessary. It wasn't a part of your business, you know, to begin with. So, yeah, you have to be really, really careful and keep that strategy in mind. Because, of course, the the bigger picture is, is your business, you know, you want to do everything that you can so that your business is successful for the for the long term,
Collin 06:44
and stay true to ourselves as well. And that's kind of what I'm picking up here. Of like, Okay, I have core beliefs, I have core values. I have a core mission, vision and goals in my life and in my business. There are i? What I'm hearing here is there are good ways to communicate that, and there are probably some less, less good ways.
Keema E. 07:01
And that is important that you said, Stay true. Stay true to yourself, because people will definitely pick up a fraud, you know, they'll detect insincerity. I mean, you've got to, you do have to be true to yourself. And that comes in when you're building your business. You know, you're, you're building yourself into it as you're building your business, so that shouldn't just organically come through
Collin 07:24
who you are. And you know, it's called Strategic Communications there, because we're trying to be we have a purpose behind it, right? And so let's say I'm developing a message from your perspective. How do we start to think about the impact that we want a message to have or impact. We want our messaging to take place in our in our potential clients.
Lauren C. 07:45
Well, I think you start off first with realizing who are you talking to. That's that's the kind of the ground level there. And once you realize who are you talking to, you want to learn everything that you can about that consumer so you can figure out the best way to communicate with them. You know, just the people that you're you're targeting. Are they on social media? Are they not really on social media? You know, should you maybe figure out, maybe other avenues to reach out to those people? I think that's kind of where you start off with that.
08:15
Yeah.
Collin 08:16
Well, I know a lot of us exist, and we have and we want a very like wide range of clients from all sorts of different, diverse backgrounds, different beliefs, all sorts of stuff. How do we thread that needle in making sure that our communication is is reaching all of them and all of our potential clients in the right way?
Keema E. 08:36
Well, I think, I think a lot of that starts with making sure that your message is conveying facts rather than opinion, being careful that that you're not leaning one way, you know, versus another, that you're, you're just, you're staying as neutral as possible. Um, yeah, I think that's where. That's where, yeah,
Lauren C. 08:57
making sure the message is, is, you know, general, but still specific to what you're trying to do, but also realizing that it is completely normal for you to have different strategies for different segments, and being okay with that. I mean, the messaging will still be consistent. It'll just be kind of tweaks a little bit depending on who you're talking to, yeah, and I
Collin 09:17
think that's what's really important there is because you started off talking about, like, Who are you talking to? And a lot of times, I know my brain immediately goes to, okay, I have a client avatar. I have a person, but in reality, I don't. I have a whole suite of people who I'm talking to. And so to take that moment to go, Okay, I'm talking to this group of clients today. How would this message be received by them? How would I communicate this message, get these facts across? Like you mentioned, Keema, how would I get that across to this to this group of people
Keema E. 09:48
and and for us, for instance, we have a wide range of clients that are in pretty much every industry, but we're so we're not going to put out a message that's talking to the restaurants who. Sure, because we're eliminating all the other folks. So we need to make sure that whatever service it is, that we present it in a way that can be applicable to any business,
Collin 10:14
right? And go and but that takes us thinking about, okay, who and I, Lauren, you mentioned earlier about, like, what method are we doing this as well? Like, is this on social media? Is this in person? Is this? Is this, you know, a TV ad? Is this radio? All those are also going to be received differently. Because I don't, I don't know if you've experienced this, but tone in an email sounds very different than in person as well.
Lauren C. 10:39
Yes, we have experienced that. And like you said, it is important to realize what the best avenue might be. Social media is all the rage right now, and you will reach, I think most of the people you want to meet reach through social media, but not everybody is on there. So I think other other avenues are still important. Having an email list is still important, leaning on those more traditional strategies, like media relations, that's still important, press releases, all of those things, text messages,
Keema E. 11:10
we find that that text messages are very effective because everybody has their phone in their hand all the time, and if you get a text message nine times out of 10, you're going To look at that right away, whereas with an email, you may or may not even see it. Yeah, but one of the things that we caution people about email, about text messaging, and emailing, though, when it comes to communication, is that if you're if you're only communicating with your your current client, your current database, then that's a that's a great way to do it, but if you're trying to get your message out to the public in general, that's not going to do it, because the public in general is not part of your database. So you've got to do a combination of things. There's not just one thing we use every every method you can think of, you know, like, I said, news release, or text messaging, email, social media, the whole it flyers. I mean, it really depends on the business and what it is we're trying to convey. I kind of view
Collin 12:06
that as, like, an internal communications versus external. And I'm not just talking about for a particular like, if you have employees, like, that's that's one way to view internal but also, I'm talking to existing clients. So I can talk to them in different ways, right? I can share with them in different manners, and speak directly to them, versus more, like more of a, you know, broadcast kind of, I'm not sure who's going to pick up on this or where it's going to touch sometimes. And I, you know, I really like, you know, the text messaging one is something that I know we personally have not investigated a lot of, just because there's a lot of unknowns to that. So for that aspect, what are some things that you've learned, or best practices, or things that you'd say absolutely don't do this?
Lauren C. 12:49
Are we found that the text campaigns go really, really well, and I think you would agree as well. They often go better than the email campaigns with our clients, because, like you said, you always have your phone, you're going to check that text message, and a lot of times you're expecting to get a good deal when you have a business texting you, yeah, for example, I'm on Chipotle text message
Collin 13:13
group. Shout out, same, Yeah, same, Lauren.
Lauren C. 13:16
So you've noticed they will send you text messages to old freak guacamole, you know, come and get the queso, you know, those sorts of things. But it's kind of trained you so that whenever you get a text, you check it. You might not go and get the deal, but you're going to look at it and read it. And that's the first step. Versus a lot of times with emails, you might see it pop up, but you may not read it. You may just say, oh, you know, I'm just going to scroll past this. You go back to it and you forget about it. But what the text message, it's just so much easier to just open it up, look at it and, you know, go from there. Yeah, and
Keema E. 13:47
I'll piggyback on what Lauren said, the text messaging again, it's for client customers that you already have, but you can easily train them that whenever they see a text message from you, they're going to open it. They're looking for a deal, for sure, but whatever your message is, nine times out of 10 you're going to be able to convey it because they're going to look at it. Yeah, yeah.
Lauren C. 14:06
We also have a groomer that we use for our dog, and they send text messages every probably six to 12 weeks or so, saying, like, oh, it's time for Bella be groomed. You know, even that is like, oh, you know, she does need to be groomed. I do need to go to you need to I need to call you. So, yeah, it can be very good, yeah.
Collin 14:27
And that kind of thing of these time based messaging and communication, obviously, as a business, I know when the last time I saw the particular client. So I have, I have something that's kind of automated. It is this cue, especially if we're doing grooming or nail trims or something like that, going, Oh, because as just as an owner of a dog, going, it's kind of hard for me to remember when I last did that. And do they is the hair really? Is the coat really that much longer than it was yesterday? I don't know. But then all of a sudden, you're right, you get a text message, and you go, Oh, wow. How did that happen already? And it kind of it does. It's another way of to get that in. Engagement, but it's intentional. Of I'm sending this as a reminder, because it's not just a like, hey groom, right? It's a Bella is ready for a groom, or Kobe's ready for his groom today, because it's been X time click here to book. It's all kind of all in that, right,
Keema E. 15:15
right? Which is so wonderful about the technology that's available to us today. We use AI a lot. AI is our, is our, is our additional, our additional employee, our Assistant Secretary, we use, we literally use AI all day, every day, seven days.
Collin 15:37
Have you heard of time to pet? Claire from acting critter sitters has this to say,
15:42
time to pet has honestly revolutionized how we do business. My sitters can work much more independently because they have ongoing access to customer and pet information without relying on me. I save hours upon hours of administrative time on billing, processing payments and generating paychecks.
Collin 15:58
If you're looking for new pet sitting software, give our friends at time to pet a try. Listeners of our show will save 50% off your first three months by visiting time to pet.com/confessional So talk about that a little bit, because I know AI, you know, it still is, is an enigma for a lot of people. It's like, what is this and how do I actually implement this? So from your perspective, you're working with a lot of messaging, a lot of planning and strategizing. How are you using AI?
Lauren C. 16:27
AI is just such a great tool. And like you said, I know people are, you know, kind of like, uh, you know, it's kind of scared over the world. I'm
Keema E. 16:35
afraid of it, yeah, which,
Lauren C. 16:36
you know, I totally understand that. But there's, there's a lot of good that can be done with AI, and especially when you talk about owning a business, running a business, because it really can be like having somebody sitting next to you to bounce ideas off of, you know, we've we use AI saying, you know, this is a client that we have. This is kind of their goals. Let's talk strategy. You know, what would be a good strategy for this particular client, they're trying to reach this customer, you know, that sort of thing. And they just give really good ideas. And it's good that you can really go back and forth with AI, you know. So it just, it helps me to think better, because, like I said, it really is like having somebody sitting right here and we're just having a conference, like, oh my gosh, that's a good idea. Let's think about this. Or what
Keema E. 17:21
if I go in this direction, I will often tell Lauren I've named my AI. My AI assistant is named Phoenix. And I'll tell Lauren I have the worst argument with Phoenix this morning, because that is the relationship, truly, no, no exaggeration. I mean, we go back and forth. And I'll say, How many times do I have to tell you that I don't like it when you word things this way. I mean, yeah, that's literally the way I talk to it is, it's so funny. But we use AI for report, writing, for research, for, I mean, you just tasking, for planning, for social media management. We use it for everything. And here's what I what I say. Also, people often will feel like, well, that's kind of cheating, because you're not really doing, you know, whatever it is. I've been self employed for 30 some years. Lauren has been self employed for over 15 years. My response to that, I have nothing to prove today, if I can do something, if I have a tool that will make my life easier, I'm going to use it. I know how to write a report. I know how to do research. If I have to do it, I can. But if I have a tool that can do it for me, why?
Lauren C. 18:32
Yeah, and, and the other aspect about AI too, is that you still add your human element to it. You're not just straight copying and pasting from it. It's really just a tool, like I said, to get you to really brainstorm ideas and to think about things differently before you put the work together and send it off,
Keema E. 18:51
right? And to that point, it really is a good input. In good input results in good output. So you can't just say, you know, write a record for me. I mean, when we when we're using AI, half of the time to spend say what we need, how we need it. I mean, you have to be very, very specific, and you have to give it a lot of information. But that time is worth it, because then you get the result that you need. Now, like Lauren said, then you may have to do some editing and tweaking and things like that, but it's a wonderful tool. Yeah,
Collin 19:24
yeah. And how do you know the quality of that report coming back to you? Well, you're leaning on your 30 years of experience, your 15 years experience. You're leaning on your expertise to go, just like you did. You know, if you hired an assistant, an actual office assistant, they come in, they sit down desk, and you go, write me a report, and they go, okay, cool. You give them a few things, you'd come back in three days. They'd hand you some paperwork, and you'd go, No, this isn't quite it. You missed XYZ. You need to do it again. The exact same concept, only now I can sit at my desk or or lay in bed at night typing into the screen going,
Keema E. 19:56
and we make it a habit of double checking and. Everything that AI does, and we find mistakes. So, you know, it's a great tool, but it still has a ways to go, but that's why we double. We don't check everything, and like I said, we do find find mistakes a lot of times.
Lauren C. 20:13
Yeah, but overall, it's a great tool to use for anybody, but especially for business owners. I mean, you're it'll just increase your productivity, and just, it's an amazing tool. I had a friend
Keema E. 20:25
over who she does a lot of traveling within the country, and so every, every year, she does this big cross country trip planning, and she has Excel spreadsheets, and I'm going to be here on this day, and I've got to look for hotels here, and I've got to do all this stuff. I said, Yeah, I can do all that for you. And I took maybe 15 minutes to put all the information in AI. And I said, just work out the plan for her, and within seconds, the entire plan that normally takes her months to do every year, it spit it out within a matter of seconds,
Collin 20:58
yeah, and I like using it for, like, here's a bunch of data. Let's do something with it. I really like that idea that how you were doing that, especially with, like, the research side of things. I'm going, here's a bunch of data. And as a small business owner, a lot of times we can go, you know, we may read a financial report or financial forecasting, or we may get some new, you know, census data for our community, and go, Well, I don't know. Like, what does that mean for me? What do I do with that? And being able to throw that into AI and go, here's census data from my geographic region. Here's my kind of business help, right,
Keema E. 21:31
right? And it could play again in seconds. It just amazes me how quickly the information is spit out. We had a client that was having some issues with reviews, and so we put all the reviews into AI and said, Give, give me a downloadable Excel spreadsheet of all the reviews with the date that, whether it was positive or negative, what the review was, and all that. And within seconds, we had a spreadsheet that had over 200 reviews that we were able and then we had to analyze that. So it's just, it's wonderful. So I can't, I can't say enough by AI,
Collin 22:06
do you have a, do you have a favorite one that you're using or using a group of other ones? Or just kind of, you know, how does that? How does that fall out? I
Lauren C. 22:14
guess we're sort of, sort of, sort of loyal to chat. GPT, I have used others like copy dot. I think it's copy.io
Keema E. 22:24
or not, Microsoft's Gemini. No, I can't think of the name, okay, but Microsoft has an AI product that I used about two weeks ago. Remember I told you about that, and I was like, oh my god, this is great. And I'm just typing away, typing away. I went away and did something else. Couple hours later, I came back and it was like, Wait, what happened to all the work I did? And it was gone. And so I typed it, and I asked the question, like, where's all the work I did earlier? Oh, we don't save anything, so you've got to be careful about the tool that you use. Yeah, that's,
Lauren C. 22:56
that's the good thing about, you know, using chat GPT, is that you could have a conversation with it and come back two weeks later and just go right back to that conversation, like nothing happened
Collin 23:07
that kind of, kind of used those conversations as, like, No, this is the thread that I was working on this. I could scroll down and see where was I. Like,
Keema E. 23:19
little files. Uh huh,
Collin 23:21
yeah. No. They are and and it is. It is just great to go, okay. You know, it can be overwhelming, but I think what's important in hearing both of you talk about this, like, find, like, find, like, one thing that you need some help on today, like, find and start with that. And then don't get too hung up on going down a Google rabbit hole of finding the best AI assist and everything. Like, just start with one. Start figuring out what you like, what you don't like, and then go from there, so that you can start implementing these tools and make it simpler for you. Definitely,
Keema E. 23:50
yeah, we definitely are AI advocates, and we provide AI consulting services because of that,
Collin 23:57
yeah, and especially whenever you're you know, when you're working with communications and stuff, making sure that there is brand consistency across those and making sure that there are that tone of voice and how things are included, and are we referencing the right things? Is it making up company names or services that I don't even offer? It did that to me one time where I was like, use you. Use it. I did it one time. I'm sorry. Go ahead. I
Keema E. 24:26
was just going to say that happened to me yesterday. I wanted, I wanted AI to come up with a list of businesses local to one of our clients. I wanted the business, the address the phone numbers, and it spit out this report. And I was like, Oh, wow, this is great. So I'm spot checking the phone numbers, and all of the numbers were disconnected. And so I went back and said, basically, what's up? And and the response was, oh, those were just placeholders. I don't have a way to get phone numbers for all of them. I. Yeah. Like, I didn't ask for placeholders. That's why it's important to double check, yeah, yep. And make sure
Collin 25:07
that those those before you just copy and paste it. Because, again, like, I'm saving time. I got to rush. I can't do this. It's like, no, no. Like, you still need to make sure that you're doing your due diligence with
Keema E. 25:16
this. Like you said, just like, if it wasn't a human being, you would check their work. You
Collin 25:20
know, we started off our conversation with you talking about, kind of the background and the reason why you're called Ethel Clark services, and kind of the meaning behind that. I did want to talk a little bit more just about branding in in general, because as businesses, I think this is a really this is a weak point for a lot of us. Of we start a business, and we start doing it, and all we really know is that we just do things right? I I do dog walks, I do pet sitting, I do nail trims, but we don't really think about the meaning behind it. So from your perspective, I know you help help businesses with this as well. What does it mean to develop a brand as a business?
Lauren C. 25:59
When you think about developing your brand. It's, it's kind of like you're, you're building a person or or, you know, creating a work of art, or whatever it is, and you're doing it layer by layer. Like you said, it's more than just creating a logo. When you talk about, you know what your brand is? It's, you know what colors are going to be consistent? What is your brand voice, you know, are you really professional? Or do you want people to know that you're kind of silly? Or, you know what? What is your brand voice? And all of these things will help you with your strategic communications strategy, because it all ties together that way. And
Keema E. 26:36
what do you want people to think of when they think of your business? You might have a pet sitting business, but what's unique about your business, what makes you stand out above everybody else? What are you going to say that your tagline is, and you put all those things together to build your brand, and that's the message that you want to supersede everything else. When you start posting on social media or you do a news release, or whatever it is, that's what you wanted people to think. I mean, you think about products are out on the market that have been out there forever, Nike just do it or, you know, whatever. Yeah, it's that kind of thinking that you want. You want some kind of thought to be provoked by the by just the mention of your name, yeah,
Lauren C. 27:15
and that it's really consistent, too. Like I said, you know, we talk about brand colors. You know, what aunts? These are all things that we go over with our clients when we say, what is your brand? You know, what aunts you want to stick with? You know, how do you want the logo to appear? Is there a background on it? You know, all of these things are very important, because you want your customer to know every single time. Okay, this is, this is who you know, this pet sitting company, or whatever it is. This is, I know for sure. This is them
Keema E. 27:42
and the tone. Lauren mentioned that before that we learned the hard way that that is so important, because everybody, every business, has its own tone. Lauren and I through, through the years in business, we've also always had this very professional, what we thought was a very professional persona. That's what we wanted. We wanted people to know, particularly, particularly being minorities. Honestly, we felt it important to be extra extra professional, and so we we brought that mindset into this business, and we said, Well, okay, we're going to be extra extra professional. Well, that's fine for our brand. That's fine for Ethel Clark services, but when it comes to our clients, all of our clients don't want to come off as being professional. We had a client
Lauren C. 28:26
or not professional, but not very they want to be more loose, you know, yeah? Maybe professionals, proper, yeah. Maybe proper, yeah. Because we had one in particular who wanted to be more funny, you know, and not so professional, wanting people to really see their their personality shining through their brand, whereas
Keema E. 28:48
we have suppressed our personality business wise, just because we were so busy, so focused on trying to be professional. And so everything we sent her, she was like, I don't talk like that. Yeah. What are you doing? Yeah,
Lauren C. 29:01
and we honestly see this play out in so many different ways with so many different, you know, companies. I mean, even when you think about like, companies that sell water, you know, you have some companies like Aquafina, which, that's a pretty, you know, professional brand, nothing really happening there, just Aquafina. Then you have another brand of water called Liquid death. And it's like, you guys are both selling water, but two totally different brands going head to head. So
Keema E. 29:30
yeah, the water is a good one. You get there a lot like you think of Fiji or Evian avion, just yeah, all, but yeah, you're right. That's yeah, example, yeah. So
Lauren C. 29:39
it's, it is important to find your your brand voice. How do you want to be perceived
Collin 29:45
and and knowing that you know kind of you touched on there. Sometimes my brand voice may have to be different than than my own personality, depending on the type of clientele that I'm going after or maybe the kind of service that I'm trying to do. You know that you I'm glad you brought up the liquid. Thing, because that's a really way out there, like, that's usually people want water. They want professional, safe, sterile, not funny, not whatever. And these people just cut right through that and there. It's kind of like a that's a nod to kind of how ridiculous all that whole thing is. But that's important, because that goes, oh, right, this is ridiculous, that I'm drinking water out of a bottle. Okay? I get I get it. Right, yeah, our friends at Pet perennials make it easy to send a heartfelt condolence gift directly to someone with a broken heart. They have this awesome, direct consumer gift model that takes the effort off of us as the business owners and ensures a thoughtful, personalized sympathy gift reaches our client or employee on our behalf. All gift packages include a handwritten card, colorful gift wrap and shipping fees across both the US and Canada. They also offer an array of milestone gifts and greeting cards that can be sent to celebrate birthdays, extend get well wishes and welcome new and rescued pets. Additionally, there are gift choices in case you need to send a sympathy gift and memory of a special human client or celebrate a pregnancy engagement or wedding of a pet lover. If you're interested, register for a free business gift perks count to unlock the all inclusive discounted package prices. And what's even better is that the service is used on an as need basis, so there are no monthly or annual obligations or minimum purchases. Learn more at Pet perennials.com check out their business program, or register for that free gift perk Scout by using the link in the show notes. Because, you know, I know for us, we, we, we go, okay, well, what do people want to hear from a professional pet sitter? Right? They want that professionalism, they want that reliability. They want the open communication. But they also want to feel caring and love and kind of a softness to it. And, you know, we may have a personality that's more brash and out there and in your face and just but is that kind of what more pet sitting people want, or are we going to have to do something different to get our message out there?
Keema E. 31:58
It's funny, you mentioned that my sister is a an animal lover. She has four birds, but we were just talking about the fact that birds. Birds hold grudges. They remember everything. They form very strong bonds with people. They have certain people that they absolutely do not like. So when you when it, when it comes to pet sitting, for her birds, she needs to know that whoever walks in the door, they, she they got to meet the birds first before she would ever allow them to, you know, to sit for them, and to know that they that they gel, yeah. So, so knowing that the personality of the pet sitter, and you know how they will be with the pets, that is important.
Collin 32:37
And how does she pick up on that? Well, it's, it's from their online presence, through the writing that is on their social media posts or on the website, and going, Oh, I feel like this person, that's what this gets out to feel. I feel like this person is going to be a good fit, because the other way to market is we just go around to everybody in our service area and shake their hands and try and have a 20 minute conversation with them. I don't have time for that, so I'm going to figure out how, else can I get people to know me and trust me before I even show up at their door. Because that's the only way that I'm going to get that that opportunity is if that trust starts before I walk inside with you and your experience and expertise in in the communications and the marketing the press releases. You know when you mentioned the press release earlier, and I have a very emotional where speaking of emotions, emotional responses to press releases, because I tend to think that press releases are only released when bad things happen. Is, this is the UH OH things that hit the fan moment for for a company. And so before, before we dive into, you know, negative publicity and stuff, talk to us about the role of a press release in a business. Because, again, it's not something that I regularly think about or go to
Keema E. 33:48
the role of a news release. Press press release is just that to release some news. It can be good or it can be bad, usually, honestly, it's good news. It's, we're launching a new product or a new service. It's, we've opened a new location. It's releasing information like that. And if you have good media connections, you get that news release to them, and then they spread the word. And that's how the word gets out. That's how the whole news release process works. Is, like I said, nine times out of 10. It really is good news.
Collin 34:20
Let's talk about bad news now. Let's say, let's say, as a small business, and again, this is something where we can't control what people say about us. And I think what I'm talking about here specifically is more than just a bad review that pops up on Google or Facebook. Let's say our, you know, our business really is facing some negative publicity. And for us in the dog walking, pet sitting world, it may be a dog has run away while they're in a care, or a bird flew out the door while we were getting the mail at a client's house, and we are starting to hear about that in our community. Walk us through some do's and don'ts of this really crisis moment as a business.
Lauren C. 34:57
Well, through this, when you're going through a crisis. Is the first thing that you want to do is take a step back. You know, we talked about that kind of earlier, not being so quick to respond, because it is your business, and you do want to protect it. You are going to be defensive over it, but you can't just come fighting. You can't just come swinging. So you need to take a step back and really look at the entire picture. Acknowledge you know what was done, whatever happened. You know what was your fault, acknowledge that and come up with a strategy for addressing what happened and what you're going to do to fix it so that doesn't happen, so that doesn't happen again. But we definitely suggest to acknowledge it, don't just ignore it and just hope it's going to go away, especially in that instance, because things like this blow up very, very quickly. It can start off as a Google review, and then it'll go to an Instagram post, and then could go viral. It'll go to a video, it'll go to, you know, so it just snowballs from there. So you gotta, you gotta stop it before it gets to that point,
Keema E. 36:00
and it is making sure you have part of the plan is making it right if you can, but working with the person you know, in your instance, your example of the bird flew out the door, the window, or whatever it's working with that person to say, how can I make this right? Do whatever you can to make it right. Talk to whatever other your team members, your employees, or what have you, and make sure that they know what the plan is to and that they also are a part of making this whole thing right. It would will be a team effort. Everybody's got to participate in it, but, but being upfront and open and honest is number one, two and three, because, again, people pick up on lies and being fake and all that. So sincerity is key. Now it's not like, you know when celebrities get in trouble, you know they they come with their you know their script, and you know they're reading something. I'm very sorry, and I'm not that person, and I won't know it can't be that, because that's fake. Yeah, if you're sincerely sorry about what happened, or you're really concerned about whatever, whatever it was, your message has to convey that it can't be scripted. It can't be it's got to be, to some degree, it'll be planned, of course, but it still has to feel real.
Collin 37:17
And you know, again, it's it can be very overwhelming. That emotional aspect too, of me going, I want to react and defend myself, but I can't forget that. You know, you mentioned, you have to make it right. Do what you can see if there is a way to reconcile with this person, and if, because, if we forget about the person that's hurting, this never goes away, if all we do is just fly across Facebook in the social media land, or, you know, whatever, and just say it's all fake. It's not real. Well, that doesn't help the person who's feeling hurt and recognizing, well, this person said something for a reason, and yes, was I at fault? Was there something more I could have done? And how do I work with them directly? Because I think maybe the best case scenario is you do reach a good resolution with them, and they help repair your reputation, and they help come and mend those bridges that were burned, you know, when the thing happened. But
Keema E. 38:08
so oftentimes people will get defensive, and you start arguing and going back and forth, and there is no point to that. Yeah. And we have always, always had the philosophy that the customer is always right now, I know every business doesn't feel that way, but, you know, we've had other businesses if somebody said, you know, this was faulty, or I didn't, I just didn't like this. Okay, you can have your money back or, I mean, we've always taken that that road, yeah,
Lauren C. 38:32
yeah. And the trouble with being overly defensive, which we see all the time, especially on social media, is that it doesn't go away. I mean, those screenshots are forever. People will never, ever forget. It'll be months and months later you try to come back and they're like, aren't you the person that let the bird go out the door? Like we're just going to act like that never happened, you know? So, yeah, you got to be really careful, yeah, especially
Keema E. 38:57
on social media, because the whole, the entire internet will come to that post and start jumping on you and you def you will never win. You'll never recover from that. Never, yeah,
Collin 39:10
I'm having heart palpitations. Now hold on. Need to breathe because it is, oh, it can be almost suffocating to the extent of this, like, oh my gosh, now what and but as a small business like we can't let that part keep us from doing our work, because there's risks in everything. But I think they're kind of having some, you know, some pre planning of as a business and going, Okay, let's just go ahead and have a plan written down on a couple sheets of paper that say, just in case, that way, you know, and it'll be on our wall, break break and break glass in case of emergency. And we can just run to that that way. We're having to think it up on the fly, either when we're emotional
Keema E. 39:50
and the and the bad thing about somebody saying something happening, you know, the crisis, a crisis happening, is that that one little thing will overshadow. Of all the good. And I'll go back to reviews as as an example, we have a client that has hundreds of reviews overall, the rating is 4.4 which is good, but those negative reviews are negative. Oh, they're awful. They are awful, and so they are louder. That's that's a whole lot louder than the good reviews. So do whatever you can to make sure that people are happy and that you address like negative reviews, for instance, that's another good example. If you get a negative review, that's, that's kind of a crisis. Address it, respond to it. It may be, maybe you have 1000s reviews, you only have one negative one address that negative review,
Collin 40:43
because, again, it's when we think about what's my company's moral character, how would I want to be addressed? And also going well, maybe the person who wrote the review, I'm never going to change their mind, but is there a way that I can respond so that the next person who's scrolling around, because if you're like me, sometimes I just flip to I'll sort of lowest to highest. And let's see,
Lauren C. 41:08
yep, yeah, and see how they respond. Because I've, I've done that too, and there will be certain businesses that respond really terribly, and it's like, oh, you know, it doesn't make you, it doesn't make you want to, want to go there, because it's like, wow, if that's how you're treating customers, I'm not sure if I want to do business with you.
Collin 41:28
Yeah, I've seen that too, where businesses kind of throw it back and say, Well, you did it wrong, and if you wouldn't have, and if you, you know, say, I man, even if there's a modicum of truth to that, from a professional perspective, from a business perspective, this looks really, really bad, like there's, I always think of that, like there's gotta be a better way to to handle this than just because it just gives up to mudslinging and name calling at that point, and you're not making it any better, and you're probably just making that person more likely to keep resurfacing from time to time, right? Yep, that's
Lauren C. 42:01
that's totally true. And it really just goes back to your strategic communication strategy as a whole, which includes the reviews. I mean, it all ties in. It all has to be consistent.
Collin 42:11
So is that as part, as part of that planning, do you sit down with people? And should we sit down and go? How do I basically have an SOP for what's my marketing communication and what's my response to negative reviews? What's my response to positive reviews? Like, is that something that you sit down and work with people so they kind of have a guide to work through those things?
Keema E. 42:30
Yeah, we actually have another client that is a social media influencer with a huge, huge, huge, huge, huge following, and is in the middle of a crisis. And we keep telling this person, stop responding. Stop stop doing these posts. Knock it off. Stop it. And this person just will not take our advice. But we keep coming back and saying, look what happened. 1000s of people commented on this, on this post, and oh my god, it's getting so bad. It's like, if you don't close your mouth.
Lauren C. 43:08
Yeah, so it is something that that we talk about. But you know, obviously they people have a mind of their own. We advise people as best we can, but you know, you're going to do what you want to do.
Collin 43:23
Yeah, well, and I really like that idea, because I think about the all of the other emergency plans that we have in place as a business of, okay, what happens if an employee gets a flat tire and they can't make to a visit? What if there's a tornado going through? What if there's icy weather? We have backups to backups to plans and how we're going to work through that. And now this idea of, yeah, but what's our communication plan? What? What's because kind of a lot of us just kind of shock and jive and wing it as things happen, and we may have a social media calendar that we follow, but very few of us are actually fully prepared for if something really hits the fan, because then we're left going, oh, what? Yeah,
Lauren C. 44:00
it is really important to at least have that conversation. And also I think it just helps you overall, because if and when those negative reviews come, you know how to respond. You're not taking it so personally. Because, I mean, you're you're not going to please everybody. You're just not. There's always going to be somebody who doesn't like something for some reason, whether it's valid or not is irrelevant. You're going to get those people. So if you have a plan in place where you already know how to respond to them, you kind of just let it roll off your back. I've responded. I addressed it. It's done. Yeah.
Keema E. 44:32
And really, a lot of the lot of people we're still talking about reviews, a lot of it is opinion, particularly when you're talking about a restaurant, we've got, you know Restaurant Reviews where people are saying that the food was awful. Okay, it was awful to you, which is fine, but don't you know that that's not a reflection of the whole restaurant. Everybody has different tastes, so you didn't like this kind of food. I'm not, you know, I'm gonna say whatever I need to say properly, but in my mind, I'm saying I. Okay, you just didn't like the food. And I'm saying that to say you can't take it personally, because everybody has an opinion, and they're going to operate off of their own experiences, their own opinion, their own desires, or own wants or whatever. And it may not truly be anything that you did, so you've got to remove the personal aspect of it, take the emotions out of it, and just say, okay, what can I do to fix it? Yeah, I'm
Collin 45:20
glad you mentioned that, because I you know, you sit down with a group of friends at a restaurant, you could all order the exact same dish, right? And three of them are going to go, oh, this is really spicy and this is gross. And you're like, what? This is fine. What do you do? Past experiences? And we run into that with our clients too. We may have a client reaches out to us and they say you were late to the visit today. And I'm like, it was one minute pass. What are you talking about? But what we may forget is that they had a previous dog walker who was an hour late, and so this person spent 60 seconds panicking in their car or at work, freaking out about what was going to happen because of a previous bad experience, and now we get the brunt of that, and so going, Ah, now this is an educational opportunity for both of us. We all learn something today, but also, what can I say to help with this person more at ease, to talk about how that may have happened to you in the past? That is not how our business operates, and we will never treat you
Keema E. 46:12
that way. And one of the things that we've done as a business is that when when people sign with us, we have a list of we have a we call it our Well, it's part of an onboarding packet. But in that onboarding packet, we talk about the things that that should happen so that we can have a successful relationship. One of the things that we have on that is that we are going to send you lots of emails and text messages and calls and all of that, if you if you want us to just wait until the end of the day to do one call and do it all, then we can do that, but we need to be in constant communication with you, to let you know what's going on, to get information from you, and that kind of thing. But letting people know you know the expectations or what's going to happen that that that helps a lot. Well, let's
Collin 46:57
talk a bit preemptively here. We're talking about business reputation. We've kind of gone into the crisis side. Maybe we've already covered this, but pick your brain a bit more on how do I start protecting my business reputation, even before something bad happens? Or is there anything that I should be doing?
Lauren C. 47:12
I think it's very important to as a business, focus on building really strong relationships with your customers, because those are the people that are really going to come to go to bat for you. You know, if you have somebody that's saying, oh my gosh, you know, they're just terrible pet sitters. They, you know, do this and do that. And you have other people, other customers, that are like, oh, you know, I did not have that experience. I love them. They were, you know, so professional, so great. And those are the people that really go to bat for you, and for people that are looking at the situation from the outside, can see that and say, Okay, well, maybe this just one person just had a they're on a they're an anomaly, you know, for the most part, though, this business is really good, so I will still go with them, you know. So it's really important to focus on building those strong relationships through things like, you know, with your email list, being in constant contact with those people, letting them know what's going on, maybe some sort of newsletter, being active on social media, letting people see your brand. Being active, you know, letting people feel like they really know you, and building that loyalty with them is super important.
Keema E. 48:19
The other thing you can do going back to reviews again, people are more prone to leave a negative review because they're so upset, they're like, I'm gonna leave a review. But if people are happy, they may not do that. So you really have to encourage people to say, you know, if somebody says, you know, you were great. I really enjoyed I really liked your services. My pet really loves you. Blah, blah, blah, would you mind leaving a review? To that effect, could you leave a review and building up the positive reviews you're going to it's going to take some work. You don't have to work for the negative reviews, but you got to work for the positive reviews, right? So that's hoping that you really have to do is just keep reminding people please
Lauren C. 48:56
leave a review, yeah, and remaining consistent, making sure that you know each and every time you are getting there, on time, your your brand messaging with all all forms of your communication is consistent, so that people can really depend on that. And
Keema E. 49:10
another important thing, another one that we learned the hard way, is making sure that you set reasonable expectations. I'll give another example. We had a client who expected their business to grow, you know, tripled, I don't know, in a month or something, but the service wanted us to provide would never, would never yield those kinds of results. And we didn't. We knew that in the beginning, and we assumed that she knew that in the beginning, but, but she didn't, and we should have had that conversation. So now we know we have to set expectations. This is what's going to happen. This is when it's going to happen. This is how it's going to happen. This is who's going to do it. All of that has to be laid out in the beginning, and that that's that's a good way to set yourself up for success.
Collin 49:57
I really appreciate that you you walk through that of. Like, be knowable, be visible, be be expected, right? Set those reasonable expectations, and that all these actually are linked to your brain reputation. How do we, how do we? Well, first, you know, we have to build a brand reputation through these things, and how do we protect it? We continue to do them. We are consistent in those things, so that people, when they think of us, they go, that's those people. Those are those professionals. Those are the consummate communicators and everything that goes involved with that. And the way we protect that is by nurturing this along the way and building out that strong culture and brand of our business. And I just, I when you said, you know, set reasonable expectations, I was like, well, that's just make sure. Oh no, right? That's part, that's part of making sure that we protect our brand too. So I think that's a very interesting aspect of that. I want to thank you both so much for coming on the show today and walking us through the importance of having a plan, implementing the plan, keeping a cool and level head, while also being consistent, so that we can not just serve our clients well, but be a good representation to our community and our existing clients and future clients as well. I do know that there's a whole lot more involved in all of this. It's kind of you know what you all do? So if people are interested in following along, getting connected with you and picking your brains on these kind of things, how best can they do that?
Lauren C. 51:18
You can find us on social media at Ethel Clark services on Instagram and Facebook. You can also send us an email. You can actually send it to me directly at L Kane, that's L, C, A, I N at Ethel clarkservices.com or visit us online at Ethel clarkservices.com
Keema E. 51:40
speaking of and let me just add that where social media is concerned, we are most active on Instagram. So if you're on Instagram and Facebook, go on over to Instagram, because that's where we're most we for some reason, I don't know why that is, we like Instagram a lot, so that's where we're most active. Cool. Well, I'll
Collin 51:58
have all those links in the show notes and that emails on our website as well, so people can get connected with you and start following along and getting these good resources. Because I know you also post a lot of educational stuff on your social media platforms as well. So this has just been an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for taking time out of your busy days to come and speak with us. And yeah, I just really, really appreciate it. We
Keema E. 52:21
thoroughly enjoyed it. Thank you so much.
Lauren C. 52:23
Thank you for having us
Keema E. 52:24
an absolute pleasure.
Collin 52:25
What is strategic communication? As our friends Lauren and Keema explained, it's not just knowing what to say, it's when to say it. As Keema said, the easiest words mended are those unspoken, having a clearly defined, controlled, intentional methodology to how we communicate, when we communicate, under what circumstances we communicate, and the tone that we're going to use helps so much as a business with so much craziness going on in the world, How can we be consistent in not just our brand as a business, but in how we speak and how we respond? This allows people to learn that they can trust us to say things in the appropriate way, in the appropriate manner, when it's also appropriate. We want to thank today's sponsors, our friends at tying to pet and pet perennials, and we really want to thank you so much for listening. We hope you're having a wonderful rest of your day, and we'll be back again soon. You.
