In this episode of Executive Connect, host Melissa Aarskaug sits down with Elie Jacobs, communications strategist and co-founder of Purposeful Advisors, to talk about executive communication, public trust, and what leaders need to do when the pressure is on. Elie shares lessons from her work in politics, public affairs, and crisis communications, including her early start in President Bill Clinton’s post-presidency office. This conversation is for CEOs, founders, and rising leaders who want to communicate with more clarity, build credibility, and lead with confidence in high-stakes moments. Elie explains why consistency matters, how executive presence is built, what separates brand from reputation, and how leaders should respond when a crisis hits. She also shares why authenticity is more important than polish and how public perception should always have a seat at the table.

Chapters:

(0:49) Elie Jacobs’ background and start in high-stakes communications

(4:24) How strategic messaging is built and why corporate speak fails

(5:55) The difference between brand, reputation, and risk

(8:01) The “fifth seat” and why public opinion matters in the C-suite

(12:42) What executive presence really means

(16:29) Advice for new CEOs building credibility

(18:35) What business leaders can learn from politics

(24:59) Crisis communication, empathy, and leadership under pressure

(31:35) Why authenticity shapes how people respond to you in a crisis

(36:10) Final advice on consistency, cadence, and being real

Elie

(0:00) If you’re an up-and-coming executive or a sitting executive, the most important thing you can do from a communication standpoint is be consistent. (0:09) Consistent in what your message is, consistent in how you’re presenting yourself, and consistent in terms of cadence, right? (0:15) Like, if you only talk to people once a year at the annual meeting, don’t suddenly start talking to people every day.

(0:20) You know, kind of ease into it. (0:22) If you’re somebody who’s very active in the local community, keep doing that. (0:26) If you’re not, you got to ease into it, because everything, to your point, everything is scrutinized right now.

(0:31) There’s so much misinformation and disinformation, and it’s kind of just this rampant thing that every little thing, you know, suddenly is just overtaking people’s Twitter feeds. (0:39) So you got to be authentic. (0:40) You got to be real.

(0:41) You know, if you don’t particularly love social situations, don’t dive into it all at once. (0:46) Ease yourself into it. (0:47) It’s got to be authentic, otherwise people won’t be able to tell.

Melissa

(0:49) PR crisis, strategic messaging and chaos, or just trying to say literally anything without stepping on a goldmine, or I mean landmine. (1:02) Today on the Executive Connect podcast, we’re joined by the ultimate communication fixer, Ellie Jacobs, with over 20 years in the trenches of politics, public affairs, and global strategy, plus a stint in President Bill Clinton’s post-presidency office. (1:26) Ellie knows how to shape narratives that actually stick.

(1:30) If you’re a leader navigating high stakes with your mic in your face, this episode is the masterclass for clarity, control, and a commanding presence. (1:41) Welcome Ellie.

Elie

(1:44) I feel like you just put a lot of pressure on me, but let’s do this.

Melissa

(1:47) Your journey started out with one of the most high-profile roles imaginable, working with President Bill Clinton. (1:57) Since then, you’ve advised leaders on politics, business, and much more. (2:03) What drew you to this field, and how has your experiences across public affairs shaped how you look at PR executives today?

Elie

(2:13) I fell into this just sheer dumb luck. (2:15) I didn’t know what I was going to do with my life. (2:17) I saw an article in The New Yorker that reprinted an ad that President Clinton’s office had put out to the Columbia Poli Sci Department, and I just responded to that ad, and that was the fall of 2001.

(2:29) The office in Harlem had just opened. (2:31) Next thing you know, I’ve got a full-time internship in the president’s office, and this is before the Global Initiative existed. (2:37) There were a dozen staffers, a dozen Secret Service agents, and about four or five interns shuffling paper and going through scheduling requests and responding to correspondence, that kind of thing.

(2:48) Then the deputy press secretary left, and I became the default deputy press secretary. (2:52) I just got thrown into this world of communications. (2:54) I’d never really done anything political before then, and so I got thrown into the world of politics at a pretty high level for a guy who I started a year to the day from when he left office.

(3:06) Secretary Clinton at the time was a senator from New York, and it was just a fascinating place to be. (3:11) You just learn a ton by osmosis. (3:14) Also, when you start with that high level of day-to-day pressure, you really can’t mess up because you’re representing him.

(3:21) If you start your career there, things are a lot easier when you continue, and you’re dealing even with CEOs of Fortune 50, Fortune 100 companies. (3:30) Once you’ve disappointed the president or made a mistake that is going to be very problematic, everything else becomes a lot easier to handle and just sort of puts things in perspective.

Melissa

(3:40) Ready to lead smarter and invest wiser? (3:44) On the Executive Connect podcast, we unpack executive strategies for wealth and influence. (3:51) Hit the subscribe button now.

(3:53) Don’t just watch, act. (3:55) Yeah, and I love what you do. (3:57) I think strategic messaging in high-stakes environments is so, so, so important in our world today.

(4:04) You actually are able to cut through all the noise and craft messages that actually stick, whether it’s a political firestorm or a corporate pivot. (4:14) What’s your process with building the correct messaging that resonates without actually spinning out of control and blowing up online?

Elie

(4:24) Yeah, I mean, the first thing you’d want to do is never do corporate speak, right? (4:27) What Scott Galloway calls yoga babble, where it’s just kind of words on a page, and it looks like it came out of a boggle tray, and it’s sort of meaningless. (4:34) But the way we do it, Frank DeMaria, my business partner and I, the way we start everything is with a real deep dive.

(4:39) We’re going to do a lot of desktop research on the company or the individuals that we’re going to be dealing with, and then we get them in a room. (4:45) And it becomes almost a therapeutic session at some level because we’re going to push assumptions. (4:50) If you’re a startup, a scale-up, midsize company, even if you’ve been around a long time, we’re going to push every assumption you’ve ever made.

(4:56) What we call red team, it’s a term out of the military. (4:59) It’s actually a term out of the Vatican, basically playing devil’s advocate. (5:03) We’re going to question every piece of material that you have out there.

(5:06) If we think that this doesn’t represent you properly, we’re going to ask why you said that or what you were hoping to gain by saying something or not saying something. (5:14) And we’ve had executives toss us out of the room because they get so frustrated with what we’re doing, but it’s our process. (5:20) We have to understand everything.

(5:21) We need to basically in the span of 90 minutes to two hours, we need to understand enough about your company that we could have been a 10 year veteran there. (5:29) We need to know the ins and outs. (5:30) We need to know the personalities.

(5:31) We need to know what that stakeholder map looks like. (5:33) And it takes us a while to put that together, but it’s all part of the process of who are the core people who you’re trying to impact? (5:40) Who are the people that can influence them?

(5:42) Who are the people that can harm you? (5:45) How are they getting influenced? (5:46) Where are they getting their information?

(5:47) Where are they getting their news? (5:49) Then you start figuring out what that overall map looks like. (5:52) And then you start thinking about things.

(5:55) We talk about things as there’s brand and there’s reputation. (5:58) Brand is what you say you do. (5:59) Reputation is what everybody else thinks you do.

(6:02) And the bigger delta, the bigger difference between those things is called the risk aperture. (6:07) The larger that difference is between those two things, the more at risk your company is going to be because your narrative doesn’t make sense. (6:13) If you are a soda maker and you think you’re a soda maker, but everybody out there thinks that you provide baseball bats at little league games, which is something you might do.

(6:24) But if that’s the only thing that you’re known for, that’s a problem. (6:28) If you are a pharmaceutical giant and you developed a drug that can be used for diabetes or weight loss or other sorts of things, and that’s what you’re saying that you’re doing, but everybody out there just thinks that you’re trying to get your share price up and you’re not really paying attention to what patients want. (6:45) You’re not paying attention to what regulators want.

(6:46) It’s a big problem. (6:48) So it’s a deep dive into really understanding your company. (6:52) And then it’s going outside and talking to stakeholders to get a real understanding of what other people think about you.

(6:56) And that could include doing in-depth interviews with stakeholders. (6:59) It could involve bringing in a qualitative and quantitative research firm to do focus groups and quantitative polling. (7:05) It’s really the best we can be is the more information that we’ve been able to get and ingest and then kind of figure out, okay, this is what everything means.

(7:15) This is where you are. (7:16) This is where you need to be. (7:17) And now we can map out how we’re going to make those things work.

Melissa

(7:20) Yeah. (7:21) I feel like you should know more than maybe somebody’s spouse. (7:25) You really got to get into it and unpack.

(7:28) You go from knowing a name to really being married. (7:31) And that can kind of feel uncomfortable. (7:33) I’d have to imagine, Ellie.

Elie

(7:35) Yeah. (7:36) It gets tough when something goes bump in the night. (7:41) We want to be the first call that a client makes.

(7:45) And it’s hard to develop that trust, right? (7:47) Because most executives are pretty skeptical of outside advisors. (7:51) That’s why you don’t work for them.

(7:53) You work for somebody externally. (7:55) A former boss of mine, a guy named Jack Martin, he actually trademarked it. (7:59) It was called the fifth seat.

(8:01) So Jack had a vision of what a C-suite looks like, of what a CEO’s conference table looks like. (8:07) You’ve got the accountants, you’ve got the investment bankers, you’ve got the lawyers, and you’ve got the management consultants. (8:13) The fifth seat is what the public thinks.

(8:15) And that’s the seat that Jack and our firm, and that’s the seat that Frank and I try to fill now. (8:19) So we’re the ones that are sitting there saying, but if you do that, what’s the public going to think? (8:24) Or you can’t do that because the public thinks this.

(8:26) Or if that’s something you want to do six months from now, it’s a big problem because currently the current mood of the country or whatever you’re trying to do is over here. (8:35) And for that to be successful, we need to move people’s opinion and we need to put a campaign in place to accomplish that. (8:42) So you have to develop a lot of trust with the decision makers.

(8:47) And as external consultants, if we’re reporting into the head of marketing or the head of HR, that’s going to be a problem. (8:54) We really want that access to the C-suite because between Frank and I, we’ve got almost 60 years of experience. (9:01) Frank was the global head of communications at NASDAQ.

(9:04) I obviously come at it from a little bit of a different perspective, but we can be of great use to CEOs who know how to use us. (9:10) And one of the things that we were surprised at, that we’re always surprised at is the learning curve for CEOs and decision makers to really understand what we’re bringing to the table and everything that we’re capable of doing and how it’s going to be beneficial for them with a pretty minimal investment.

Melissa

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(10:06) Things are so, so misunderstood these days. (10:10) A simple, you know, face gesture, a simple text that had no emotion in it, you know, a simple interaction. (10:18) I feel like everything is, it kind of feels like everything is misconstrued a lot because it gets more attention online.

(10:27) So I have to imagine, you know, this is, should always have a seat at the table for that exact reason.

Elie

(10:34) It should, right? (10:35) You know, the public face of a company, whether it’s a product or an individual, it’s usually more individually driven these days than it wasn’t, than it was, you know, 20, 30 years ago. (10:45) Or if you think about kind of the iconoclastic CEOs, there was sure, there was Henry Ford, there was John Rockefeller, there was JP Morgan.

(10:50) And there was like a long spread of time that there wasn’t anybody that kind of had that status. (10:54) And then Steve Jobs comes along and like shifts the entire kind of concept of what a CEO is supposed to be in relation to their company. (11:02) And that’s continued, right?

(11:03) You think of all these companies, you know who their CEOs are. (11:06) 20, 30 years ago, not 20, probably 30, 30, 30 or 40 years ago, you know, you’d be hard-pressed for people to know who the CEO of Pfizer is or the CEO, even the CEO of Nike or Coca-Cola. (11:17) Right now, I think, you know, there’s so much connection between the brand, the reputation (11:22) and the individual that if the individual isn’t in a position where they feel confident in what (11:27) they’re saying, confident in the people that are around them, advising them that they’re not going (11:33) to end up with egg on their face either today or six or eight weeks from now, obviously can’t (11:37) predict the future, but, you know, smart people and good advisors looking at kind of, again, (11:42) those repute, the reputational risk map, the stakeholder map, you can do a pretty good job (11:47) of predicting where things are, where things could go wrong.

(11:50) And more times than anything, you know, CEOs or CEOs of particularly a big companies, because they’re smart, they’re talented, they work really hard and they’ve got some sort of X factor, right? (12:02) And it’s the ones who really know how to lever that X factor part that are really the superstars, people like Jamie Dimon, right? (12:11) But they also need to have a natural ability to communicate.

(12:14) There’s a lot you can train, right? (12:16) Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, George Bush, they all did a lot of speech training. (12:20) They all did a lot of media training.

(12:22) Jamie Dimon, I know for sure, has done a lot of media training and speech training, but there has to be a little bit of an ability to communicate from a, like deep down in your gut level, that’s going to resonate with people. (12:35) And that ability is also probably one of the reasons that they’re CEO. (12:39) That’s how they rose through the ranks.

Melissa

(12:42) Yeah, I love it. (12:43) I want to pull back a little bit of that. (12:45) Let’s talk executive presence.

(12:48) I often, you know, I hear this a lot. (12:51) You got to have executive presence. (12:54) So in your experience, what separates leaders who command trust and actually those who just from those who just talk well, like kind of what you were saying, it’s one thing to show up and be in a suit and be well-dressed.

(13:08) It’s a whole nother thing to command trust of your staff, the public, and then speak well. (13:15) Like what role does that play in growing to the C-suite in today’s world?

Elie

(13:20) Yeah, you know, it reminds me of a quote from Steve Young, the 49ers Hall of Fame quarterback. (13:25) I don’t remember where I saw it or how long ago I saw it, but I’m going to paraphrase because I don’t remember exactly what it was, but at some point he said, you don’t just step up and say you’re a leader. (13:34) People have to decide to follow you.

(13:36) That’s what makes you a leader. (13:37) So there is some level, again, going back to that X factor, there is some part of that. (13:42) That is sort of this ephemeral thing that you can’t really hold on to, but you know when you see it.

(13:47) That said, if you are a competent human being, a diligent human being, somebody who can digest a lot of information and process it and come to some solid conclusions. (14:00) And I think one of the other things is most employees or customers or stakeholders across, again, that whole huge map, they can sense when a CEO has confidence, not only in themselves, but also in their company or in their products or the services that they’re delivering. (14:17) If you are trying to go up the corporate ladder, you find a company where you’re going to have that confidence because that’s going to come through.

(14:28) Not just the confidence in yourself, but also that you believe in what you’re selling. (14:33) Again, whether it’s a product or a service. (14:35) So I think that’s one of the biggest things that differentiates very successful CEOs from CEOs who do fine and they make a lot of money.

(14:45) I think it’s that sort of confidence in yourself and confidence in the company that you’re running or trying to build. (14:52) And then past that, again, I think to your point, a lot of it is about the ability to communicate. (14:59) There are CEOs who are dyslexic, there are CEOs who have stutters, there are CEOs who have bad speech impediments, there are CEOs who have other behavioral or psychological or learning disabilities or impairments, there are CEOs who have heavy accents.

(15:19) Those aren’t the parts that you communicate through. (15:21) What you communicate through, again, is being genuine, it’s being confident, it’s having a message, really understanding what that message is, taking it into your entire being and then representing it. (15:35) Because the reputation of your company, if you’re going to be a forward-facing CEO, which most CEOs need to be, whether they’re fundraising or they’re doing investor calls or they’re doing media calls, they are going to be the face of the company whether they like it or not.

(15:48) You need to really take in that message and be able to not just parrot it back, but be able to manipulate it as each occasion calls for, so that when people walk away from meeting you, they know who you are, what you do and what your company does.

Melissa

(16:07) I love that. (16:08) It’s so great. (16:09) Now, I’m a new CEO and I’m trying to work on my presence, build credibility.

(16:16) Is there a way that you recommend new founders, CEOs to build credibility in the media and additional stakeholders today? (16:27) Is there a specific formula for that?

Elie

(16:29) I don’t know that there’s a cookie cutter formula. (16:32) It’s person and company and industry and country specific. (16:37) That’s where the science becomes more art for what we do.

(16:43) Nobody can go wrong by reading How to Win Friends and Influence People. (16:47) That should be on the top of everybody’s reading list. (16:53) I don’t know that you need to read Machiavelli or Sun Tzu, but How to Win Friends and Influence People is probably a really good place to start.

(17:00) I think that a CEO needs to have a real cold, hard look at themselves. (17:09) Particularly if they’re new or if they’re looking at themselves. (17:15) Have a conversation with the people that know them best, whether it’s a spouse or a best friend or a kid or a parent, whoever it is.

(17:24) Really do that gut check of, is this the right position for me? (17:27) Am I at the right place in my life, in my career? (17:30) Am I at the right space in my professional growth where I can be effective and make this company better?

(17:37) The last thing you want to do is be a failed CEO. (17:40) If you’re walking into a situation that you shouldn’t have been in in the first place, you’re putting yourself way behind the eight ball. (17:47) I think not enough business executives, they see the finish line and get really, really eager to get to that finish line without thinking through how they’re going to get there, or if that’s even the right race that they’re running to keep the analogy going.

Melissa

(18:02) Yeah. (18:02) I want to take the analogy. (18:05) There’s a lot of lessons in politics that executives today should understand, need to understand.

(18:13) I know you’ve advised many political candidates and national security leaders. (18:18) I’m curious what lessons from the political arena area do you think executive business leaders must understand if they want to thrive in today’s hyper scrutinized world that we live in?

Elie

(18:35) Yeah. (18:36) I would say that there’s two primary ones, and I may end up rattling off more, but we’ll start with two. (18:43) I think the first one is politicians have a different risk perspective.

(18:49) They’re usually dealing with a lot more than just kind of the thing that’s in front of them. (18:53) Not that executives aren’t dealing with just the thing in front of them, but executives, particularly for publicly traded companies, are generally just thinking in three month blocks, right? (19:02) They’re just thinking about that quarter’s earnings.

(19:04) We can talk about why that’s so problematic and why we probably need to shift to a twice a year earning schedule, but it’s a whole other thing. (19:11) So I think politicians are looking at a much longer, well, traditionally politicians. (19:15) I think politicians now are a little bit of a different breed, but traditionally politicians are looking at a much longer horizon for the things that they’re trying to do.

(19:23) I think the second thing that is really important that a political leader can differentiate from a business leader is the holistic approach that they’re taking to whatever they’re dealing with. (19:33) In the national security space or the elected official space, you have to look at that whole spectrum. (19:40) The external risks that you’re facing, the internal risks that you might be dealing with, how it impacts your district, how it impacts the city that you’re representing, how it impacts the people that you’re sending money to overseas or the soldiers that you might vote to send into war, right?

(19:55) It’s a much different kind of broader thing that you need to be looking at. (19:59) I think business executives can really benefit by taking a much more holistic, broader glance at the things that they’re dealing with. (20:08) A lot of it has to do with expanding your circle of advisors, expanding your information consumption.

(20:16) What are you reading? (20:17) How much are you reading? (20:18) Where are you getting it from?

(20:19) Who’s briefing you? (20:20) Where are they getting their information? (20:22) Are you getting it from enough perspectives?

(20:23) Are you getting it from enough sources? (20:25) Are you getting it from different places throughout the country? (20:28) They need to, I think, spend a lot of time looking at and doing it themselves, doing that qualitative research, whether it’s a quick conversation with an employee in the hallway, whether it’s sitting down with an investor or a major customer and having a really potentially difficult conversation to understand where they think that you are.

(20:53) CEOs need that information. (20:54) There’s also the level below CEOs or even the other people at the C-suite table, some of them are incentivized to not necessarily give the CEO what he actually needs to make decisions. (21:08) This is where boards become really, really important.

(21:11) This is where your circle of friends become really important. (21:13) This is where if you went to business school or a group of college friends, people that you’ve known a long time or that you can turn around to and ask really blunt questions. (21:22) That’s a role that we often play.

(21:25) We like to be those external objective observers and say, I know the CFO is saying this and the chief risk officer is saying this and the investors are saying that, and that kind of all makes sense. (21:35) But have you thought about A, B and C? (21:37) And maybe they have, and they’re still reaching that decision.

(21:39) But if they’ve thought about A, B and C, maybe they have a little bit of question about B. (21:43) OK, let’s dig into that. (21:44) Why are you concerned about that?

(21:45) Or, OK, you’ve thought about A, B and C, but we think that D could be an issue based on media coverage, social media coverage, a question an analyst asked on the last investor call. (21:58) It’s really, again, it’s about where are you getting information? (22:00) How much are you getting?

(22:01) How much are you taking in? (22:03) How much are you processing? (22:05) It’s a full-time job.

(22:07) It’s 24-7 if you’re running a company, particularly as it gets bigger or multinational.

Melissa

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(23:09) Um, I know I’ve had a personal situation where I, for the longest time, people didn’t know I had kids and I like, I’m like, really? (23:16) But I didn’t realize I wasn’t putting my kids or anything kid related out in my, my, my world. (23:22) And so I didn’t happen.

(23:25) Um, Ellie, until somebody said, Hey, uh, I didn’t even know you were pregnant. (23:30) I was like, Oh, well, clearly I’m not showing people underneath the hood of what, who I am outside of just what I do. (23:40) And it wasn’t, it was more than one person that came to me and said, you only talk about business.

(23:45) And, but that’s not really who you are. (23:47) You’re spunky and fun and you have kids and you make mistakes and you’re goofy. (23:52) And, um, but it’s true because how I was showing up online was not authentically me until somebody told me that.

(24:01) Um, and I think there’s so much truth behind what you’re saying by having advisors and people that will tell you, like, what are you saying? (24:11) Why are you saying it that way? (24:12) It sounds, you know, it sounds like you don’t care.

(24:15) It doesn’t sound like you’re compassionate or you’re only about business, but I think you’re spot on with getting feedback from a diverse group of people, not just people that have a vested interest in what you say, but people outside your, you know, your work circle and maybe your friends and business community. (24:33) So I love that you said that. (24:34) I think there’s so much truth behind it.

(24:37) Um, I always say this too, in cybersecurity, it’s not if it’s when you have a breach. (24:43) So what’s your best advice for people when things go sideways and, uh, you need to kind of, you’re in crisis and you need to communicate that with confidence and clarity.

Elie

(24:59) So I’m going to approach this from two different sides. (25:02) Um, when we talk about risks, issues, and crises, um, it’s a hierarchy and there are three distinct things and the way we approach things, they’re obviously interrelated. (25:15) So the analogy I’ve been using, and it’s probably way too old at this point, but there are objective inherent risks with air travel.

(25:24) You’re defeating gravity. (25:25) You don’t know what the weather’s right. (25:26) There’s objective things.

(25:28) As soon as you make that decision to get on an airplane, now you’re facing issues. (25:32) Is the airplane in good shape? (25:34) Is it a Boeing airplane?

(25:35) Are you sitting next to somebody who hasn’t showered recently? (25:38) Did the pilot have a bad night? (25:39) Is it bad weather?

(25:40) Are you leaving from Newark or trying to land at Newark, right? (25:43) There’s subjective things that you’re dealing with. (25:45) And then there are crises like when the door blows off or there’s a bird strike and you have to land on the Hudson river.

(25:51) And we try to put things in that perspective for clients of, let’s sit down and understand the objective risks that you face in the industry that you’re playing in. (25:59) Now let’s look at the issues that you, your company itself is facing based on your position in that industry. (26:05) And then we can start mapping out what a crisis situation is going to look like.

(26:10) Crises are by nature unpredictable. (26:14) They’re, but they can be preventable. (26:16) And if you can, if you can start thinking through in a pretty creative way, and sometimes, you know, some of these crisis books get longer and longer because you start coming up with crazy possibilities.

(26:25) But once it’s on paper, it’s something that you can start thinking about how to prevent it. (26:28) So you keep it in the issues category before it becomes a crisis. (26:32) So with that all in mind, a crisis still is going to happen, right?

(26:36) It’s not if it’s when, when that happens, and hopefully you’ve done all the things to put in place, things that are going to prevent, if you’re a fast food company, somebody is going to get sick. (26:46) A chef’s going to lose a finger. (26:47) Like those are things that are just, those are issues that you’re going to deal with.

(26:51) It’s a crisis when it actually happens, regardless of how many, what protocol you put in place to prevent it from happening. (26:57) But something went bump in the night. (26:58) Now you’re dealing with a crisis.

(26:59) An activist investor has shown up. (27:01) You get caught on a kiss cam at a Coldplay conference, canoodling with your head of HR. (27:07) There’s a crisis, right?

(27:10) Where I think kind of coming out of that political world where I always try to start things with clients. (27:17) The crisis is this could be the worst moment of their life, professional life. (27:22) It’s really important to put that in perspective, right?

(27:26) I not entirely jokingly when we get a call about a crisis thing, the first question I ask is anybody dead, right? (27:34) Let’s state, let’s, let’s put the stakes where they are. (27:37) Cause if there are casualties or there are people that are ill or people that are in harm’s way, that is a very different scenario than your stock price crashed.

(27:46) And I think it’s real that that’s the first thing let’s level set where, where things are. (27:51) And then, you know, as a leader, the things that you want to come across, you want to be empathetic. (27:55) And if you’re not naturally an empathetic person, you probably shouldn’t be in a leadership position.

(27:59) You want to work with your team as quickly as you want a, you want to have done tabletop exercises where you kind of know the core team that you need in the room. (28:09) And those people know their roles and responsibilities to both go get information, bring information back, process it, brief you as the leader so that you can direct them to go make the right decisions out in public. (28:21) So hopefully you’ve all done, you’ve done that already that you at least know the people that need to be in the room and you’re communicating with them well.

(28:29) So, you know, the first thing you need to do is go out there and say what, you know, during a crisis, one of the primary definitions of a crisis is that it’s unpredictable and it’s fast moving. (28:41) So if it’s fast moving, you may not know all the facts when suddenly the calls start coming in from the media or even worse, they start coming in from regulators or elected officials. (28:51) So figure out what went wrong, figure out how you’re going to stop it from continuing and then figure out how you’re going to make whole the people that were impacted by the thing that went wrong.

(29:01) And that’s, that’s your process. (29:03) And that’s the, the goal you should have at all times. (29:05) Isn’t how are you going to make your company come back, come out of this looking good?

(29:09) It’s how are you going to help the people that were impacted? (29:12) And sometimes those are sometimes those are quote unquote, just shareholders that were impacted, but those are key parts of your business. (29:20) And one of the things that we try to, again, when we try to level set where we are in a crisis is we will try to ask relatively early on, what do you, where do you want to be when this thing ends?

(29:31) When you come out on this on the other side, do you want to be right where you were? (29:34) Or is this potentially an opportunity to improve, to reinvent your company, reinvent who you are, reinvent how you interact with your local community, the local community, your employer, your employees live in. (29:45) Crises can be opportunities.

(29:47) That doesn’t mean you should lean into doing it, having a crisis, but it does mean that you should at least approach it with the possibility that, you know, we can do things that we might not be able to do if things weren’t on fire.

Melissa

(29:58) And it shows your character. (30:00) I think we all are humans. (30:01) We all have crises.

(30:02) We all make mistakes, but the difference is, you know, in these positions, you know, you have, you know, roles and responsibilities to, you know, the people of the United States or your shareholders or your employees. (30:16) So how, how are you going to handle it shows what kind of character you have. (30:22) And like you said, if you’re, you’re not somebody with a great character, you’re not going to have empathy.

(30:27) You’re not going to be honest. (30:28) You’re going to just kind of not deal with it. (30:31) But I think to your point, I’ve made many and plenty of mistakes in my life, but often when I show up with apologizing and saying, you know, I made a mistake.

(30:44) This is on me. (30:45) You know, people give people forgiveness and give them grace with, you know, where they are in their life. (30:52) We’re not, none of us on this earth are perfect.

(30:54) We’re just breathing, living experiences, experiencing creatures trying to do our best job. (31:01) So I love that you said that. (31:02) I think it’s so important.

(31:04) And I often question myself, um, Ali, where I’m like, okay, how did I say that? (31:10) Did I, I miss, did I say that wrong? (31:12) But I think we’re, we’re all just kind of glancing at things.

(31:18) At least I know I am the busier I get. (31:21) I’m not reading word for word anymore, but sometimes I read things. (31:25) I’m like, that didn’t say that.

(31:26) And I have to go back and read it, but it’s really important how you say things. (31:32) So it’s empathetic and it’s best position for the company.

Elie

(31:35) Well, it goes back to what you were just saying about, you know, somebody mentioning that they didn’t know that you had kids or that you were pregnant, right? (31:41) Like, what are you presenting externally? (31:43) Because that’s also going to impact how you present externally when something actually happens, right?

(31:49) If you are looked at as kind of this automatron all business, all the time, no external life, no care, you don’t care about anything other than your business. (31:59) That, that it’s, that’s again, brand and reputation. (32:02) If that’s your brand and your reputation is that you’re, you know, this automate autumn, you know, automaton that doesn’t make mistakes and everything is perfect online.

(32:11) And that’s what everybody knows about you. (32:13) When something goes wrong, a, now you have to worry about breaking that image. (32:20) And B, now you have the possibility of looking inauthentic.

(32:23) If you’ve never demonstrated, you know, to the public, whether that’s through an interview or a social media post or whatever else it might be. (32:31) I think it’s one of the reasons that we’re starting to see LinkedIn kind of look like what Facebook did about 15 years ago. (32:36) And you see executives posting family pictures or, you know, posting a selfie video, walking down the beach or something like that.

(32:44) It’s, it’s important and it’s an opportunity. (32:46) Some of it’s kind of crass and gross that it’s happening because it does feel sort of manufactured. (32:52) But at the same time, it’s important that, that most of all employees and employees, families, and the people in the communities that you’re serving know that you’re not just this profit-driven Scrooge McDuck character.

Melissa

(33:06) And that’s spot on because it’s funny. (33:09) I had somebody say, Oh God, she’s so perfect and she’s so polished. (33:13) And my friends are like, what?

(33:15) Like, no, no, totally not her. (33:19) I’m like, I go, wow, I give off perfect and polished. (33:23) I don’t know.

(33:25) But I think there’s some truth behind that. (33:27) And it’s, it’s probably gone the other way now where I’m like, Oh cool. (33:30) Now I’m, I’m probably guilty as one of those people like posting about my kid.

(33:34) It’s national. (33:35) Take your kid to work day. (33:37) Look, I took my kids to work today.

Elie

(33:39) Right. (33:40) But if, but if that’s the authentic you, that’s going to come through.

Melissa

(33:43) And I think it’s a balance, right? (33:45) I think, you know, who we appear online and socially is going to be there forever. (33:51) And so appearing in a way that’s true to you, not, you know, appearing this way to like, you know, to be a vegan and you’re not a vegan or to be a whatever.

(34:02) I don’t know why that pops into my head and be a whatever, but I love, I love all this discussion. (34:07) I think it’s so, I personally think that it’s so important right now when everything is misconstrued or the way people are raising their hands or rolling their eyes. (34:20) Um, I laugh because when I first started this podcast, you know, all the answers to me are always on the ceiling.

(34:26) They always have been like my brain thinks left and right. (34:30) And everybody’s like, are you rolling your eyes at me? (34:31) I’m like, no, I’m just looking for the answer up there.

(34:37) But this has been so much fun, uh, for leaders who want to sharpen their messaging and learn more about what you do. (34:46) What’s the best way that they can connect with you?

Elie

(34:49) Uh, go to our website, purposefuladvappledavidvictor.com. (34:55) Uh, you can connect with me on LinkedIn, E-L-I-E-J-A-C-O-B-S. (34:58) There are a couple other Ellie Jacobs, but you’ll see the grainy picture of this and you’ll know it’s me.

(35:04) Um, but, uh, you know, we’re, we, we are happy to talk to anybody and everybody. (35:09) Um, we, we try to meet clients where they are in terms of kind of their financial growth. (35:14) So we do everything from what we call a hundred day sprint where, you know, we’re going to come in and we’re going to do that deep dive that I mentioned.

(35:21) You’re going to walk away with a messaging book. (35:22) You’re going to walk away with kind of an outline of what a stakeholder map is. (35:26) And you’re going to walk away with a 60 day tactical plan of everything that we just, that we just did with you.

(35:31) And we’ll do, we’ll do some SEO work and some content development there also. (35:34) And that’s kind of like an entry level price thing. (35:36) And then we do, there’s another offer that we have.

(35:39) It’s also a hundred days, but it’s at a much deeper level. (35:41) And obviously that costs more cause I’m going to take up a lot more of our time. (35:45) Um, but we’re happy to just kind of come in and chat with somebody for a little bit and see if it’s a good fit for us and good fit for them.

(35:51) Uh, the last thing we want to do is work for somebody that doesn’t really like us or appreciate or, yeah, or, or respect what we’re doing, which is something that’s that, that happens to anybody who’s in the consulting world and you never want to repeat it.

Melissa

(36:04) I love it. (36:05) Now, any final thoughts that you want to listen, leave with our listeners?

Elie

(36:10) You know, I would say, you know, if you’re an up and coming executive or a sitting executive, the most important thing you can do from a communication standpoint is be consistent, um, consistent in what your message is consistent in how you’re presenting yourself and the consistent in terms of cadence, right? (36:28) Like if you only talk to people once a year at the annual meeting, don’t suddenly talk, start talking to people every day, you know, kind of ease, ease into it. (36:37) If you’re somebody who’s very active in the local community, keep doing that.

(36:43) If you’re not, you got to ease into it because everything to your point, everything is scrutinized right now. (36:48) There’s so much misinformation and disinformation, and it’s kind of just this rampant thing that every little thing, you know, suddenly is just overtaking people’s Twitter feeds. (36:57) So you got to be authentic.

(36:58) You got to be real. (36:59) You know, if you’re, if you’re not particular, if you don’t particularly love social situations, don’t dive into it all at once. (37:04) Ease yourself into it.

(37:05) It’s got to be authentic. (37:06) Otherwise people will be able to tell.

Melissa

(37:08) So true. (37:09) So true. (37:11) Thank you so much for being here today and sharing your time and your knowledge with our listeners.

(37:18) That’s the executive connect podcast.

Elie

(37:22) My pleasure.