May 19, 2025
How To Manage Sticky Situations In PR
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Karen Swim, APR and Michelle Kane dive into the topic of ”sticky situations” that PR professionals often face with clients, such as when a client behaves inappropriately at an event or makes unscripted comments in an interview.
That Solo Life Podcast, Episode 300Episode Title
How To Manage Sticky Situations In PR
Episode SummaryWelcome to the 300th episode of That Solo Life! 🎉 Karen Swim, APR, and Michelle Kane reflect on their podcasting milestone before tackling a topic every PR professional can relate to – dealing with "sticky situations." From unscripted comments in interviews to inappropriate client behavior at events, Karen and Michelle share experiences, insights, and strategies to prepare for and manage these challenges with professionalism. They emphasize preparation, setting clear boundaries, and protecting your own reputation as a PR practitioner while navigating these tricky waters.
If you’ve faced a PR crisis or want to be fully equipped for when one arises, this episode is packed with relatable stories and actionable advice.
Episode Highlights- The Importance of Preparation
Why media training, briefing sheets, and understanding client boundaries are non-negotiable steps.
- Clients Behaving Badly
Memorable (and eyebrow-raising) examples of client mishaps during events or interviews, and lessons learned.
- When Damaging Information Emerges
What to do when unexpected or concerning information about your client surfaces.
- Protecting Yourself and Your Reputation
Tips on maintaining contracts, financial safeguards, and crisis plans for PR pros themselves.
- The Role of Ethical Responsibility
Navigating PR crises while adhering to ethical practices and maintaining professionalism.
Related Episodes and Additional Resources- Podcast - How to Communicate in a Crisis
- Podcast - The Joy and Pain of Clients New to PR
- Blog - How to Handle Tough Client Conversations
- Learn more about ethical PR practices with PRSA’s Code of Ethics.
- 00:18 - Celebrating 300 episodes
- 02:21 - Sticky situations with clients and what defines them
- 05:00 - Events gone wrong and handling inappropriate client behavior
- 08:42 - Unscripted comments during interviews and the importance of being present during media interactions
- 13:30 - Concerning or damaging information surfacing about a client
- 15:31 - Crisis communication plans for PR pros and self-protection strategies
That Solo Life is a podcast for public relations, communication and marketing professionals that work as independent and small hosted by Karen Swim, APR and Michelle Kane. Karen is the founder of Words For Hire, a PR agency that specializes in B2B, Technology and Healthcare, and the President of Solo PR, a community dedicated to independent practitioners in public relations, communications and related fields. Michelle Kane is the Principal of VoiceMatters, a company that offers PR, Communications Consulting, Editorial and Voiceover Services.
Talk to Us- Karen Swim - LinkedIn, Threads, Instagram
- Michelle Kane - LinkedIn, Instagram
- Solo PR - LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram
Please leave a review here - even a sentence helps. Share and tag us (@SoloPRPro) on social media so that we can thank you personally!
Thanks for listening! 🎙️ Have a topic you’d like us to cover? Drop us a line at Solo PR Pro.
That Solo Life, Episode 300: How to Manage Sticky Situations in PR
Transcribing live conversations can be tricky so please be forgiving of any typos or errors that you find. Love something here and want to share? Great, please read the notes at the end. Enjoy!
Michelle Kane (00:18):
Thank you for joining us for this episode of That Solo Life, the podcast for PR pros and marketers who work for themselves, people like me, Michelle Kane from Voice Matters, and my wonderful co-host, Karen Swim of Solo PR Pro. Hi, Karen. Do you know what? Hello? Do you know what today is? Sorry. Is it Monday? Yes. Sorry. I guess I'll reframe the question. This is our 300th episode. Can you believe it? Ah,
Karen Swim, APR (00:48):
Yay. cue the confetti. I cannot believe it. This is amazing, and I am Congratulations. Congratulations. Oh my gosh, you did it. What a great milestone.
Michelle Kane (01:02):
Yeah. I mean, I honestly haven't really had a moment to really soak in that notion, but it's still fun. I hope people still love it, and I hope as we move on from 300, that more and more people will love it. But I can't imagine talking shop every week with anyone but you.
Karen Swim, APR (01:24):
Oh, Michelle, you're going to make me cry. I feel the same way. It's funny because many, many years ago before podcasting became mainstream,
(01:33):
I dabbled in it a little bit, and I was always ready when the commitment was over. But with this, I have never grown tired of it. I've been tired, tired through it. I've had challenging moments, but this is, it's just such a joy. And to our listeners out there, if you're thinking of podcasting, there's just so many reasons to do it. And I think Michelle and I really come here from pure joy, for love for our profession, love for one another. We just enjoy hanging out. And we, as Michelle said, we really hope that you get some joy out of this as well, and that you pick up some tips along the way. Please stick with us on this journey because we are far from being done.
Michelle Kane (02:21):
Yeah. So today we're going to have some fun, right? You have something fun planned. Yes, yes. Sticky situations and how to handle them. Oh, boy.
Karen Swim, APR (02:32):
Yeah, that's a good one. We all have those sticky situations with clients, and it's always fun to just chat about those. And I always, sometimes even in our off air talks, when we talk, we get ideas from one another like, oh, that's a good idea. That's a great way to handle this. Or in our solo PR pro group, when things come up, it's like, oh, yeah, we share with each other how we've handled stuff. But the one thing about PR is that there's always going to be a sticky situation.
Michelle Kane (03:11):
No. Everything else goes off without a hitch. Everyone listens to you all the time, and everyone does what you want when they want you to. Right.
Karen Swim, APR (03:19):
Ha ha ha.
Michelle Kane (03:22):
Oh gosh. Yeah. Oh my goodness. Yes. It can get crazy out there.
Karen Swim, APR (03:29):
And we are not, I think that we should say this. We are not sharing very specific details or names of clients to protect the integrity of people who have shared stories and the clients who are part of these stories. And we absolutely mean no disrespect to any of these situations, and we just want to chat about things that happen in general. So let's just say that that's my disclaimer for the day. So no one sue us, because we can't afford to pay you.
Michelle Kane (04:04):
There you go. There you go. There was one sticky situation where I was not directly involved, but it was an event, it was an evening event. It was an annual, an organization's grand annual event, and one of the prominent speakers showed up late and out of sorts in a non-medical way.
Karen Swim, APR (04:30):
Oh, wow.
Michelle Kane (04:31):
They mispronounced names. And it was one of those situations where you're like, what is happening right now? And we all kind of rolled through it, but to this day, we will still giggle about it. And then the person had all sorts of interesting reasons as to why this was happening. But honest to God, my first thought was, is this person having a stroke? I mean, should we be seriously concerned? And then I soon realized, no, okay, this is just going to be interesting, and I hope they stop soon because wow. I mean, thankfully there was not a lot of cleanup to do on that front. It's not like it was a scandalous story or anything. It was just more of a, well, that happened.
Karen Swim, APR (05:15):
It's interesting because I think that goes in the client's behaving badly file, right? Clients who
Michelle Kane (05:21):
Yes. Yes. There we go. Yeah. Thankfully not
Karen Swim, APR (05:25):
Either. They do things that are inappropriate. They say things that are inappropriate. And we've seen this play out in public ways too, where someone has been on camera on an interview and it's not gone well because they came under the influence of something, and God bless the PR people who had to manage that. And we've seen it even on social media where people have done streams or recordings, and the audience immediately picks up that like, Hey, and then the PR people are left to manage it. I think there's not a lot that we can do to control all human behavior, but clearly I think that for people who have those issues, they have those issues. And as PR people, they typically will come out at some point. So when you know that, then you can take some measures to safeguard your client and your client's reputation. And it may even mean understanding that if they're not going to be under your watch or in a controllable environment, that there are certain things that you can't put them in situations where they could potentially fail.
Michelle Kane (06:46):
Right. And especially in that situation, it was definitely, even in my head, this is not my responsibility, but if needed, okay, how do we need to handle this afterwards? And thankfully it was sort of tempest in a teapot. But still, like you say, if you can know ahead of time, great, this came out of what is happening right now,
Karen Swim, APR (07:08):
Really. And that is a really, really tough one because as a PR person, you want to do the best that you can to protect your client's reputation. You don't want to lie. We've all seen this publicly too, where people have said that the person was having a medical issue, and you're like, that's not the truth. So we PR people go to the PR a website and read the code of ethics even if you're not a member, because I do believe that we have an ethical obligation, but you don't want to throw your client under the bus. You want to do what you can to minimize the damage. And after those situations, I do think if your client does or says, acts inappropriately does something inappropriate, and let's separate that from things that are illegal or things that could expose them to lawsuits. So we're talking about the more benign issues. It probably warrants a conversation about,
Michelle Kane (08:12):
Definitely
Karen Swim, APR (08:12):
About the behavior and about the measures that were taken. And it could require some apologies, some hosts more
Michelle Kane (08:25):
Just being ready.
Karen Swim, APR (08:27):
Yeah. I mean, that's tough. That is a really, really tough one. Fortunately, I think for most of us, we don't see that on a regular basis. I think we've all seen it to some degree over our career, but it's not a frequent occurrence.
Michelle Kane (08:42):
No, no, not at all. No, thankfully.
Karen Swim, APR (08:47):
I think another one that kind of falls under that is when your client goes off script interview and maybe says something that is racist, offensive, or just downright wrong, or they expose something that they weren't supposed to share about the company.
Michelle Kane (09:05):
That's the one You're in the slowmo. No, I remember there was an episode of The Good Wife with Alan Cumming as Eli Gold, and it had something to do with the Wisconsin Cheeseboard.
Karen Swim, APR (09:18):
Yeah.
Michelle Kane (09:19):
Oh, I have tried to find that clip and I just can't, or he's just having a, he himself is having a fit watching this unfold on television and his reprimand is kind of like the things we always wish we could say to a client, do not speak unless they're my words.
Karen Swim, APR (09:40):
And I know that journalists really hate this, but it's the reason why so many PR people want to be present at interviews. Some of it is being able, if necessary, and this is in the extreme, because I'm one of those people that if you're comfortable with me listening in, I want to listen in because oftentimes hearing the client talk about a situation really helps to inform my work too.
(10:06):
And then I can take what they say and I can utilize it too. But also, we just had this happen recently. Clients who really want to develop their thought leadership even more often want notes from you. They want to know, what did I do? Well, they want that feedback. And so if you're there in the background just listening, not interrupting, not controlling, but you're there and you're taking notes, and you can offer some constructive feedback. You also can follow up on any questions that the interviewer asks. But a lot of journalists hate that, and they feel that it should just be them and the client. But sometimes client and interviewer alone can be terrible on the client side because clients are people, and they're not all practiced interviewees. So they get comfortable and they may spill something and it's like, oh, wait, you're doing an IPO when? And you're like, no, I think we need to say, did you just disclose that? Or they give an opinion on something and it's like, yeah, that's a tough one too. But media prep is your friend prep, prep, prep, and then prep. Again, give them a briefing sheet. Go over very specific things, know the interviewer and their style.
(11:34):
Warn your client what are the things that you need to watch out for? What is this person? What might they say? Because of course, a journalist's job is to get at facts and to uncover truths, and they're going to dig.
Karen Swim, APR (11:48):
You have to prep your client what their boundaries are. It's not that you encouraging them to be less than truthful, but there are some things that are not ready to be disclosed to the public. And so you have to protect that and not grow so comfortable that you let your guard down and let information slip that is not supposed to come out yet.
Michelle Kane (12:11):
And that can often translate to social media as well. I'm sure we've all seen those situations where an owner of a business just goes all out on someone, and I've been so lucky. Of course, offline will say, yeah, we really want to say this stuff. And they'll be like, but I know I can't. I'm like, that's good. I'm like, type it out somewhere and then delete it
Karen Swim, APR (12:36):
And type it. Not
Michelle Kane (12:38):
On the platform that Yes, not on the platform. Open a note. Yeah, send it to me in an email. We'll all go and then we'll craft the response. But yeah, I mean, it's those little things that can really cause damage that you just want to try to avoid and what are you going to do? But
Karen Swim, APR (13:00):
Yeah,
Michelle Kane (13:00):
I mean,
Karen Swim, APR (13:02):
What about the sticky situation when you're humming along with a client and information comes out that is super concerning or damaging even? Oh my God, that's the worst.
Michelle Kane (13:15):
Yes, yes. Thankfully, I haven't been in that, but have seen it lately. And especially when you're blindsided, because it's almost like we joke that as a PR pro, we're often the therapist, but I always say, I don't need to know everything, but I need to know everything. It, it's kind of like an attorney, right? I can't help you unless I know all the ugly bits. And not only can that help you, if it's something criminal, just say, yeah, I'm not going to work with you. And I think that's something ethical to decide as well. I mean, if they're asking you to do things outside the bounds of our ethics, it's just time to, and the relationship, no matter what, it's unfortunate. But when it comes down to illegalities, and yeah, that's rough,
Karen Swim, APR (14:12):
And people can hide things, obviously. I think it's really important to vet, I mean, and into that hard to look into people, do your ticketing, do your research, know who you're about to do business with. And this is another good reason. As PR pros, we have to protect ourself with contracts, agreements, things that are in writing, things that are signed. And we also have to protect ourselves financially by collecting deposits, because if your client does something and then the entire thing blows up in your face, you could be out money. So you always need to have a cushion for yourself, a financial cushion that lets you absorb something blowing up in the client, being in trouble and not being able to pay you, or a client not paying you just because they're not a great person, or you needing to walk away and resign and say, I can't be a part of this. And that's a tough one because depending on the magnitude of what comes out,
Karen Swim, APR (15:14):
You
Karen Swim, APR (15:15):
Also, you go from protecting your client and their publics to really protecting yourself and your reputation.
Michelle Kane (15:22):
Exactly.
Karen Swim, APR (15:22):
And so I think we all sort of in the back of our mind, and actually we should have plans for this as well. We should have crisis communication plans for ourself. We need to be able to quickly go into action on our own behalf. Should we face one of those situations where you now have to distance yourself from someone that you represented?
Michelle Kane (15:44):
Agree, agree. And in those instances, I say trust your gut and know that you can walk away. And that's why it's good to have those terms written into your agreements and your contracts that gives both of you an out, because you may need to use it one day and for good reason. So protect yourself in that way. Give yourself that peace of mind because that's worth everything. When something like that comes up,
Karen Swim, APR (16:10):
It really is. We are being very mild, but I think for our non PR audience, I just want to share with you that I know everyone thinks that our jobs are easy and that we're the only ones who mess up or have ears, or we're at off. And there's always a lot of bashing about PR professionals, but the amount of things that we see in this line of work would make your head spin. And I mean, I could really go there and when I retire, I'm going to, my burn book is going to become so public, but I won't. And I think that that is a lot of professions, but I think more so in this profession, we see it all and we, wow, we've seen some stuff that would curl your hair.
Michelle Kane (17:08):
We know the things, but well, we hope we've given you something to think about or maybe gave yourself a giggle about one of your sticky situations. At the end of it all, we're here to support each other. That's really what this podcast has been about and what we'll continue to be about. And so we invite you to talk to us at solopro.com. Let us know what you'd like to hear. Please do share this around if you value it. And we thank you so very much for coming along this ride with us. And until next time, thanks for listening to “That Solo Life.”
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Transcribing live conversations can be tricky so please be forgiving of any typos or errors that you find. Love something here and want to share? Great, please read the notes at the end. Enjoy!
Michelle Kane (00:18):
Thank you for joining us for this episode of That Solo Life, the podcast for PR pros and marketers who work for themselves, people like me, Michelle Kane from Voice Matters, and my wonderful co-host, Karen Swim of Solo PR Pro. Hi, Karen. Do you know what? Hello? Do you know what today is? Sorry. Is it Monday? Yes. Sorry. I guess I'll reframe the question. This is our 300th episode. Can you believe it? Ah,
Karen Swim, APR (00:48):
Yay. cue the confetti. I cannot believe it. This is amazing, and I am Congratulations. Congratulations. Oh my gosh, you did it. What a great milestone.
Michelle Kane (01:02):
Yeah. I mean, I honestly haven't really had a moment to really soak in that notion, but it's still fun. I hope people still love it, and I hope as we move on from 300, that more and more people will love it. But I can't imagine talking shop every week with anyone but you.
Karen Swim, APR (01:24):
Oh, Michelle, you're going to make me cry. I feel the same way. It's funny because many, many years ago before podcasting became mainstream,
(01:33):
I dabbled in it a little bit, and I was always ready when the commitment was over. But with this, I have never grown tired of it. I've been tired, tired through it. I've had challenging moments, but this is, it's just such a joy. And to our listeners out there, if you're thinking of podcasting, there's just so many reasons to do it. And I think Michelle and I really come here from pure joy, for love for our profession, love for one another. We just enjoy hanging out. And we, as Michelle said, we really hope that you get some joy out of this as well, and that you pick up some tips along the way. Please stick with us on this journey because we are far from being done.
Michelle Kane (02:21):
Yeah. So today we're going to have some fun, right? You have something fun planned. Yes, yes. Sticky situations and how to handle them. Oh, boy.
Karen Swim, APR (02:32):
Yeah, that's a good one. We all have those sticky situations with clients, and it's always fun to just chat about those. And I always, sometimes even in our off air talks, when we talk, we get ideas from one another like, oh, that's a good idea. That's a great way to handle this. Or in our solo PR pro group, when things come up, it's like, oh, yeah, we share with each other how we've handled stuff. But the one thing about PR is that there's always going to be a sticky situation.
Michelle Kane (03:11):
No. Everything else goes off without a hitch. Everyone listens to you all the time, and everyone does what you want when they want you to. Right.
Karen Swim, APR (03:19):
Ha ha ha.
Michelle Kane (03:22):
Oh gosh. Yeah. Oh my goodness. Yes. It can get crazy out there.
Karen Swim, APR (03:29):
And we are not, I think that we should say this. We are not sharing very specific details or names of clients to protect the integrity of people who have shared stories and the clients who are part of these stories. And we absolutely mean no disrespect to any of these situations, and we just want to chat about things that happen in general. So let's just say that that's my disclaimer for the day. So no one sue us, because we can't afford to pay you.
Michelle Kane (04:04):
There you go. There you go. There was one sticky situation where I was not directly involved, but it was an event, it was an evening event. It was an annual, an organization's grand annual event, and one of the prominent speakers showed up late and out of sorts in a non-medical way.
Karen Swim, APR (04:30):
Oh, wow.
Michelle Kane (04:31):
They mispronounced names. And it was one of those situations where you're like, what is happening right now? And we all kind of rolled through it, but to this day, we will still giggle about it. And then the person had all sorts of interesting reasons as to why this was happening. But honest to God, my first thought was, is this person having a stroke? I mean, should we be seriously concerned? And then I soon realized, no, okay, this is just going to be interesting, and I hope they stop soon because wow. I mean, thankfully there was not a lot of cleanup to do on that front. It's not like it was a scandalous story or anything. It was just more of a, well, that happened.
Karen Swim, APR (05:15):
It's interesting because I think that goes in the client's behaving badly file, right? Clients who
Michelle Kane (05:21):
Yes. Yes. There we go. Yeah. Thankfully not
Karen Swim, APR (05:25):
Either. They do things that are inappropriate. They say things that are inappropriate. And we've seen this play out in public ways too, where someone has been on camera on an interview and it's not gone well because they came under the influence of something, and God bless the PR people who had to manage that. And we've seen it even on social media where people have done streams or recordings, and the audience immediately picks up that like, Hey, and then the PR people are left to manage it. I think there's not a lot that we can do to control all human behavior, but clearly I think that for people who have those issues, they have those issues. And as PR people, they typically will come out at some point. So when you know that, then you can take some measures to safeguard your client and your client's reputation. And it may even mean understanding that if they're not going to be under your watch or in a controllable environment, that there are certain things that you can't put them in situations where they could potentially fail.
Michelle Kane (06:46):
Right. And especially in that situation, it was definitely, even in my head, this is not my responsibility, but if needed, okay, how do we need to handle this afterwards? And thankfully it was sort of tempest in a teapot. But still, like you say, if you can know ahead of time, great, this came out of what is happening right now,
Karen Swim, APR (07:08):
Really. And that is a really, really tough one because as a PR person, you want to do the best that you can to protect your client's reputation. You don't want to lie. We've all seen this publicly too, where people have said that the person was having a medical issue, and you're like, that's not the truth. So we PR people go to the PR a website and read the code of ethics even if you're not a member, because I do believe that we have an ethical obligation, but you don't want to throw your client under the bus. You want to do what you can to minimize the damage. And after those situations, I do think if your client does or says, acts inappropriately does something inappropriate, and let's separate that from things that are illegal or things that could expose them to lawsuits. So we're talking about the more benign issues. It probably warrants a conversation about,
Michelle Kane (08:12):
Definitely
Karen Swim, APR (08:12):
About the behavior and about the measures that were taken. And it could require some apologies, some hosts more
Michelle Kane (08:25):
Just being ready.
Karen Swim, APR (08:27):
Yeah. I mean, that's tough. That is a really, really tough one. Fortunately, I think for most of us, we don't see that on a regular basis. I think we've all seen it to some degree over our career, but it's not a frequent occurrence.
Michelle Kane (08:42):
No, no, not at all. No, thankfully.
Karen Swim, APR (08:47):
I think another one that kind of falls under that is when your client goes off script interview and maybe says something that is racist, offensive, or just downright wrong, or they expose something that they weren't supposed to share about the company.
Michelle Kane (09:05):
That's the one You're in the slowmo. No, I remember there was an episode of The Good Wife with Alan Cumming as Eli Gold, and it had something to do with the Wisconsin Cheeseboard.
Karen Swim, APR (09:18):
Yeah.
Michelle Kane (09:19):
Oh, I have tried to find that clip and I just can't, or he's just having a, he himself is having a fit watching this unfold on television and his reprimand is kind of like the things we always wish we could say to a client, do not speak unless they're my words.
Karen Swim, APR (09:40):
And I know that journalists really hate this, but it's the reason why so many PR people want to be present at interviews. Some of it is being able, if necessary, and this is in the extreme, because I'm one of those people that if you're comfortable with me listening in, I want to listen in because oftentimes hearing the client talk about a situation really helps to inform my work too.
(10:06):
And then I can take what they say and I can utilize it too. But also, we just had this happen recently. Clients who really want to develop their thought leadership even more often want notes from you. They want to know, what did I do? Well, they want that feedback. And so if you're there in the background just listening, not interrupting, not controlling, but you're there and you're taking notes, and you can offer some constructive feedback. You also can follow up on any questions that the interviewer asks. But a lot of journalists hate that, and they feel that it should just be them and the client. But sometimes client and interviewer alone can be terrible on the client side because clients are people, and they're not all practiced interviewees. So they get comfortable and they may spill something and it's like, oh, wait, you're doing an IPO when? And you're like, no, I think we need to say, did you just disclose that? Or they give an opinion on something and it's like, yeah, that's a tough one too. But media prep is your friend prep, prep, prep, and then prep. Again, give them a briefing sheet. Go over very specific things, know the interviewer and their style.
(11:34):
Warn your client what are the things that you need to watch out for? What is this person? What might they say? Because of course, a journalist's job is to get at facts and to uncover truths, and they're going to dig.
Karen Swim, APR (11:48):
You have to prep your client what their boundaries are. It's not that you encouraging them to be less than truthful, but there are some things that are not ready to be disclosed to the public. And so you have to protect that and not grow so comfortable that you let your guard down and let information slip that is not supposed to come out yet.
Michelle Kane (12:11):
And that can often translate to social media as well. I'm sure we've all seen those situations where an owner of a business just goes all out on someone, and I've been so lucky. Of course, offline will say, yeah, we really want to say this stuff. And they'll be like, but I know I can't. I'm like, that's good. I'm like, type it out somewhere and then delete it
Karen Swim, APR (12:36):
And type it. Not
Michelle Kane (12:38):
On the platform that Yes, not on the platform. Open a note. Yeah, send it to me in an email. We'll all go and then we'll craft the response. But yeah, I mean, it's those little things that can really cause damage that you just want to try to avoid and what are you going to do? But
Karen Swim, APR (13:00):
Yeah,
Michelle Kane (13:00):
I mean,
Karen Swim, APR (13:02):
What about the sticky situation when you're humming along with a client and information comes out that is super concerning or damaging even? Oh my God, that's the worst.
Michelle Kane (13:15):
Yes, yes. Thankfully, I haven't been in that, but have seen it lately. And especially when you're blindsided, because it's almost like we joke that as a PR pro, we're often the therapist, but I always say, I don't need to know everything, but I need to know everything. It, it's kind of like an attorney, right? I can't help you unless I know all the ugly bits. And not only can that help you, if it's something criminal, just say, yeah, I'm not going to work with you. And I think that's something ethical to decide as well. I mean, if they're asking you to do things outside the bounds of our ethics, it's just time to, and the relationship, no matter what, it's unfortunate. But when it comes down to illegalities, and yeah, that's rough,
Karen Swim, APR (14:12):
And people can hide things, obviously. I think it's really important to vet, I mean, and into that hard to look into people, do your ticketing, do your research, know who you're about to do business with. And this is another good reason. As PR pros, we have to protect ourself with contracts, agreements, things that are in writing, things that are signed. And we also have to protect ourselves financially by collecting deposits, because if your client does something and then the entire thing blows up in your face, you could be out money. So you always need to have a cushion for yourself, a financial cushion that lets you absorb something blowing up in the client, being in trouble and not being able to pay you, or a client not paying you just because they're not a great person, or you needing to walk away and resign and say, I can't be a part of this. And that's a tough one because depending on the magnitude of what comes out,
Karen Swim, APR (15:14):
You
Karen Swim, APR (15:15):
Also, you go from protecting your client and their publics to really protecting yourself and your reputation.
Michelle Kane (15:22):
Exactly.
Karen Swim, APR (15:22):
And so I think we all sort of in the back of our mind, and actually we should have plans for this as well. We should have crisis communication plans for ourself. We need to be able to quickly go into action on our own behalf. Should we face one of those situations where you now have to distance yourself from someone that you represented?
Michelle Kane (15:44):
Agree, agree. And in those instances, I say trust your gut and know that you can walk away. And that's why it's good to have those terms written into your agreements and your contracts that gives both of you an out, because you may need to use it one day and for good reason. So protect yourself in that way. Give yourself that peace of mind because that's worth everything. When something like that comes up,
Karen Swim, APR (16:10):
It really is. We are being very mild, but I think for our non PR audience, I just want to share with you that I know everyone thinks that our jobs are easy and that we're the only ones who mess up or have ears, or we're at off. And there's always a lot of bashing about PR professionals, but the amount of things that we see in this line of work would make your head spin. And I mean, I could really go there and when I retire, I'm going to, my burn book is going to become so public, but I won't. And I think that that is a lot of professions, but I think more so in this profession, we see it all and we, wow, we've seen some stuff that would curl your hair.
Michelle Kane (17:08):
We know the things, but well, we hope we've given you something to think about or maybe gave yourself a giggle about one of your sticky situations. At the end of it all, we're here to support each other. That's really what this podcast has been about and what we'll continue to be about. And so we invite you to talk to us at solopro.com. Let us know what you'd like to hear. Please do share this around if you value it. And we thank you so very much for coming along this ride with us. And until next time, thanks for listening to “That Solo Life.”
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