Leading Through Crisis with Keith Erwood

When disaster strikes, what separates the leaders who rise from the ones who freeze? In this episode of Unpacked with Ron Harvey, crisis management expert Keith Erwood draws on decades on the front lines of emergencies, from his years as a New York City EMT to advising organizations on business continuity and disaster recovery. Keith makes a sharp case that the plan itself is never the real test of leadership under pressure. The decisions a leader makes in the moment are. He and Ron unpack how any organization can build that capability long before a crisis ever arrives, and why waiting for perfect information is often the costliest mistake of all.

In this conversation, you will learn:

• Why the people who rise in a crisis often are not the ones you would expect
• The trait Keith consistently sees in leaders who stay clear and calm under pressure
• How crisis leadership can actually be trained through scenarios, tabletop exercises, and muscle memory
• A real pandemic-era example showing how one delayed decision triggered a cascade of new problems
• Why your business continuity plan is a "toolbox" and your strategies are the tools inside it
• What should happen in the first sixty minutes of any crisis, from activating the team to mitigating damage
• The role trust, clear communication, and the courage to course-correct play when everything is on the line
• A simple habit any team can adopt to stay crisis-ready in just a few minutes a week

Whether you lead a large enterprise or a small team, this episode is a practical, no-nonsense guide to making better decisions when time is your biggest enemy and the information in front of you is incomplete.

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Just Make A Difference: Leading Under Pressure by Ron Harvey

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Disclaimer:

The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and guests and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any organization or entity. The information provided in this podcast is intended for educational and informational purposes only and should not be considered as professional advice. Listeners should consult with their own professional advisors before implementing any suggestions or recommendations made in this podcast. The speakers and guests are not responsible for any actions taken by listeners based on the information presented in this podcast. The podcast is not intended to be a substitute for professional advice or services. The speakers and guests make no representations or warranties of any kind, express or implied, about the completeness, accuracy, reliability, suitability or availability with respect to the information, products, services, or related graphics contained in this podc...

Transcript

Welcome And Meet Keith Irwood

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to Unpack Podcast with your host, Leadership Consultant, Ron Harvey of Global Core Strategies and Consulting. Ron believes that leadership is the fundamental driver towards making a difference. So now, to find out more of what it means to unpack leadership, here's your host, Ron Harvey.

SPEAKER_02 0:20

Well, good morning, everyone. This is Ron Harvey, Vice President, the Chief Operating Officer for Global Course Strategies and Consulting. If you've been following us and you're a guest of ours of ours all the time, you know we do everything leadership. People always matter. And so we're excited that we get the opportunity to showcase and share different people from around the globe with a lot of expertise on our podcast, which is Unpack with Ron Harvey. So hang on, fashion your seat belts. I have another phenomenal guest coming out of Florida. And I'm going to ask Keith if he would introduce himself and share whatever he wants to about himself before we dive in. So Keith, welcome and thank you for saying yes to the show.

SPEAKER_00 0:59

Thanks, Ron, for uh having me be on Unpacked, and I'm excited to be here.

SPEAKER_02 1:04

Yes, yes. So, Keith, you're in Florida. Can you tell us a little bit about your business, who you are, what you do? So, people and the guests that are with us know who's with us?

SPEAKER_00 1:14

Sure. So

What The Irwood Group Does

SPEAKER_00 1:15

I'm Keith Irwood, uh, one of the founders of the Irwid Group, uh, founded the company along with my wife. Uh, she's the CEO and financial officer, while I'm the COO and technical officer, but I'm also the chief uh the principal managing consultant, where I do the main lifting of the consultant where we help businesses prepare uh for the future and disruptive impacts to their business through business continuity and IT disaster recovery along with crisis management.

SPEAKER_02 1:48

Yes, yes. Thank you. We got some stuff in common. I didn't I didn't pick up, you know, the wife uh CEO. You play the same role I play in my company. My wife is CEO as well. I'm CEO and business developer. So we got some stuff in common. We work for our wives.

SPEAKER_00 2:02

Yeah, I I noticed that. Um, I, you know, a lot of people look at that as like that's weird, but I love, you know, um be having a family business, working for my wife and doing the day-to-day operations, it makes it a fun, family-oriented business.

SPEAKER_02 2:19

Yes, yes, we appreciate it. And I'm sure we'll get some questions. Uh, you know, you may get some reach out and how do you um for for my wife and I, we get a lot of invites to to people that are actually in that space and trying to figure out how do you work a business with your spouse um and keep a healthy relationship in a healthy business? Um, and I think that'll be something that we may get into the let's see, but we'll we'll dive into, you know, so the work that you do and the spaces that you're in, there are a lot of things as you look at it.

From EMT Work To Data Recovery

SPEAKER_02 2:45

I want to dive into leadership a little bit for people that are listening. Um, you spent a lot of time in crisis management. Um, what is it that that really got you into that space? Um, you know, when you the business you're running in crisis management?

SPEAKER_00 3:00

Well, that's a great question. Um, I like to tell people my life came around like a full circle because when I was a young boy, um, and I I grew up in New York City, and I had grandparents that lived in upstate New York. So when we would go up every summer, we go to the county fair. My first stop was always running towards the uh pavilion where the Red Cross and the civil defense was, and gathering up as much information as I could, all the pamphlets on disasters and disaster planning and preparedness. And I'd sit there for hours just reading that. Um, and then as I got older, um, I became a New York State EMT and then started working for New York City EMS, and I spent about uh 13 and a half years doing that. Um, there's kind of a long story there, but I'll keep it short. But basically what happened was I I went to New York City EMS as a way to kind of get into the medical field in a backdoor way, where instead of I would pay out of pocket to go and learn medicine, because I got that job and worked under health and hospitals, they would actually pay you your salary to go to school. Um, long story short, there, my intention was I wanted to become a PA or physician's assistant, um, just for clarity. And then I had spoken with some of the teaching hospitals, and I was told, okay, if I go through that program and I get good grades, they'll actually get me into the medical program. So that was my intention. Um, as you know, life happens. So um New York City had like a like budgetary shortfall. So they ended up canceling that program. Um, they removed us out of health and hospitals and put us under the fire department. Um, no problem with uh firemen, they do a great job, but that wasn't the career path that I had decided on, and that went away when they removed us from the health and hospitals. And I knew a bunch of people that were in programs that had to be taken out of programs and put back out, you know, working on the ambulance and things like that. Um, so that disappeared. So I kind of fell back on another passion I had, which was computers. And I went, I decided if I'm gonna go to school and have to pay for it out of pocket, that was the path I was gonna go down. And I was already involved with computers in the in the 90s, actually, even before I started EMS in 1993. Uh, one of the places I was working at had a pretty sizable computer network and databases, and we worked on those and set them up. And then I um through that, I actually found out that I was really good at data recovery. Yes. Um, starting around 95, 96, I would do a lot of work recovering data for people. And the irony back then was well, number one, it was easier to do back then, and then two, it wasn't usually about files for a company. Yes, it's usually about something happened to their computer and their family pictures happened to be on that computer and they wanted to recover them. So that's what that's how I got my start. And then I would pick up Slack from like if local computer shops and other consultants had too much work that they couldn't handle, they would call me, especially if they needed some data recovery. And I ended up working with uh a lawyer out in Staten Island where we recovered the data, but then the question was he kind of knew my background in EMS, and I don't know how he put the DOS together, but kind of like basically asked me, let's start putting plans in place so this never happens again. And that was in the late 90s, and that's kind of how I really got started in that. And then as time went on, people would ask me about you know different crisis, like how do we manage it better? Um, and you know, with with the EMS, we were responding to a lot of very large crises and disasters within the city. Um, first on scene, usually, and we're setting up the incident command system. And it's very interesting, like people don't necessarily know the history of emergency management well, and I won't take a huge dive, but a lot of that was born a lot of the people who came up and ended up working in New York City Emergency Office of Emergency Management act, they came from other departments, but a lot of them also came from New York City EMS because of the skill set that's kind of born in that space. Um, so people basically naturally with the IT disaster recovery kind of started asking me to put other plans in place and kind of help them manage with the crisis. So that's kind of how I got into that space. Um, it was kind of by accident, but like

Why Some Leaders Rise Under Stress

SPEAKER_00 8:10

I said, my life kind of came full circle and it's what I enjoy doing today.

SPEAKER_02 8:17

Yeah. Yeah, which is for people that are listening, if you forget how do you, how do you, why do you do what you do and how you got started is always important because it is there's some value and some purpose behind that. You know, you spend a lot of time with leaders that that are in real crisis moments, um, and you walk through you know probably thousands of those. What separates leaders who rise in those moments and those who freeze? What have you noticed?

SPEAKER_00 8:42

Yeah, so it's it's pretty interesting. Um, there's a few different dynamics, and one of the things, especially with uh say like a large-scale event or disaster that impacts not just one person's business, but a large region and everything around them kind of has the appearance of crumbling.

SPEAKER_02 9:04

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 9:04

And you see you always see people who are there's always the people that people expect to rise to the occasion, and uh oftentimes the people who actually do rise to the occasion aren't necessarily the people that you would expect, right? Sometimes they can be uh other community leaders, uh other employees within a business who rise to the occasion to make things happen, and then sometimes there's the leaders that you would expect to take charge, they kind of end up unable to do so at times. And the one thing that I discovered is you can't really tell ahead of time, with one exception, and it's usually the people who have kind of experienced crises throughout their life uh of different types and different scenarios that tend to rise to the occasion. Um but I also find that you can kind of train for it, but the thing is you don't necessarily know, like you might be depending upon one person who might rise to the occasion and then they falter. So it's hard to tell sometimes who that might be, especially appearance-wise or expectations based upon what you've seen.

SPEAKER_02 10:24

Yeah, yeah. Are there any uh in in your in your experience, are there any characteristics? So if I'm a I'm a uh I'm an organization and I'm and I want to make sure that I'm identifying, because you know, leadership under pressure is important and and it makes a break in the organization. What would you tell people that are listening? What are some things that if I'm the CEO of an organization, what would I be looking for? And it's never 100% guaranteed that it's going to work out well, but uh is there anything you've noticed that that some those people that have risen to the occasion,

Training Decision-Making With Scenarios

SPEAKER_02 10:55

have you noticed anything specific about them that's pretty common?

SPEAKER_00 10:59

Um well, one of the things I I find interesting is the the clarity and calmness under pressure is and the ability to make the decisions fairly quickly with the incomplete information. And the thing with that is you you can kind of train for it and build on it, and that's part of what I also do with the crisis uh management and leadership is the the training process behind that. Okay, um, that's kind of key to it, right? Getting getting used to it, and it's not so part of what I do is about the planning and creating the plans. The plans, though, provide the structure and necessarily um the things that you can fall back on as far as strategies, but that's not the key to it. The key to it is actually the leader making the key decisions uh at the time that it needs to be made.

SPEAKER_02 11:56

Yes, yes. I love that you go in there, and I say that because oftentimes, you know, I think people can be technically capable and competent. Um, but I also um, you know, being military, you know, people respond differently under pressure. And I think most leaders, the time when you're really going to be assessed the most is when there's chaos. You know, can can that leader get the whole crew back on board and say, I've got it, doesn't seem like it's it's not going the right way or things are falling apart. And and in those moments of crisis, which is the work that you do, you know, what shows up? People that are pretty steady, people that are well respected, um, people that have a voice and can get people to feel you know or see some momentum in whatever they're going through. I mean, so when you think of that, um, making a breaking, you you mentioned a couple times on Nikki that it can be trained. You spend time in that. What when you say it can be trained, can you if can you unpack a little bit more about how can I train someone to be prepared for crisis moments?

SPEAKER_00 12:52

Sure. Um, and well, the first thing to do is right, you need to kind of have a structure in place in order to do that. So that's like the uh step one is to build out that structure and the planning process, what you would potentially do in a crisis. So leadership, right, it's it's one thing to lead during normal times. And then yeah, that that can be there's pressure on that in and of itself. But when a crisis strikes, there's even more pressure, more that you have to rely on the leader to make the right decisions at the right moment in order to move forward. Um, one of the things that I look at, so there's like a couple different things there. Um, especially with leadership under crisis, I kind of look at it as a stewardship, right? You're not just um somebody who's leading along the way, but you also have to be grounded in certain beliefs and character. And part of how we kind of train that is what we do is we set up the plan and then we'll create scenarios. Yes, and of course, the like we put we add certain things into the scenarios to kind of create some pressure and decision making where we might, in like one instance, where we take away some of the decision making process where you don't necessarily know what you have to decide, and then that creates some stress and some pressure. But it's also it's kind of like uh when we also do IT disaster recovery, it it becomes um, you want to build like that muscle memory and a repetitive nature of when there's pressures building and decisions that have to be made in the moment. Um, I've seen where so this is uh interesting aspect that I I've run into multiple times. And a lot of times what companies want to do, especially companies that are like high-tech or very smart people, the the common thing that I run into often is well, we'll just figure out we'll just figure it out when it happens. So then I kind of try to come back in and explain the problem with that, is yes, you're you're smart people, you no doubt could probably figure it out during a crisis, but there's certain things that happen. And having plans and strategies in place, being able to fall back on those and making the right decision saves a vast amount of time. And when a crisis happens, time is your biggest enemy. Where um, so like downtime happens, and then there's a cost involved. And most people just look at when a downtime happens, we're losing revenue or cash flow has been disrupted, and both of those are important, and that's often the first and only thing that many companies or people will look at, but there's other additional cost factors and impacts, and those time delays

The Pandemic Porta-Potty Lesson

SPEAKER_00 16:10

build in additional costs. Um, so I want to kind of give an example. Uh, I was working with one company where, and this was like a simple thing, and I kind of it I like using this because it paints a big visual in people's minds. And it was uh so during the pandemic, I was helping one company with their uh crisis management, and one of the decisions that had to be made was they were a big distributor and they had a lot of truckers coming on site. So, what they wanted to do is protect the people on site and not introduce other people into the facility that may or may not be infected or cause a potential outbreak within the company. Yes, where people who are like maintaining a quarantine to continue working. So, one of those things that we had to do was get a port a potty outside for the truckers so that they wouldn't come inside the facility and break that quarantine.

SPEAKER_02 17:14

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 17:15

Um, sounds like a very simple decision, but what happened was uh bringing that company in, they had standard language, leak legalese, leak legal language within their contract, which was pretty standard. Uh, basically talking about if something happens to the Porta Paddy that causes a spill, it would be a hazardous material incident and then respond. So the legal team got involved and they didn't want to sign off on that because of that one line. Yes. Um, so what had happened is a lot of time had transpired, about a month went by before the decision was made, and they finally brought in a new head of the legal department. And he said, Why are we holding this up? Let's just pull the trigger. They signed off on it. The problem came in is that by the time they decided to move on it and sign off on it, all the vendors in the area were already the supply was taken up, so there were no more porta-potties. So, because of that one decision process, they had to actually fall back and say, you know what, we need to open up our facility to the truckers because we don't have we we can no longer provide that as a service on site. So just the delay in that one decision-making process caused a whole other series of other decisions that had to be made and planned around that they weren't prepared for because they they delayed in the decision-making process. So, kind of one of the things that I do is come in is we look at strategies, and I like to kind of speak about it like this to simplify it is your plan, your your business continuity plan is like your toolbox. Yes, and all the strategies that you come up with are just your tools that you put in your toolbox, and the more tools that you have in your toolbox, the better off you're gonna be. And right, you could use your tools in many different ways, but you have the starting point there. So the more planning that you do, and that the more you involve other people within your business, whether that's again like your legal counsel or your HR decision makers, the more that you discuss these strategies ahead of time, the more you'll be prepared as a leadership team to make these decisions when the crisis happens. So that's kind of how I like to look at it as an example. And I like to use that example because it's usually a very visual example for people to imagine of what the impact can be.

SPEAKER_02 19:57

Yeah, and thank you for sharing. I mean, and the examples are really, really clear because it, you know, sometimes you see it as a simple decision that can cause a full. What do you see on the Keith in the first 60 minutes? What are what are the mistakes that you see leaders making when a crisis happens? And what do you see the leaders,

The First 60 Minutes Mistakes

SPEAKER_02 20:15

the number one or number two mistake that probably happens in the first 60 minutes from from a CEO executive role? What do you see as in the first 60 minutes that we just don't get right?

SPEAKER_00 20:26

Yeah, so basically within the first uh even five, 10, or 15 minutes is there's usually a delay. Every everybody wants to wait before pulling the trigger on making certain decisions. The problem with that is you're never gonna have complete information. And the other interesting thing about it is usually the first information you get, especially during a big crisis, it's usually incorrect. So you need to make adjustments, and there's certain things that should happen, um, such as, right, if if we're gonna talk, especially like let's talk big business, right? If if something happens and there's an impact to a business, and we'll just say, okay, it's it's at a facility on site, the first thing that should happen is the crisis team should be activated, at least uh partial. And what should also be done is an evaluation, right? Um, there's usually an assessment team to go look at, and these are usually people in the company that know um like what they're doing it in a specific department or the facility, and they can look at the impact and figure out pretty quickly what's going to be the overall impact to the business or the damage to the facility. And then the decision process can actually begin. And right, the first couple of decisions would. Be okay, if this has happened, is it going to get worse? Right. So that's that's the first thing to look at. And then if it does get worse, do we need to stop or halt work? Do we need to evacuate the building? Do we need to send people home to an alternate location? Different things like that. The other thing that is often missed is if something's happening and it's causing damage, like, is there something we can do right now to mitigate the damage impact? Right. And that's actually like if insurance, as long as it's not a life or safety threat to people, minimizing the damage impact is usually a key call-out in any insurance that you might have, also. And then from there, moving on to the decision process of what do we need now for the recovery efforts. So for that first 60 minutes, it's about how quickly can we get those minimal things up and the information we need. And again, usually the first initial information isn't usually going to be correct, but it's about the decision-making process and how quickly can we adjust to each new piece of information that's coming in rather than let's wait and see.

SPEAKER_02 23:19

Yeah, yeah. So when you when you when you think about it, okay, so in the first 60 minutes, um, you know, the decision's got to be made, information may not be as accurate um as it as it will get over time. Trust in in the middle of the role, what's the role

Trust, Clarity, And Course Correction

SPEAKER_02 23:35

of trust in the middle of crisis management? And how do you build it?

SPEAKER_00 23:41

Yeah, that's a great question. Um, so trust usually comes from the the leadership team, right? So and there's some interesting things there, right? So almost in any company you have you have built-in leaders that people trust, yes, and then leaders that people are kind of well, I'm not so sure, you know.

SPEAKER_02 24:03

Yeah, the underpince, yeah, the underpinski.

SPEAKER_00 24:05

Yeah, so it's one of the things, right, is that comes from a couple different things. It comes from communication and communication with clarity, right? Like um, if you have a leader who maybe makes a decision, right? It's one thing to make a decision and be wrong and say, you know what, I I made a mistake there, let's quickly change it and and do this instead. Rather than I make a decision, it's not working out so well, but let's just keep going with it and and seeing how that's gonna turn out, right? I think people appreciate a leader who recognizes that they've made either a mistake or poor decision, and they recognize it and then they correct or course correct as they're moving forward. And that um that's something like we see right across across industries and uh as you know, right, even in the military, right? There's like tons of examples out there with leaders making decisions and then having the course correct and making new decisions. Yes. But we also have leaders who uh they make poor decisions and then they keep making poor decisions, but that also comes, it comes from both practice and it comes from clarity, right? It also comes from confidence, and those are the key things that you can build through like different tabletop exercises and practice scenarios and even delivering communications, right? Like it's almost all leaders in the major corporations we have in in this country and other countries, most of them go through communications um exercises and courses. Like they're given that extra help from the company to learn how to effectively communicate. So even when we have people, right, there's always this debate of are leaders are great leaders born or are they made? So I kind of believe that it can be both, but even the people who look at we look at as natural born leaders, they could still benefit through training and practice, yes, and knowing what how to make decisions in those moments of whether it's normal, normal business day decisions or even more importantly,

Simple Ways To Practice Preparedness

SPEAKER_00 26:35

during a crisis.

SPEAKER_02 26:37

Yes, yeah, I love it. I think, and I think that's the important part is you got to work the muscle. So as we look at time, uh, two questions for us uh um as we get closer to that time frame. For the leaders that are listening today that are in key roles, what's one thing that they they can do in their organization um to ensure they're more prepared when a crisis shows up?

SPEAKER_00 26:58

Yeah, definitely um pre-planning, thinking about it, right? It doesn't, and a lot of I've seen this, it's across the board, everything from large businesses all the way down to small businesses is they think that practicing or training or doing an exercise is so disruptive to their company that they put it off. Or maybe they'll do it once per year, but it doesn't really have to be that way, right? You can you can even bring it down to a team level. Uh, most teams or most good teams, they'll usually have like whether they call it uh a standup or a quick catch-up, right? A meeting like once per week, or even if it's once per month. You could take a quick three to five minutes out of the beginning of each meeting or or the ending of each meeting and kind of talk things through, right? Like, well, hey, what if this happens, right? Like what if this scenario happens? And it could just be something basic, right? Like you could be um, let's say an IT team and your meeting once a week, we'll say, and it could be like, hey, we're we're so busy, we're overworked patching different machines that we're not necessarily keeping up on our disaster recovery. Let's kind of talk through what we would do if X happens and what how would we respond? How would we recover? What's the first thing we should do? And then do we have that documented? Can we document it? Can we do it better? And like, what do we what do we improve for next time? So it could be as simple as that, but also I do think that especially in upper leadership positions, things should be exercised much more frequently. There's really no reason why people can't sit down in a room, even at an executive level, with their busy schedules and talk about a scenario or a one-off. If X happens, how are we gonna respond? And can we respond quickly enough? Do we have the right things in place where we can make key decisions quickly? And if we don't, how do we fix that?

SPEAKER_02 29:10

Yes, yes. Great information, Keith. Great information. So for our listeners that want to

How To Reach Keith And Final Takeaways

SPEAKER_02 29:15

connect with you, um, you know, what is it that they will be experiencing that says they should reach out to you and how do they contact you?

SPEAKER_00 29:22

Sure. So there's a couple different things. Uh, unfortunately, a lot of people don't call me until an incident happens. Um, and and I don't want to say it's too late because it's it's not, but what I can do, like if you're suffering uh in a crisis already, what I might be able to do is limited. I can always give you know advisement and guidance, but it's much better to call before a crisis happens, and then we can put the systems and framework as well as the strategies for recovery in place before anything happens. And I want to make a key point here. Like I do a lot of things that are different than a lot of other consultants or agencies and big consultant companies in my space, is oftentimes they'll help you put a plan together, but when the crisis happens and you call for help, which inevitably happens because people the first instinct people have is let me call them and see if they can help me because people naturally kind of panic when things happen. Absolutely. Um but rather so what a lot of companies will say is hey, we already built the plan, just follow the plan, you'll be okay. So one of the differentiators for me and our company is that I'll never turn away a call for help. Um, even if even if I haven't worked for you before, we haven't built your plan. If you call for help, I'll at least give you some advisement and guidance at the very least. But especially if we've built a plan with you, I'm never gonna turn you away at that moment of crisis. Like everybody needs a little help here and there. Yes, awesome.

SPEAKER_02 31:10

How do people reach you? What's the best way to contact you on the Erwood group?

SPEAKER_00 31:14

Um, so uh you mind if I give a couple?

SPEAKER_02 31:17

Oh, yeah, give a couple ways. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:20

So the first way, uh, I'm pretty easy to find on LinkedIn, right? Keith Irwood. Um, I think I'm the only one currently out there in the world. Uh I had an uncle by the same name, but you can reach out to me on LinkedIn. I share a lot of resources uh and information there. The other way is obviously you could go to Erwoodgroup.com and reach out to me that way. And I know this is probably unexpected for a lot of people, but you could uh you could call or text me at 925-339-8886. So 925-339-8886. Whether you're going through a crisis or you need additional help or you're just not sure and you need more confidence or clarity, you can call or text me. And I'll even give you a free 15-minute um readiness walkthrough to see how prepared you really are.

SPEAKER_02 32:14

Yes, love it, love it. Uh, Keefe has given you three ways to reach out to him. Um, you can go to his LinkedIn profile. Um, and as we did the research, I didn't find anybody else but but him is uh out there, so he's the only one that I found. Um, but you can also go to his website um and look him up, and I'm sure there are resources there for you. And he gave me his personal cell number. Um, so you can call or text him and even have questions. And I think that's the important part about this podcast is we want to not only educate you, but we want to be a resource for you. So if you listen to the podcast, um share it with others. Um if you know someone that can use either of the services that Keith or I offer, reach out to us. We love to have a conversation. Um, we're only in business um because you use our services, and so we appreciate that. For everyone that joined us on the podcast, you know, Keith and I want to unpack something, and I always want to put resources in front of the entire community that listens to us. Um, if you know of another person that should come on the podcast because they have something to add value to the people that we serve, love to have a conversation to see if they're a good fit. Um, feel free to reach out to us on our website. Um, there's a link out there. Um, there's always a way to register to be on the podcast. Um, Keith, any last-minute information that pop up that you want to share before we jump off?

SPEAKER_00 33:22

Um, so one thing that I could share with everybody is it's really important to prepare. Um, everybody thinks that this type of scenario or this event, right, whether it's an earthquake, a fire, flood, or hurricane, everybody thinks it's not going to happen to them and that they're immune. But the best thing you can do is just start looking at your business and just think about what would actually impact your business and how you can plan for your future around that. That's the one thing I would share.

SPEAKER_02 33:55

Yeah, I agree with you. I mean, that's the important part, is it's being prepared for the emergency. Um, I say all the time for us, you know, uh, my wife and I both served um in the in the military for 21 years. And we prepared for the worst case scenario. We hope it never happened, um, quite honestly. Um, but if it did, we didn't want people to feel ill-equipped or prepared to get through it, um, which is a bad feeling. If you don't prepare your team for when it happens, it's a horrible feeling as a leader. So, leaders, um, they do prepare their people for catastrophic events. And if something goes wrong, how do we take care of people? Because there's going to be some damage, there's going to be some loss, but you want to minimize that. And that's what preparation does. It allows you to minimize the amount of damage happening in that moment of a crisis. Um, thank y'all for joining us. We hope you share it with someone else. Um, at this time, Keith and I will sign off and tell y'all thank you. Um, you will be able to reach either one of us. You can go to our website, Global Course Strategies and Consulting. You can find me on LinkedIn. Those are probably the best two spots to ever find me. Or you can go and look up Unpack Leadership Unpacked Leadership, um, the podcast, and you can find me there as well. So until next time, Keith and I will sign off and tell you thank you for joining us and being with us, I'm doing our time today, and look forward to you joining another episode of Unpack with Ron Harvey. Have a good day, everyone.

SPEAKER_01 35:09

Well, we hope you enjoy this edition of Unpack Podcast with Leadership Consultant Ron Harvey. Remember to join us every Monday as Ron Unpacks Sound Advice, providing real answers for real leadership challenges. Until next time, remember to add value and make a difference where you are or the people you serve. Because people always matter.