Bulletproof Your Business: Mastering Continuity in Crisis

The unexpected happens—platforms crash, power fails, key equipment breaks down. Is your business prepared to keep functioning when disaster strikes? In this eye-opening conversation with business continuity expert Erika Andresen, we explore the critical yet often overlooked practices that keep businesses operational through any disruption.

Erika, a certified business continuity professional, former lawyer, and emergency management professor, reveals why small businesses are particularly vulnerable to disruptions despite being the backbone of community resilience. She shares compelling stories of business owners caught unprepared. These cautionary tales highlight how seemingly small dependencies can create devastating single points of failure.

We dive deep into practical approaches for identifying vulnerabilities in your business operations, from social media dependencies to supply chain fragility. Erika explains that while large corporations have robust continuity teams, small businesses can achieve significant protection with thoughtful planning and backup systems. Her firsthand experience surviving Hurricane Helene without power, internet, or cell service for days provides sobering insights into how quickly cascading failures can impact even the best-laid plans.

Most valuable is Erika's practical framework for developing your own continuity strategy: aim for an 80% solution by methodically examining every aspect of your business and asking, "If this disappeared tomorrow, how would we continue?" The difference between hoping disasters won't happen and having concrete contingencies can determine whether your business survives or thrives through unexpected challenges.

Connect with Erika:
www.eaasc.com
Take the Business Readiness Assessment is at the bottom of the page:

Check out Erika's book:
https://www.amazon.com/How-Not-Kill-Your-Business/dp/199018538X

Follow Erika on socials:

Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/dontkillyourbusiness/
TikTok
https://www.tiktok.com/@dontkillyourbusiness
LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/company/eaas-consult

Chapters

• 0:04 Welcome to Communication Connection Community
• 1:03 Introduction to Business Continuity
• 3:34 Understanding Single Points of Failure
• 9:19 Dealing with Social Media Disruptions
• 16:35 Surviving Natural Disasters and Power Outages
• 21:56 Assessment Tools and Exercise Scenarios
• 26:31 The Community Impact of Small Businesses

Transcript

Carl Richards: 0:04

Welcome to Communication Connection Community the podcaster's podcast. This podcast takes a deep dive into modern day communication strategies in the podcasting space. We chat with interesting people who make the podcasting and speaking spaces exciting and vibrant. We also dive into the podcasting community with news updates, latest trends and topics from this ever-evolving space. So strap in, it's going to be one amazing ride.

Carl Richards: 0:32

Let's dive into today's episode. Is your business ready in case something happens In other words, if Facebook goes down, the internet goes down, power outages, natural disasters is your business protected? You might be hearing this and going well, yeah, of course it is. But our guest today is going to walk us through some interesting scenarios and talk about business continuity. She's an expert at it. Erika Andresen is a subject matter expert in keeping businesses alive, thriving, making money and increasing value. She is passionate about empowering business owners and investors by educating them about business continuity practices so they can remain operational through any disaster, disruption or even quick growth period, because that can be a challenge too, too, that maybe you weren't planning for. She's a certified business continuity professional, a former lawyer, veteran professor of emergency management, invited speaker, mit guest lecturer, international podcast guest, quoted expert in Forbes success money geek smart sheet and dark reading and Amazon bestselling author as well, and she's also so much fun. She's a hoot, apparently, and we're so glad she's here today talking to us about business continuity. Erika, welcome to the podcast.

Erika Andresen: 1:57

Sure. So what I like to say as my business proposition is that I keep your doors open and cash flowing. And before I actually say what that is, I just invite your listeners to think about that. What do you think that means to you? Keeping your doors open and cash flowing?

Erika Andresen: 2:14

So business continuity is everything and anything that allows you to stay operational and making money through any type of disaster, disruption at all. And that could be a natural disaster, a man-made disaster, and disruptions can be good or bad. So the good disruptions are viral, overnight success that you're not prepared for. And then the bad disruptions are things like maybe there's a key piece of hardware that you have that stops working all of a sudden, and maybe it's your employees win the mega millions and I'll quit the next day. Or it could be as simple, as your entire business is on Facebook and you're put in Facebook jail. So that is a major disruption and would allow you to not have a business if you didn't plan for it. Because some people will do risk management, but risk management does not always eradicate risks. It helps mitigate them. So business continuity picks up where risk management fails.

Carl Richards: 3:12

Wow, and I'm so glad that we're talking about this today and I'm glad you mentioned the variation of this that it can be, depending on your business. It can be something like a piece of equipment that you need it can be employees leaving because they did win the lottery. Or it can be like you say something that is connected to social media or other reach outs that you do, which is very relevant in the podcasting space. There are a lot of podcasters who rely on social media platforms, email, all kinds of technology to get their messaging out there, and without it they're screwed in a lot of ways unless they have this, as you said, this business continuity set up. In your experience, have you found that a lot of business owners or entrepreneurs they're not set up with a business continuity plan. They're just not thinking about it.

Erika Andresen: 4:03

Yes, both. So business continuity is a profession. You may not have heard of it or your listeners, and that's not abnormal. This is a profession that has existed for decades and large international corporations do it. The government does it. They actually call it large corporations enterprise resiliency, but it is business continuity. They have an in-house team that does this all the time.

Erika Andresen: 4:24

And small businesses, by and large, do not do business continuity because they don't know what it is and there's no barrier to entry. And I made that my mantle to help small businesses, because small businesses are the fabric of communities and it's not just the US economy or Canadian economy, it is all over the world. Business continuity is practiced all over the world. Business continuity is practiced all over the world and they call it business continuity and there is specific programs, even through the UN, to help developing. And I watched all these small businesses who did not do any business continuity throw up things like their GoFundMe page because they needed assistance after the disaster.

Erika Andresen: 5:13

And one of the things I've talked about in every single talk I've ever given about business continuity is a thing it would only apply to your best listeners, but there's a grant called the Readiness for Resiliency Grant and it's sponsored by the US Chamber of Commerce Foundation with FedEx, where they are going to reward small businesses for preparing for these types of things, and what you need to do is you just have to register and show them you have a continuity plan and if you are ever in an area that's declared by disaster, they will give you $5,000 to help you recover. And knowing, like some people, like a $5,000 big deal, that made a huge difference for a lot of the businesses here and they didn't have it because they weren't doing business continuity. They didn't think it was that important. They didn't see it as an investment instead of a cost and it's like no, you have a cost of inaction. The cost of inaction is you standing on a burning platform and saying, oh God, what do I do now?

Carl Richards: 6:10

Right, $5,000. You're right, it doesn't sound like a lot of money, but at least it is something, and thank you so much for sharing that. We'll make sure we get the information so we can share that to our listeners later on. What is it that is stopping business owners from taking a serious look at that? Is it the thought that that won't happen to me? Is it just we're too busy to even think about it? Is it we think that, well, when crisis happens, I'll be able to figure it out? What's your experience or what's your gut saying?

Erika Andresen: 6:43

Again, it's probably all of the above Most of the time. There's a psychological thing called optimism bias, and this is endemic all over the world, where you think the bad things will never happen to you. If I tell you there's a 60% chance something happens, you're going to assume that you are in that 40% chance. It's not going to happen too, but 100% of people who believe that it's a mathematical impossibility, 100% of people can't be in 40%, and oftentimes, with a lot of the things that happen, it's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when, especially when you talk about cybersecurity type stuff and it was like oh, I'm small, no one's going to come after me. No, you're exactly who they're coming after because you haven't invested in any type of cybersecurity measures. So you're like shooting fish in a barrel for a lot of them.

Carl Richards: 7:29

Wow, okay, good to note. I'm glad you mentioned the cyber end of things, because obviously podcasters live in the cyber universe, as it were. Podcasts are, if not on YouTube, then on audio platforms. But one of the things that I've noticed is there's this reliance on and you alluded to this earlier about being in Facebook jail. There's this reliance on social media to get the word out about what it is that their show is, about, their fresh content. But you've witnessed firsthand, or you've seen it happen, that where folks have been either put in Facebook jail or there's something that has disrupted their sharing of content, and it's almost like they throw their hands up in the air and go oh my goodness, I didn't think this would happen.

Erika Andresen: 8:12

Right, right. So I'll give you two examples one with Facebook jail and one with the recent TikTok ban. So with Facebook jail, there's a woman I know who is a consultant, whose entire business model is on Facebook. Everything is Facebook and to include her contacts and I had told her at some point I'm like you should probably back up all your data offline. You should have access to everything offline. Because it wasn't even about Facebook Jail. It's about if the internet is down, then you can't access this information. You may need to because you may have a client meeting that day. How are you going to contact people if everything is online?

Erika Andresen: 8:49

So there was a time where I was actively engaged with her and needing something to do with her and I was messaging her because she only works through Facebook and I wasn't getting a response, because it doesn't warn you that the person you're messaging is in Facebook jail. You just don't get a response and I was like, did she die? And after a month I kind of just moved on and went somewhere else. And that's also part of what this is continuity, it's like everyone talks about. I want to spend my money on marketing. It's like okay, you're going to draw people to you. But if you are unable to serve them, the need you've created doesn't go away. You've created doesn't go away, they're just going to go to your competitors. So after about a month she comes back. She's like oh God, I was in Facebook jail and I couldn't contact anybody. I go. So you never put your contacts offline, did you? She went, nope, I was like well, and the thing is, they don't tell you why you go into Facebook jail. Half the time she didn't know why something apparently offended something. So her business, which relies a% on Facebook, was shut down for over a month and she couldn't tell anybody. And that's another aspect of up and discontinuity is crisis communications. So crisis communications is when you're communicating to the community, your employees and your stakeholders or your clients hey, there's an issue going on. This is the issue. This is how I'm planning to solve it right now. I'll update you as more information comes along. You'll see that a lot with, like any kind of disaster, people come out and say here's our briefing about this. That is crisis communication, but businesses do it too. So if she would have said hey, I can't talk to my main platform, I'm using this as an alternative for the next 30 days while Facebook clears this up, but don't worry, we can still continue our business. That's the first thing.

Erika Andresen: 10:25

And then with TikTok, you know everybody wanted to think that this ban wasn't happening. They were waiting for a Hail Mary pass and I'm watching all the influencers say things like okay, well, you know what I'm gonna. You know, go to the link tree in my bio and see all the other platforms I'm on. But of course, they were concentrating on TikTok mostly and I can even account that. My views I had one video that 116,000 views. That on Instagram had 268 views same video, but you know, it's just different.

Erika Andresen: 10:54

And, like on that Friday, before the TikTok pan was supposed to go, in effect, everybody was jumping like oh, you got to go here, I have to go here. And then they go. I'm so sorry it's got. It has to be this name on this platform, because somebody already took my name on that platform.

Erika Andresen: 11:09

And the way that people used to steal website names not steal like they would register them in their name and say like oh, you who would want this? I'm not using this, and my intention was always just to sit on it and sell it to you at a much higher rate to see how valuable it is to you to have this exact website. That's the exact name of your business. So that's been a problem with TikTok. How long does it take to set yourself up on other platforms? It doesn't take very long at all. I pretty much ignore my Facebook, but I have it. But the first thing I did when I started on my social media was go and find every platform and secure my same handle across all of them. So I've had a YouTube for over a year and it literally took me like 60 seconds to set it up. I haven't put any videos on it because I haven't wanted to do it yet, but I might now that TikTok is such a precarious position.

Carl Richards: 11:56

Wow. And again, I don't think we stop to think about the severity that this can have on business, yes, but also personally, because obviously, if it's affecting your business, it's affecting you personally if you don't have revenue coming in, if something is impeding the operation of your business, and especially with something as and not to downplay it, but something, as we'll say, simple as social media. Like you said, it's easy, or there's some steps to do it, but it's reasonably easy to back things up If you're connecting with people on social platforms. It's not impossible. It's not like it's that daunting if you're doing it one step at a time.

Carl Richards: 12:35

What is a good way for somebody who is hearing this information for the first time? What are? And again, not to give away the store, just want to make sure that we're setting people up, to make sure that they are properly protected. What are some things that they should be aware of or that they should be doing to make sure that there is business continuity? If they're hearing this going, oh my goodness, I'm not properly set up. What are some things that they should be doing right from the beginning, right now, that will help them protect themselves?

Erika Andresen: 13:03

So there's a thing called a single point of failure. So what that means is, if that thing is gone, your business can't move forward, it can't operate at all. So having backups for anything. So what I normally do when I work with a client is I walk them through something and I go okay, tell me what you do, like I'm five, because if you explain it to me in very layman's terms, you're not glossing over things that I often will find so, like, for example, cupcakes.

Erika Andresen: 13:29

Like, tell me how you make cupcakes, I bake them. No Simpler. How do you make cupcakes? Okay, flour, eggs, water. Okay, where do you get these from? I have a vendor. Do you have just one? Yes, I go, that's a problem, because what if that vendor goes out of business, has some kind of problem of their own, has no business continuity plan of their own, and you're relying on them to give you supply and all of a sudden it's not there. What's your backup? So that would be a single point of failure and I go okay, let's go on. And a lot of times too, I'll say even for your podcasting. Let's say you're using Zoom right now. Do you have the ability to record your podcast on something that's not Zoom?

Carl Richards: 14:05

Yes, I do.

Erika Andresen: 14:06

Okay, there you go, so you don't have a single point of failure. So it's about yes, it's like I said, remember I said in the beginning it's about keeping your doors open and cash flowing. It's your ability to carry on no matter what happens. So that is really like what I would tell people just start looking at everything around and just take it away and say, okay, how would I do my job without this? Okay, I have a ring light.

Erika Andresen: 14:31

Can I do something without the ring light? Do I really need the ring light if I'm recording something? Or I could figure out another solution. Do I have a backup ring light? Do I have another alternative? I could put a lamp. I have a laptop, Okay, one. Can I do it off of my phone if my laptop craps out one day? There are all these that literally look at everything you touch and use and then your software systems, and take each one in a way and figure out how you would work around it. But do it in advance, because when you're doing it in the moment, you're stressed. You will, and haste makes waste, so you will oftentimes miss the really obvious stuff and also you won't be stressed. You'll be like, oh, I planned.

Carl Richards: 15:09

I guess one of the biggest things too that can happen that we have no control over natural disasters, power outages, that, just anything that disrupts us and almost every business. Now there's not too many businesses that are out there that don't rely on something like electricity. You need that, you need to like, I need it. If I don't have electricity, I need to make sure that I have a laptop that's working. I need to make sure or my phone, that I can do whatever I need to do, even if it's something as simple as follow up on email or take a call on Zoom or on another platform, or even if I'm recording. How am I recording now that I don't have my? You know I'm not in my regular studio to do that, so how critical is it to, and at what point do you? Is there such a thing as overdoing it or overprotecting? Too many for lack of a better word too many redundancies in place if there is a crisis?

Erika Andresen: 16:04

So I'll tell you how important it is. So when Helene hit me, I lost power, I lost internet and I lost cell phone service All of them and water too, so all of the things and I didn't get power back until a week later. So I also didn't get cell phone service. Really, it was texting only, it was the minimal because you couldn't even make calls Until they brought in boosters because of 18 towers here, 16 of them were knocked out from the storm, so there was no way to communicate for a couple of days. But even then it was only texting. But I remember getting a text being like your internet service is back on and I'm like big whoop because I can't access it, because I don't have power. And they were things I needed to have done in that time and I had to to. I traveled out of the area when the roads were open and I was like I have power, I can at least send emails to people and say hey again. Pricey's Communication. If you weren't aware or forgot, I live in Asheville. This is in the news. This happened. I know I owed you this, I need more time or you know whatever. So that was something that was really, really important to understand Like you actually can lose everything. And then what would you do to result? So the stress I had of making sure I had a fully charged phone. I had to use my car to charge my phone because I didn't have any other option. You know, and I was using candlelight at night at 7 pm we had a curfew of seven anyway. So go home candlelight, read a book until it was too silly not to yes and no, I think. If you have plenty of money, go ahead and throw all the money in the world and you're going to be like I might not have ever used this, but I had it and it's helpful.

Erika Andresen: 17:47

I never advise on everybody going to 100% solution, because that's often very difficult to achieve and some things you're just not going to be able to get around Like, aside from having a generator. But even then, if I had a generator, I didn't have internet. But then the internet came and then would that have been sufficient for my phone? Who knows about that? But also too, I'm kind of kidding myself If I had a power bank to use my laptop, I couldn't have gotten the work done because I was in survivor mode. So even my mental bandwidth was not able to handle that. I tell people get yourself to an. I think ideally an 80% solution is fantastic. I think that should be the top. If you want to go as low as 60% solution, that's also better than you're doing now A thousand times better than you're doing now.

Carl Richards: 18:41

I don't ever recommend unless you have an infinite amount of funds or what you're doing is, like critically important to go for 100% solution and just throw everything out that you can not, understanding that generators run on a type of fuel and at some point that fuel might run out and if there's no access or limited access to fuel, you might not be able to fill your generator, like there's so many other spinoffs or snowballs that happen, so there's a trickle down.

Erika Andresen: 19:11

Well, I can tell you from this. And the generators. So people had solar, but it wasn't sunny those days, it was cloud, so you got some power, but not full. The people who had generators gas stations weren't working because you need electricity to get the gas to pump out Right when they actually were able. Some of them were working, but they didn't have point of sale systems working. So you need the cash. If you didn't have cash to pay for it, you're also having a world of hurt. But then people who got really desperate after a while.

Erika Andresen: 19:36

You have to think about this too. When you have a generator running there, loud people can hear it. So if they don't have a generator, or they do and they don't have fuel, they're going to come and steal your fuel or generator. It happens. So you have to think about a security system for both of these things, in addition to the stuff that you have. It's, it's insane. The level of this is where my veteran background comes in. I know about high-risk situations. I know about life and death because when I was in Afghanistan, the risk assessments we were doing was most likely, least likely and most deadly to us, because every mission there was at least a 50% chance we'd get killed. So I had to think about all these things and my brain is wired to think of terrible, terrible things.

Carl Richards: 20:13

Third and fourth and fifth order fact down the road I was just going to say you need to think about not just, okay, the immediate, okay, turn on the generator, That'll get us whatever we need. We're good, and then when that runs out, I'll just go get more, more fuel for the generator. Like you said, there's other things that are going to happen. That which is good that your brain goes that way, because this is how you can help people, regardless of and obviously we're talking about something. But natural disasters are happening more and more, and not just in places like California or Florida. They're happening even here in Canada. We've had natural disasters where people have been out of power and out of not even being able to do business for days, in some cases weeks, because of something that they didn't expect would happen.

Erika Andresen: 20:57

Because I'm also a professor of emergency management, one of my favorite chapters to discuss with my students is an international chapter. I'm like don't think that we are in a precious snowflake little vacuum. These happen all over the world. There's flooding, there's earthquakes, there is wildfires all over the world. Heat waves, which is one of the things. While it's not officially a disaster, it should be, because heat waves cause the number one cause of death in pretty much the world and it happens every year and people call it extreme weather and it's like it's just going to be weather at a certain point. We have to stop calling it extreme. It's just become weather, because it's the same thing as repeating, year after year, our seasons. There is no hurricane season anymore. It's getting longer. Wildfire season used to only be a couple of months, now it's all year long.

Erika Andresen: 21:42

So the definitions that people are used to, with assessing their risk and thinking, oh, this is again optimism bias. This is never going to happen. It will, and you'll be so thankful that you thought about it in advance. But don't be like those people who like talk to me about, like, oh, I want to make a business continuity plan. I'm like okay, great. Actually, I had a consultation earlier this month and they said all right, this is not a Q1 or Q2 thing for us. It's something that's our goal for the year. But our biggest concern is X. And I'm like okay. So I finished the conversation and I said, all right, cool.

Erika Andresen: 22:14

Before we close, I would just like to make a statement that I'm going to give you some free piece of advice, regardless of who you decide to engage for your business continuity plan. I said you told me that this is your number one concern. Because I'm an emergency management professor, I know that these are most likely to occur in the winter and in the summer. So you told me these are not Q1 and Q2 goal of yours, but the thing that you want to protect yourself from happens in Q1 and Q2 most often. So you might want to rethink that statement. They weren't too happy about that, but I'm like you know it's like telling me that I want to. I want a hot girl summer body, but I'm not starting to die till October. And it's like well, what's the point?

Carl Richards: 22:50

Good for the following summer, I guess.

Erika Andresen: 22:53

Or if you're in the Southern Hemisphere. Okay, sure, Starting late for Australia, but you'll get there.

Carl Richards: 23:04

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Or planning for that winter getaway to Mexico or something like that, where, yeah, no good point. Wow, this has been so insightful. I'm just in awe and, like you say, a lot of people. They either don't know about it or they just don't stop to go. Huh, maybe I should not just put a pin in this and deal with it later. It's something. No, I should probably sit up and take notice and ask myself some questions. Am I prepared in case it's like always having that? You know you keep the flashlight handy just in case. You have the candles just to get. You don't need them all the time, but it seems like when you do need them, you can't find them Right. So so, making sure that you have these plans in place, you actually have a checklist or or a quiz that folks can take? Tell me a little bit about that.

Erika Andresen: 23:49

Yeah, so on the homepage of my website, which is wwweaasccom, it's called the Business Readiness Assessment. So at the bottom of the homepage you can click on that and it's 10 questions of you know A, b, c choice, kind of like a Cosmo quiz Are you mostly A's, mostly B's, mostly C's? And it'll tell you how prepared you are operationally for your business. And then it gives you the results and you know you are free to book with me afterwards to discuss your results more. If you want better results or to understand them, you absolutely can have an appointment with me. But I think that's one of the first things that's going to make you go. Oh, okay, cool, and I also do a monthly, usually on Thursdays. I don't know when you're going to broadcast this, but it's the 20, it's actually two days from now. I'm going to be doing what I call a bastardized version of a tabletop exercise. A tabletop exercise. The thing is you can have a plan. It helps if you've walked through, gone through the motions so you understand what to do when the time comes.

Erika Andresen: 24:47

And I gave one scenario for a fake business I make up every single time, and so the last one was kind of fun. I said you're a stationary company that makes greeting cards, but you your business on the fifth floor of the Nakatomi building in Los Angeles, which, and then there's a Christmas Eve party that some terrorists go visit and there's a helicopter that blows up. So, yeah, it's diehard. And I was like so how would your business operate? Like, what would you need to do if you woke up on Christmas morning and saw that this is what happened to the building you worked in? And then you know we work through this, and then somebody said at the end well, how often is a terrorist attack going to happen? I go, don't think of it that way. It is something that happens to the physical structure that you work in that is preventing you from doing your job. It doesn't matter what it is. There's all these things. So normally within one scenario, I hit five to seven different areas of business continuity for each business.

Carl Richards: 25:40

Wow, phenomenal. We'll make sure that that information is posted in the show notes, so we'll make sure that we get that from you before you leave today. Erika Andre sen, what an amazing conversation. You know what? As I said, we've never had somebody talk about business continuity on the show, but now I understand the relevance of it, certainly for podcasters, not just from a podcasting perspective, but even from their own business perspective, because pretty much everyone that we touch on a regular basis they're podcasters, but they're business owners first. So thank you so much for sharing your insights today. Before I turn you loose, I'll give you the final thought.

Erika Andresen: 26:19

It's really important for businesses, especially small businesses, to realize how integral they are to communities. Now, one of the things when I was asked during some kind of networking icebreaker question was can a business owner be everything and everywhere all at once? And they're being cheeky because the Oscar nominations are coming out that day and, of course, that movie went on to win the Oscar. And people giving very flat answers like, well, no, I mean, you're multitasking. That's never good. And someone's like, well, if you're on the internet, then yes, you can be. And I was like you know what?

Erika Andresen: 26:49

One of the way I see what I do is I empower business owners to keep their dreams alive, and what's part and parcel of that is the dreamer, the business owner.

Erika Andresen: 26:58

If you have employees, if you have businesses, you're paying people so they can pay for their expenses, they can buy food, they can pay rent, they can pay mortgage, whatever it is, but also buy things that enhance their lives, and they usually get that from other dreamers in the community who also have employees. So it's a beautiful cycle to be part of, and you really get to see it after a disaster, because what everybody says after a disaster is I just want to feel normal again, and the way people feel normal is being able to have access to a coffee shop, being able to go to a restaurant and get food, being able to even listen to a podcast because they got their internet back and they're able to do like anything. That is normal gives resilience and comfort to people and community. So it is so. This is why I really love concentrating on small businesses, because I don't think anybody realizes truly how important they are.

Carl Richards: 27:47

Well, thank you so much for sharing your passion and all of your insights today. Erika Andresen, that's a great place to leave it. Thank you so much for being my guest today.

Erika Andresen: 27:56

Thank you.

Carl Richards: 27:57

And thank you for joining us today. Special thanks to our producer and production lead, Dom Carrillo, our music guru, Nathan Simon, and the person who works the arms all of our arms, actually my trusty assistant, Stephanie Gafoor. If you like what you heard today, leave us a comment and a review and be sure to share it with your friends. If you don't like what you heard, please share it with your enemies. Oh, and if you have a suggestion of someone who you think would make an amazing guest on the show, let us know about it. Drop us an email, askcarl at carlspeaksca. Don't forget to follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter as well. You'll find all those links in the show notes, and if you're ready to take the plunge and join the over 3 million people who have said yes to podcasting, let's have a conversation. We'll show you the simplest way to get into the podcasting space because, after all, we're Podcast Solutions Made Simple. We'll catch you next time!