The Future of Work is Community (with a touch of AI) - with Ashley Dennison

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Daniel Nestle: Welcome or welcome back to the trending Communicator. I'm your host, Dan Nestle. So I'm new to the consulting and solopreneur world and I have to admit, it's been a wild ride so far. You know, I love it. I get to focus on projects and ideas that truly interest me and keep indulging my obsession with the future of our profession. It is the trending Communicator, after all, especially with AI and technology. And of course, you know, with the fundamental nature of our work and the way our roles are changing. But sometimes, I gotta say, it's lonely. You know, when you're working on your own, you're attacking the operational tasks, the thousands of them that come up every day. You're setting up meetings, you're taking meetings, you're pursuing business. You're chasing down new ideas you have in the shower.

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Daniel Nestle: You and you know, those ideas are the keys to unlock the fortunes that await. But then you get in a spin and you get distracted and oh boy, it's easy to forget that there are others like you that are out there amidst all the swirl. They're all entrepreneuring. They're your people, they're your new tribe, your community. And all they want is for you to succeed. This hit home for me earlier today when I joined a monthly zoom meeting for communications consultants, or more accurately, members of the commsconsultants.com community, a new and growing service where clients with communications and marketing challenges can search the profiles of vetted comms pros to find someone who can help. Today was my first time meeting many of my consultant comrades and I was just amazed at the eagerness to share wins, challenges and advice.

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Daniel Nestle: The whole thing got me thinking. Is community the future of work? And are the people I saw on the screen prepared for the changes that are coming? Definitely. Questions that I want to discuss with my guest today. A consultant and entrepreneur herself, she's worked in every facet of the comms world, both in house and agency in New York, New Orleans and Chicago. And for the past decade, she's been helping companies large and small with executive thought, leadership change management, communications crisis and more. And just a few months ago, she launched a global directory of more than 300 pre vetted communications and marketing consultants. I think you can see where this is going. Please welcome to the show the founder and CEO of commsconsultants.com Ashley Dennison. Ashley.

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Ashley Dennison: Hi Dan. That was such a nice intro. Wow, thanks.

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Daniel Nestle: You know, you know, and at the time of this recording, I Just got to point out that we didn't set it up so that would record after that initial zoom meeting that I was in.

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Ashley Dennison: No, yeah, it was just a total fortuitous. It happened to play out on the same day. And how nice that you got to meet so many of our community on the same day that we happened to chat.

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Daniel Nestle: Well, it was terrific and it certainly gave me some ideas for my intro, which I sometimes kind of have to think about a lot, but I'd have to think today. I just kind of let it go and it just got me thinking about this whole idea of community and work in the future and all the things that I am concerned about and that you're certainly concerned about and what a better person to talk about those things than you. And after that call, I felt kind of energized and charged up, like, all right, another reminder that I'm not alone. There's a lot of people out there who are doing what I'm doing or similar things to what I'm doing. And I can't look at them as competition because that's so self defeating.

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Ashley Dennison: Right.

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Daniel Nestle: The pie is so big, the market is so big and that's the one thing I keep learning over and over again. Don't worry if somebody else has something similar to offer, you know, they can't take any job, so.

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Ashley Dennison: Right. Well, I mean, yeah, when you're an independent, I mean, I'll just say when you're an independent, you're by nature of it, you're working independently on your own and you're one person. So you only have so much time in a day that you want to work or can work and think about all of the opportunities there are under the comms and marketing umbrella worldwide. How could you possibly ever be short of client volume when there are so many opportunities out there?

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Daniel Nestle: Yeah, absolutely. And if only that would make its way into my inbox and my wallet at some point. But I'll get there. I know I'll get there. I've been very fortunate so far. I just started up a few months ago as of the time of this recording, already have a great client. And you know, people tell me more than most people get in their first few months, so I'm going to count myself blessed. But today actually, you know, this whole comms consultant.com thing, you know, I was in recruiting long time ago. Early days of job boards, early days of of candidate marketplaces and which I mean when I say early days. Do you remember Monster.com? Do you remember like those things, right.

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Daniel Nestle: So, you know, I was in Japan at the time working for the sort of knockoff version of monster.com that were trying to build in Japan. And man, those were heady times. But it got me a lot of exposure to this whole world of, you know, of profiles being, you know, being searched and vetted by clients. And you're putting yourself out there and you're hoping somebody picks you. And yeah, you know, it can be a little crazy. But let me ask you before, like, let's dig into all of this, but first, you know, for our listeners, I know I gave you a little intro in the upfront. Is there anything you want to add to that? And then how did you get to start thinking about commsconsultants.com? What was the inspiration, you know, and what's the story?

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Ashley Dennison: That's a big question. That's a great question. I have been an independent now for almost 10 years. And my whole background is as a communicator, as a consultant now for the last 10 years. And I have not been in the recruitment space, the talent space. This is a completely new area for me to have to learn and understand. It's been a big challenge, but a juicy challenge. And it, you know, comsconsultants.com was really an evolution of the networking that I have done organically over many years as an independent. You know, for 10 years I've been meeting people like myself around the world who have a lot of the same struggles and challenges and worries and fears and patterns that I myself have had.

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Ashley Dennison: And I've found a lot of personal and professional gratification in helping those people where I could and where I was able to give counsel or just commiserate. And it was through the evolution of many conversations that I actually first started a LinkedIn networking group for consultants and as I like to call it, the Consulting Curious. The Consulting Curious. And that group is still active on LinkedIn. We can certainly link your listeners to it. It's a free networking group with more than 1500 people under the comms and marketing umbrella worldwide across many countries. We have lots of great resources there. Everything's free, a great community. And it was directly through that community that the smaller, hyper focused community of commsconsultants.com was created.

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Ashley Dennison: And our focus with commsconsultants.com, what makes us a little bit different, as you heard on today's call, is the hyper focus on finding new client opportunities, bringing in client work, not Just for each of us as individuals, but for the collective whole. So taking a collaborative, community based approach to driving more demand and more interest worldwide amongst business leaders and bringing independent experts in communications and marketing, that is our focus.

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Daniel Nestle: Before. So I want to dig into that a little bit. But you said, you mentioned the big LinkedIn group. What was that called?

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Ashley Dennison: It's called the Comms Consulting Collective. So if that isn't enough C names for you, we've got the big LinkedIn group is called the Comms Consulting Collective.

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Daniel Nestle: Got it. Okay.

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Ashley Dennison: Ccc. And that one is the big one with more than 1500 people. And then the smaller group, that is a pay to play entity, that's commsconsultants.com and I should have known as a communicator, I made the terrible mistake of using too many C words and being too alliterative. I went crazy with my alliteration. And now people often confuse them. They, you know, they get them mixed up and there's a lot of crossover. I mean, as you can imagine, really, most of our listed consultants@commsconsultants.com are also a part of the larger community, but they serve slightly different purposes. I mean, just to quickly explain that the larger networking group, the Collective, is just simply a place to connect, to share insights, tips, resources, strategies.

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Ashley Dennison: It's a networking group, but again, commsconsultants.com if you pay to be listed with us there, you are joining this global fight for world domination essentially to try to dominate the market and bring in paying client opportunities that will benefit the folks that are actually listed on my site.

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Daniel Nestle: Okay, that makes sense because I'm part of the smaller one and you know, full transparency. I am a paying member of comms consultants.com, if you haven't gathered that, because I was at meeting. You know, it's a, when you start out a new business, you know, start out being a consultant in communications, you see something that says comms consultants, you're like, maybe that fits me. You know, I mean. Yeah, it does. And you know, clearly I met Ashley and you know, I'm really impressed with, with the people there so far. You know, that's the thing. It's, it's, it's this community. What I was gonna ask you actually was this whole thing about shifting from the big group to the little group you're talking about. Yeah, this great commute, this great, you know, community of people and this big network.

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Daniel Nestle: You Always hear this expression that I, to poison the well a little bit that I absolutely hate, which is your network is your net worth.

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Ashley Dennison: Right.

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Daniel Nestle: And you hear that in places like BNI or like, you know, where it's like these referral programs where you join and you know, you're, you're supposed to find business for other people in the community or in the group, you know, and you pay some exorbitant fee to be part of this community, but then you get referral fees from all these other folks and it becomes an income stream and then there's a whole different set of motivations behind it. And you know, long story short, eventually it's sort of smarmy and you're like, how can I get a job for this guy? It's not really like it's more transactional than relationship based. And that's the problem.

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Ashley Dennison: Absolutely.

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Daniel Nestle: You know, hey, and I know that by the way, there are plenty of people and many of my listeners who are BNI fans, that's Business Network International, I think that's what it's called. And who are, you know, who are in things such as the, the Connective and these other groups that do have business models based on making referrals. But that's not what comms collective. Sorry, that's not what comms consultants is about. And you know, it's because fundamentally comms consultants is about us, meaning the consultants getting projects and you know, being a place where we can pick and choose the kinds of projects that we want to do ultimately.

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Ashley Dennison: Yes, yes, that's the goal. I said it on today's call. I'll say it for the benefit of your listeners that my vision for my own consultancy over the last 10 years, what I have always aspired for, and what I hope for every member of my community@commsconsultants.com is choice over their projects. Not just projects in the door, not just a client pipeline, but choice over when they work, what they work on, who they work with, what clients they take, what projects they refer out versus what projects interest them. That's the place to be, if you ask me as a consultant is in that seat of I get to make decisions and I get to decide, you know, what I'm going to do, what I'm not going to do. That's a privileged place to be.

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Daniel Nestle: Yeah, yeah. And, and why do I hope to be there? The. But I was going to ask you though, Is, you know, when you saw this big community and you decided to, you know, wait a second, there's something here for if we niche down and just focus on comms consultants, you know, did you ever run into any of that, any kind of obstacles or I would say, you know, pauses or self doubt where you're like, wait a second and am I monetizing my network or is this a service that I'm providing to people? You know, is there, was there something there that made you think anything about that at all? And you know, if so, if not, great, we can move on to the.

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Ashley Dennison: Next thing you know, I, I don't look at it as tapping my network for money and making money through my network. I view it as almost like a collaborative approach to global marketing. So what I tell people who join is think of your. So I guess we should preface this by being clear about what I'm asking financially. I ask every senior consultant for 300 US annually. That's the investment. If you're a junior consultant with less than 10 years of experience, I discount that 50% because folks at that level make less in client billings. So it seems only fair to me that they should pay less to join. But I tell people, think of this money that you're investing on annual basis as you putting an investment into the global marketing budget.

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Ashley Dennison: For commsconsultants.com and for any of your listeners who have seen our LinkedIn domination in recent months since we've launched, you can see the power of bringing so many communicators and marketers together to sing from the same hymnal, so to speak, exactly what we tell clients, right? Which is you have to have a message and you have to repeat that message over and over in all these different mediums and channels, in all these different ways in order for people to get it. And what we're doing is we're all paying into and putting skin in the game, as you put it. Putting skin in the game into this idea that independent experts bring real value for businesses. And every business across the globe should be seriously considering bringing us in to advise, counsel and support.

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Daniel Nestle: Yeah, what I find different about it and you know, by the way, this show is not supposed to be like a plug for anything. It's where I'm going with this is there's this whole fascinating development in the way that we approach work here. And what I find interesting is the community approach. Now, you know, when I first saw it and when I, you know, when I Started to think about it was more about okay, I'm going to put myself onto a marketplace and I'm going to, you know, pay whatever it is to just be, have my profile there and be available for people searching for me. Very passive, sort of posted up post and ghost almost type of a thing. But, but then I, I, I sort of saw the value proposition a little better.

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Daniel Nestle: Which is, which is okay, I belong to a couple communities. You know, I have a, a learning community that I belong to and you know, it is, it's fantastic to rise community. MARK SCHAEFER and when we built that community, it was all just people really giving of their own time and their own knowledge, sharing information. But we were careful about who was coming in and you know, we tend to attract people like us a community. At some point it became fee based, you know, so you start, you get to a certain point there's some administrative stuff going on. There's a lot to, there's a lot to handle, a lot to take care of people's time, you know, so now it is, it's a fee based, a monthly fee.

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Daniel Nestle: When I look at it that way and I look at comms consultants, you said 300 a year, but if you think about it as $15 a month or something right now, sorry, 20, $25 a month, something like this. Right. So anyway, like communities cost this much. Like that's a, such a minor thing if you think about, you're not, it's not a, it's not necessarily a talent exchange. It is that, but it's also a community of people. And if you're in this community where you have access to resources, to learning to the other people in the network where you're actually building relationships, you break it down. It's not really a significant change fee at all. I mean from my perspective anyway. Point is that, yeah, my point is it's about community more than it is about the talent in some ways.

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Ashley Dennison: Well, let me say a couple things there. One, I was very frustrated as a consultant over the years with the standard billing model and structure of both recruiters and staffing firms and talent agencies. So if you look at as an independent what currently exists in the market to help me find business, right. I'm an independent. I want more work in my pipeline. I want new clients. What are my options, what am I looking at in the marketplace for if I want to increase my client volume? Who's going to help me do that? This is, you know, Part of what I was looking at when I came up with the idea of commsconsultants.com because to me, and you tell me if you think of something else, Dan, I will sing it from the rooftops if there's something I'm not thinking of.

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Ashley Dennison: But to me there was really just the traditional recruiters out there who usually work on more full time positions than they work on consulting opportunities. When they do work on consulting opportunities. My understanding of the traditional recruiter model is they take about 20% of your project fee when you book a client engagement through them. At Comms consultants, we take no cut of your fees. And I'm not saying this to pitch commsconsultants.com I'm just describing how I wanted to disrupt the model that currently existed in the marketplace. Because I was frustrated as a consultant looking at whether it was working through a staffing firm, a talent agency and subcontracting under one of those firms or working through a recruiter. I was frustrated with the percentages that they were, would potentially be taking of my work, the work I would be doing.

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Ashley Dennison: And I was also frustrated at the thought of not owning my own client relationships, my own client communication, my own client follow up. To have to kind of be forced into that subcontractor position, that also bothered me. I want to own my relationship, I want all of my fees. And I just, I couldn't find anything like that. I couldn't find any service or platform out there that was really platforming and helping and positioning independent consultants specifically and not taking such a huge chunk of the fees that they are earning for their work.

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Daniel Nestle: Yeah, yeah. The only, the only platform that I think is out there that, you know, where consultants can market themselves is LinkedIn. And you know, to be a member of LinkedIn, it's a lot more than what you're charging. And it's just try looking for communications consultants on LinkedIn. I mean, I've done it, Dan.

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Ashley Dennison: 60,000 results. If you narrow to the U.S. I was curious about that, Dan. I did it, I did a little bit of market research. If you narrow just to the US and you search communications consultant on LinkedIn, you get like 60,000 results.

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Daniel Nestle: 60,000 profiles, unvetted, right. People, you don't know if you can trust them. And you know, when I was on the client side, when I before I had, I was a consultant not too long ago, you know, I searched, I looked around for my share of freelancers or project workers or people who would come in and help with a very particular challenge. And nine times out of 10, it was my network, you know, people I knew or know or. Yeah, a referral of some kind. Absolutely. So, so being a part of, of that kind of a network is I think critically important for people like me who are out there now building a business. You know, what, what struck me in everything you were just saying, though, is I, I found to be the case as well.

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Daniel Nestle: I mean, going back a ways when I was recruiting and were doing temporary assignments, you know, basically project work or consultants, it was never about, we're going to take 20% of your fee. We always charge the client. But then the FEES would be 20% lower. Yes. So, you know, everything gets passed on to the lowest rung on the totem pole every time. And, but you know, there's, there's a, there's a sacrifice to be made for these things. You know, you have somebody else do your marketing for you, somebody else do your YouTube, your payroll for you, and somebody else do these other things for you. So, you know, you give up some, give some to get some. But that's not always the case.

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Daniel Nestle: Sometimes it's a straight up transaction and they're unscrupulous people and you know, you get kind of wedged into a, a project that you're getting vastly underpaid for. Not fair. But nowadays, of course, there's a lot more information out there and hopefully more communities. Like what? Like, like comms consultants. And you know, I could never see something like that happening simply because the community is connected. So, you know, even on today's call, you have people saying, here's how you. Giving negotiation advice or giving pricing advice, which is always a big thing. And, and you know, you wouldn't get that in from a, from a recruiter. Well, a recruiter would help you with the negotiation, but you wouldn't get that kind of, that level of care. So it's people taking care of one another.

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Ashley Dennison: Yeah.

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Daniel Nestle: And the community, like right now, it is the LinkedIn community. It is the, you know, the website, the directory. But you mentioned that there's more in store for the community. Right. And let me just back up because there's something here that keeps pushing its way into my head and it is this model of community that I think Mark Schaefer came up with. And you know, he said community is the future of marketing. And I don't disagree. I don't disagree. Of course because, you know, audiences are fractured, people are all over the place. But you tend to trust the people that are like you. You trust the people who know what you're going through and you gravitate toward one another and you build a community that is, you know, fairly unified in either purpose or in objective or belief or something.

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Daniel Nestle: So the evolution goes from like weak connection to a strong connection to think of a continuum. And your weak connection is like, I'm connected to you vers, you know, via social media. And then it kind of evolves to, well, I'm subscribing to your newsletter, right. And I'm hearing what you're saying, so it's a one way thing probably, but I'm building trust.

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Ashley Dennison: Yeah.

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Daniel Nestle: And then it evolves into a strong connection where you start to take people from that to a more specialized centralized community, which is based on strong relationships, you know, where you're vested in one another and it's based on trust. So you know, if you're sort of on the early part of the spectrum, you know, you, you stop your social connection with somebody while they're gone, if or if they unsubscribe from your email list, email list, they're not part of your circle anymore. But once you're in the community, even if you remove yourself, there's still that community. They're still there, they're still with each other, you know, so it's a very strong bond. So where I was going is, is that what you're aiming for? Is that the, do you think that's the future of work for communications?

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Daniel Nestle: Is that the future of finding work for communications?

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Ashley Dennison: Gosh, that's such a good question. Generally, I'm one to say that we have overstated the value of your network, your connections, your community. When we talk about finding opportunities, finding whether it's a full time role that you want to be positioned for or you want to get in the door for, or it's a new client project. As a consultant, it's always bothered me a little bit, if I'm being honest with you, Dan, that people tell you left, right and center that your network is your net worth, as you said earlier, and that, you know, your connections are everything. And who do you know? It's always who do you know? As an up and coming communicator, you know, in my younger years, that would really bother me when I would hear people say, you got to know someone to get in.

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Ashley Dennison: You got to have connections. You gotta, you gotta do this, that and the other. Almost like you got to play the game. You got to build that network, you got to do the political stuff. That used to really bother me because I'm a merit based thinker. I believe if you're smart, if you know what you're doing, if you're capable, if you're a hard worker, then you should have every right and ability to ascend through the ranks of our profession just as fast, if not faster than the people who have spent all this time building up this network of connections and people. So at the end of the day, community is what you make it and it's how you use it.

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Ashley Dennison: But I do just have to put that in there and say I get a little bit frustrated when I hear people and there's a lot of them. In our profession, in comms and marketing, we have our fair share of schmoozers. Right. We have our fair share of schmoozers and folks that are so focused on who they know, who they're connected to, who they're, you know, who they can kind of get in with.

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Daniel Nestle: Yeah.

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Ashley Dennison: That they lose sight of the work, the importance of the work, doing great work and standing out for the work that you're doing and for the person that you are and not just leveraging that network, working those connections. And I'll just say one more thing, is the number one question I hear from independent people, consultants in all categories, all spaces, creative consultants, independent accountants, independent legal professionals, anyone who's working in an independent field, the number one question you hear is how do I find new clients? How do I get new business in the door? How do I fill the pipeline? And I caution people, whenever asked that question, not to be too reliant on your network and your referrals.

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Ashley Dennison: Because if you're not always thinking creatively, including in terms of how to expand your offerings, how to expand your reach, how to think differently and set yourself apart from others, if you're sitting back and waiting for those connections to come through for you might be waiting a long time.

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Daniel Nestle: Yeah, there's like these different things converging in my brain as you say this. And one of them is this idea that we're so, I guess, inundated with connections and connections. And you know, I agree, like you have a big network, it's, it's useful, but you can't possibly have close relationships with everybody in that network. And, and by the way, I'm totally guilty of schmoozing a lot. You know, like I've done it. I have a podcast that sort of is almost the, like an example of that. But at least I'm sharing, I think I'm sharing really important knowledge from the show. Like I get something serious out of this, you know, you are.

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Ashley Dennison: This is fun schmoozing, what we're doing now. This is the fun part of schmoozing.

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Daniel Nestle: I mean, but I also, it's directed schmoozing, but I also feel like it is. Like what I want to do is contribute to the profession. Like I want people to be prepared for the future. Like to be prepared for what's coming. In our case, we're talking about the future of work a little bit here. And you know, the idea of all these connections out there that are going to somehow magically help you. It's almost as though there are parallels between the way that you would be, if you're a communicator, the way that you're communicating on behalf of a brand or on behalf of a client or on behalf of somebody else. You know, there's this sort of conventional wisdom.

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Daniel Nestle: You do xyz, you know, you go for the earned media hits, you know, you go for your media relations and you have your social media kind of conversations that you're doing and you have, you know, a whole cavalcade, very complex integrated plan of attack, but everybody else does too. So it's like, it's, it's different if you're working for Apple, right, or Google, but most of us don't work there. So for most of us who are working for clients and for, and for companies that, you know, sell refrigerators or build, in my case, turbines or you know, or toilets in my last company, like the glamour is not going to help you. So, you know, doing things that old fashioned way or sort of the conventional way doesn't work.

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Daniel Nestle: So now along comes AI and you can do all of those things much faster and easier, but you just keep, you just do them more. So it's doing, it's not doing the work better, it's just doing more of the conventional work, right? So it's like increasing volume and frequency but not really doing anything that stands out. So again, I'm gonna drop Mark Schaefer. I talk about Mark Schaefer all the time. I have to talk to Mark anyway. He was on my show and he's a good friend. But Mark said on the show that there's a pandemic of dull and ushered in by or exacerbated by AI but it's not just AI. I mean, it's been happening for a long time with social media, content and so on.

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Daniel Nestle: And I think we face the same thing in this whole world of finding jobs or marketing ourselves or, you know, being consultants, in that there's so many dull pitches out there, so many dull consultants out there. I don't want to say the people are dull, but the way that they're going about it is dull. So you need to. Mark says be crazy. I don't know if you need to be that crazy in your job search, but maybe you do. Right? Where we gotta be disruptive and stand out.

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Ashley Dennison: Yes.

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Daniel Nestle: Right.

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Ashley Dennison: Gosh, I couldn't agree more. I, I could riff on that all day. Oh, my gosh.

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Daniel Nestle: Yeah. So I'm thinking that you must have some ideas about how you're going to use comms consultants. You know, I mean, it is already disruptive in some ways, right? But I mean, the community is a great place to actually start to fan the flames. A little bit of craziness, maybe.

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Ashley Dennison: Well, you know, crazy doesn't necessarily come to mind. But what I think of is, I think there's a taste for the imperfect. I would say the unpolished and the imperfect. There is a hunger for that out there because in the swell of AI and all these magical tools that will perfect and polish and fine tune and hone and speed up everything that we're doing, I think the humans on the other side of our messages and our channels that we're actually trying to meaningfully connect with, they are exhausted by all of this perfect, by all of this polish and everything being just so positioned, just in the right way. Just so. And I'll give you an example on LinkedIn. I'm a big LinkedIn poster.

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Ashley Dennison: Apologies to any of your listeners who have been inundated with my commsconsultants.com content in recent months, but I will never stop, so you better unfollow me. I cannot be stopped. But on LinkedIn, I'll tell you, I've done a lot of sort of AB testing in recent weeks. I'm a big fan of being experimental with content and with my approach to see what drives engagement and more importantly, what drives the kind of engagement I really want. And I think there are lessons in this not just for folks out there trying to do LinkedIn content, but for people in our space who are trying to do all forms of content across all channels, for all audiences. And here's my big takeaway.

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Ashley Dennison: When you write off the cuff in the moment, just with whatever happens to be on your mind, and you don't even read through it more than once before you hit post, and you think, oh, boy, this is the worst thing I've put together all month. That is going to be the post that explodes in engagement. It has happened countless times to me in recent months where I have fired off a post because I had a wild hair that struck me. And it's all about speed. It's all about writing in a way, as if you're talking to a friend. You're not writing for the algorithm, you're not writing in this perfect, polished, professional way, and you're certainly not leveraging AI to improve every phrase.

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Ashley Dennison: Those are the posts that have gone wild for me in a good way with the kind of engagement I really want. And I think it speaks to that hunger for the imperfect.

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Daniel Nestle: Yeah.

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Ashley Dennison: That I was talking about.

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Daniel Nestle: I, I would adventure to say that you're also expressing a, A strong point of view as, you know, so, you know, you can write off the cuff. And I totally agree. Being you're being raw and authentic is maybe I said this recently, is that, you know, people ask me about how can I spot deep fakes or how do I know what's. What's fake and what's real? I said, I said, well, you probably can't, but really, when it comes down to it, people claim that they can, but, you know, it's getting harder and harder, but you can spot when something's real and authentic. You know, it's like some of the deep fakes, you won't know that they're fake, but when something is really real, you'll very much have a very strong feeling that it's real.

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Daniel Nestle: I can't say 100%, but, you know, it makes a lot of sense and people hunger for that. People do hunger for the real and they're hungering more and more. And I, I think that's a new, very important secret or hack for success is stop thinking just right. You know, just get out of your own way.

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Ashley Dennison: Well, and be, maybe be courageous too. Because to your point, Dan, about having a point of view, having a stance, not being afraid to speak out on something that takes courage, right. To step outside of conventional roles, conventional norms of what's expected. We're all thought leaders Right. Going back to LinkedIn, we're all experts, we're all thought leaders. And there's a tried and true way to present yourself in that space when you're trying to be perceived as an expert or a leader in your field. If you shake that up, if you kind of set that convention to the side and be a little daring and decide you're gonna, you know, you're gonna put your one toe out of line and see what comes of it. You might surprise yourself and your audience might be a little surprised.

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Ashley Dennison: They might wake up from the coma that they've been in and suddenly pay a little more attention when you put something out there.

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Daniel Nestle: It's amazing to me that courage is one of the hardest things for us as communicators, I think. And I mean, I'm in awe of people who are just speak their mind. Very like, put it right out there. Don't care about what anybody says. Just, they say it doesn't mean that they're always right and it doesn't mean that, you know, sometimes they're not being assholes. But, you know, look, it happens. They, they're out there and they're just like, I am me. Take me as I am. Anybody who's in like a big corporate job or something is like, very, very scared to do anything like that. Right, Right. And for good reason. It's the world we live in. I am having my own transformation in this respect.

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Daniel Nestle: I mean, I, you know, I, I said, I, I posted something a couple weeks ago, as of the time of this recording, where I really laid into this whole idea of media relations, which is big in our profession. The most engaged post I've ever had on LinkedIn. Like, I laid into it. I wrote, I wrote an article about why I think it's gotta die or, you know, seriously, like, I, I think it's a whole different conversation, but I am, I think that. I think that media relations is dying and we need to let it go. That's the, that's the title of the, of the piece that I wrote that accompanied the post, but absolutely the most engaged with piece I've had.

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Daniel Nestle: And I put some, occasionally some spiky things out there, but this was particularly strong and it was like turning a corner for me, you know, because I wasn't, I mean, I don't think I was. I was saying something that I'm sure angered some people who have, their, who have invested their entire career in being able to pitch a story knowing which journalist is where you know, but that's, that whole world. It's not, it's not their fault that world is over. Like, that's a whole different thing. So anyway, I, I, I went down that road and I totally agree with you. It's like you just, you gotta be a little courageous. So I, I just need a couple more dashes of that in my, in my spice rack or whatever, so I can be a little more courageous going forward.

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Daniel Nestle: But, you know, which brings me to another thing I wanted to talk to you about, and because you mentioned it, this whole idea of tightening up your content with AI Everybody knows who's. All my listeners know that I'm a huge, I'm very bullish on AI. AI is my thing. You know, I've put myself out there as an AI and communications consultant. You know, like, I think that there's so much that we will do with it, and we are doing with it, and, you know, I'm amazed every day at what I see. However, there's a lot of trepidation in the market about it, and I think that the comms world maybe hitting a wall with it or they just haven't started to begin.

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Daniel Nestle: Like, it's like a, There's a lot of communicators who just haven't paid attention to it or haven't really worked with it because their bread and butter is writing, and they don't want anybody to take that away from them. Right. But looking at comms consultants or the consultants who are on comms consultants, you know, you're getting more and more people all the time. You know, how's it looking for the, as a collective group? Right? I mean, do you think that the, that people who are out, who are going out into consultings are ha. Do they have the right skill sets to meet the future? Do they have AI up their sleeves? Like, what's going on? Oh, I'm looking at Ashley's face, and I know the answer. I wish, I wish I was taking video.

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Ashley Dennison: I'm glad you're not taking video. No, no is the short answer, if you want my honest opinion. I think we're, as a profession, we are in a mad dash, a scramble to try to understand, adopt, and master AI and figure out how best to utilize it, to present ourselves as experts in using it so that we can maintain our jobs and maintain our value in the marketplace. And I think that dynamic is even more pronounced in the communications consulting community. I Think consultants always feel even more pressure, astounding pressure, when new tools, new technologies, new developments break into our space and into our orbit. Consultants, especially at the more senior level, feel this overwhelming pressure to very quickly master that new thing, whatever it is, and to be vocal about their mastery of it.

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Ashley Dennison: Because this is why so many businesses bring in senior level consultants in the first place, is to come in to train, coach, utilize, leverage a new technology, a new tool, a new way of working, a new process. So I think all communications and marketing people are in that scramble to some degree of trying to figure out what they're doing with it. But I think it's far more pronounced in the consulting space. And no, Dan, you. And I'm not just saying this to blow smoke up your ass, excuse my language. Am I allowed to swear on this podcast?

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Daniel Nestle: It's marked explicit.

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Ashley Dennison: So you are one of the two people listed on our site that I would say actually have literacy and something approaching mastery of where AI is today and have some idea of where it's going tomorrow. We have a number of folks listed who want to claim that they have that, but if I'm just being honest here, and I'm not going to names, very, very, very few actually get it, and I am not among that number. I'll say it right now, I'm not. I'm not among that number at all.

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Ashley Dennison: I use AI in some ways, but in a very small way in my day to day work and going back to the points were making earlier about being a little bit imperfect, a little unpolished, a little bit courageous, wouldn't it be courageous in today's climate to step out into the ether and into the forefront and say, hey, I have no idea what I'm doing with AI. Holy crap. This is scary and overwhelming and it's moving at the speed of light and will someone please help me? I feel like I'm on a train that's been derailed.

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Daniel Nestle: Boy, I wish people would start saying that because then I would be able to reach out and get clients, because that's exactly those, exactly people I want to help. I think it's less likely for that to happen in the comms community, though. I think you're right because we are knowledge workers like we are as a community of people. I always thought, and still think that we're learners and we are, you know, we're a knowledge hungry group and our value to our employers and to our clients is almost entirely based on how much we know about what they're doing. And you know, when it, when there's some indication that we don't know something, you know, it's like, wait a second. And of course I'm painting with a broad brush, but, you know, it's, it happens. You know how many.

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Daniel Nestle: I've met a lot of communications people who were, you know, top 2% of their class, right? Which, by the way, is a corollary. There's this whole study about like valedictorians and people like that who never become CEOs, right? Who, who are never like, what? You'll never, almost never find a CEO who is an A student, right? It's like you're gonna. Going to find the A plus students being the followers maybe at the second or third level below because they're much more comfortable where they have to know, learn, et cetera, but they don't have to make that final accountable decision where they have a structure to work within. It's fascinating study. If I can dig it up, I will.

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Daniel Nestle: But anyway, like to, to try to get comms folks, and I suppose a lot of folk, a lot of consultants out there to admit they don't know much about AIs, I can understand why that might be troublesome. But looking at the way things are developing, I fear for a lot of the consultants I've met. I fear for people out there who aren't jumping on the train. But at the same time, I want to console them and say, you don't have to go that far. You just have to get to be enough so that you kind of understand what's going on enough to say, you know, I, I kind of see where we need to go with this within whatever specialized area of communications or marketing that I am offering.

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Daniel Nestle: If you're out there as a performance marketer, right, and you're all about automation and you're all about like, conversions. If you're not getting fluent in AI and like in the various tools out there, then you're screwed. But, you know, people will just blow you away. But if you're not a technical person, if you're a writer, if you are a, like a storyteller, you know, these are still, you know, very human. You need to use AI to speed yourself up a little bit and to enhance what you do, I think. But you're on safer ground. The other thing I would say, and I want to hear what if you agree with me on this, is that it's really surprising to me that more comms people haven't really jumped in to AI because, and I'm speaking generative AI because we know how to have conversations.

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Daniel Nestle: Our superpower is in having conversations with our audiences and our stakeholders that persuade or that convince or that calm people down, whatever it is. We, we achieve some sort of objective through conversation, through very practiced messaging, through understanding, you know, what is motivating people. And we also further that by being able to answer, ask questions. So being curious.

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Ashley Dennison: Yeah, right.

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Daniel Nestle: So being curious and being conversational, those two things are the most important skills to have when you are working with AI. Those two very things. And you can get so much out of your AI. You, you can learn all the prompting you want, you can learn all the frameworks you want, learn everything and that, but which will, they will be helpful. But if nothing else, you can just jump right onto a large language model and be curious and conversational and you can get a whole lot of results. And you know, it's the easiest thing. So, so yeah, astound me. So what do you think that we're going to see this mad rush is going to continue? But do you think that, you know, it's a, it's a must for the community?

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Daniel Nestle: Do you think that, where, do you think that AI is going to play a role among the skill sets of all the folks that are in the, the comms consulting community?

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Ashley Dennison: Well, I mean, as you know, comms and marketing, if we're grouping them together, they're not a monolith, right? It's this hugely diverse, massive community with all of these different branches and arms and specialties. And I've seen that firsthand with the folks at commsconsultants.com, we have more than 30 different specialties listed. And that's really not even scratching the surface. I expect that to grow. And also as people get farther into their careers, whether they're in full time roles or they're consultants, they generally get more and more specialized into those niche areas. So you brought up a couple of examples of types of consultants or types of specialists that maybe wouldn't need to leverage AI in such a heavy way day to day.

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Ashley Dennison: I mean, depending on where AI goes and the different branches that it develops in itself, my take is there will always be plenty of work within the comms and marketing space for smart, creative, intuitive people who are willing to learn and have the good baseline skills within their specialty, whether or not they've Mastered AI. To me, a big part of it is being able to vocalize and be honest about what you don't know, that's a big part of it. If you can be the type of, you know, communications leader or consultant who can sit there and confidently say, here's what I don't do. Here's what I'm not an expert in, here's what I don't know everything about. That's, number one is being able to clearly and confidently state what you are not an expert in. And number two is saying, hey, I know.

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Ashley Dennison: Going back to our network conversation earlier, I know who to call, who is an expert in that. I know this person, that person and this person that. I follow their content. I'm always watching their insights. I learned so much from them. They are true leaders in this space. They are true experts. Knowing what you don't know, being confident about sharing that with others openly and unashamedly and being able to identify quickly, I know a great partner who can come in and just revolutionize this for us. To me, that's the key. That's how to position yourself if you are not going to be the next, you know, the next leader in the AI comm space. If you don't think that's you, that's not your role.

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Ashley Dennison: Start making friends with people like Daniel and others who are right at the cutting edge so that you can be seen as a valuable resource, a connector with whoever it is you're trying to help, whether it's a client, whether it's your employer, whether it's your cco, your CEO. And they can look to you as someone who is well connected enough and who knows enough about what they don't know and is humble enough to be able to say, you know what? I don't have the answer on that, but let me call someone who does.

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Daniel Nestle: You are, you're presenting this really amazing glass half full view of people's willingness to pay it forward and to admit when they don't know something and to, to just like, you know, say, hey, I believe that there's karma here. So I'm just gonna introduce you to the right person now. I totally do that. And I am always 100 sure that at some point in the future, right, there will be a. I'm not gonna say a reward, right? But I will say that there will be a, a karmic sense of goodness happening from that. Right? Because, you know, like, I've certainly recommended different people for different things. Over the course of my life, you know, I've been on LinkedIn for 20 years. I mean, I've. You know, I've. It's happened. The. The worst thing.

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Daniel Nestle: The worst thing that's come out of it is, hey, you know, I got a couple of bridges built somewhere, right?

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Ashley Dennison: Yeah.

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Daniel Nestle: And I have some relationships with people that just make me feel better. You know, have I gotten jobs out of that? I don't know. Maybe at some point or another. Like, it's just things kind of build on it, you know, But I think just the idea of do. Of. Of. Of paying it forward, of saying, you know, I don't. I'm not good for this job. Like, I can tell you right now, this is not me, but I know somebody who is, you know, that you have nothing to gain by lying or by pretending, but you have everything to gain by saying, I know a person who can do that.

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Ashley Dennison: Well, absolutely. You have everything to gain, personally and professionally. It's just a good human way to behave. It's the generosity of spirit that you can show to others. It also, to me, presents an opportunity to highlight where you are an expert. So in the same vein of pointing out, you know, hey, you know, AI for communications is not my strongest skill set, but I know someone fantastic who really does this well. Let me connect you at the same time, this is what I do extremely well. That's. Yeah, that's what I always recommend to consultants as they get more specialized.

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Daniel Nestle: Yep.

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Ashley Dennison: In. Into whatever their particular thing is, I remind them that they shouldn't even try to do it all. They shouldn't position themselves as someone who can do it all. That. That actually detracts and deters from their key message. Right. What are we always telling clients about having this key message that you're hitting over and over again? Your sound bite. Right. If you want to be remembered for this thing that you do so well, so brilliantly in the marketplace, whatever that thing, maybe it's creative storytelling, you know, or it's issues management. Whatever it is, by nature of honing a path for yourself, in that one thing, you are discarding and setting aside many other possible paths, many other areas of expertise.

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Ashley Dennison: And so if you want to commit to your path of specialty, where you truly are an expert, you have to at the same time be willing to say, and all of these other areas are not my expertise, but I know people who can do those things for you. Let me connect you.

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Daniel Nestle: You reminded me of something. Cliff Ravenscraft, a podcaster who I met years ago, who actually was probably Singularly responsible for pushing me over the cliff to, no pun intended, but pushing me over to over the edge to start my own show. I went to see him do a keynote once, and he said the root of decide is cid, which is Latin, I suppose, for to kill. So by. When you decide, you're killing all of your other choices.

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Ashley Dennison: I love that now.

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Daniel Nestle: It's harsh, but it's. But, you know, that's why it's so hard to make a decision. So I, you know, look, I agree with you. I think, I think that's. It is. First of all, it is hard to do. But second of all, like, you knowing where you, where you're laying your, your. Where you're planting your stake in the ground, you know, helps you know where you are. You can't. You don't know where you are unless you have an indicator of a physical location where you are. I mean, in real life. So there's a lot. I think there's a lot of angst and confusion and certainly reluctance to pick up on AI for example. But I like what you're saying where not everybody needs to master it. You know, you don't have to be a master of it. It. It.

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Daniel Nestle: It will be a very good thing for you to understand how it can enhance and boost your. You. What you do. But. But. Because nothing will be untouched, I think. But, but, you know, make yourself better at what you do with a little bit of a helper in your pocket. But there's no reason to master it. And by the way, I'm very much behind the idea of, hey, don't go out and master AI because there's only a few of us who. Who claim to have. And I'm fine in that space myself. I'm just kidding. I've. I've met loads of people who are, who are so like all over AI and who are masterful of it. And you know, I, I am super respectful and I'm glad there's more and more of us because the world needs a lot of help with this, and.

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Ashley Dennison: It'S going to branch and divide just the same way. Our profession has branched out and divided into so many subspecialties and subcategories and nuances. I mean, anything. I mean, that happens. You can look at our streaming options with video. I mean, remember when there was just Netflix and you had to order the DVDs in the mail? And now look at the cornucopia of options we have with Video streaming services. It's virtually back to the days of cable with, you know, 150 channels and nothing to watch. It's, you know, this is going to proliferate, it's going to expand, it's going to diversify. There's going to be so many different subsegments of AI, just like there is with anything else. And we'll need specialties or specialists and consultants and experts in every one of those areas.

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Ashley Dennison: So today's expertise in AI, in generative AI is not going to be two years from now.

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Daniel Nestle: That's right.

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Ashley Dennison: The same type of expert in the same way. So part of it is going back to the curiosity were talking about. Having that curiosity at the forefront of everything you do. And you may not be a master of something, but being able to show that you're curious about the conversation that's unfolding and what's happening in the space and maybe being a little bit more adaptable and a little bit more flexible as times change and things shift and not being so married to the position that you were in five, 10 years ago, but being open to new things, wouldn't that be nice?

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Daniel Nestle: That would be nice. And adaptability, flexibility, comfort with discomfort. How often do you hear that? I mean, I hear it all the time. I wanted to know, you know, I know we're sort of starting to get towards the wrap up here, but before we do that, I would, I think I'd be doing a disservice to our listeners. We talked about what, you know, what comms consultants or what we as consultants, kind of where we're at as far as preparedness with AI. But what are you hearing from the clients that you're talking to those folks who are visiting your site, but also who you are talking to about what their needs are? It seems to me, and I'll just get a little context, it seems to me that there are a lot of companies, a lot of leaders who know that they need help.

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Daniel Nestle: They just don't know what kind of help they need. They're, they're, they've plateaued or they feel like, oh, you know, I just don't know where to go with this. They, maybe they don't, maybe they think they need training, but they don't know what kind of training. A lot of questions, very ambiguous. What do you hear?

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Ashley Dennison: Yeah, that's a great question. I, by nature of my work, both as a consultant for many years and with commsconsultants.com I tend to only speak to the most entrenched, exhausted, beleaguered communications leaders because they, you know, they come to outsource when their team is so strapped, so stretched, so exhausted, running, but running on fumes that, you know, that's when they tend to predominantly come to us. I wish that more, and this is part of what our mission is at commsconsultants.com, i wish that more communications leaders, marketing leaders and business leaders and C suite leaders were spending the time to proactively and strategically consider what is the future of work, what is the future of employee communications? For example, where are we going to be a year from now? Where are we going to be five years from now?

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Ashley Dennison: And let's bring in some experts like were talking about to coach, train, contemplate, build a strategy. But what I find, Dan, is the people I talk to and I, I have been fortunate to have been connected to and continue to have the opportunity to speak with a lot of CCOs at Fortune 100 brands. So we're talking some of the best here, at least on paper.

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Daniel Nestle: Yeah.

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Ashley Dennison: What I hear is that they are struggling to keep their heads above water with their day to day with, you know, meeting the needs of their CEO, of their shareholders, of all of their various stakeholders. Headcounts are being slashed, budgets are being slashed. So they don't have the same resources from a budget perspective or a team perspective that maybe they once did.

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Daniel Nestle: Yeah.

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Ashley Dennison: And they're catching up. So many leaders, maybe not so much the CCO CMO level, but so many around the VPSVP level in the in house comms world, are spending nights and weekends playing catch up with their overwhelming inboxes. They're trying to balance so many things that there just isn't time and space to come in and contemplate and ideate around something like how is AI going to transform our business? How can we leverage AI to improve our workflow? They're looking for arms and legs, they're looking for doers. They're looking for people who are going to come in and help give them a breath of fresh air so that they can maybe close their laptop before 9pm so in terms of prioritizing that and thinking ahead to the future, it's an uphill battle with those folks, I would say.

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Daniel Nestle: So right now the job to be done is, you know, give me peace of mind. Right.

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Ashley Dennison: I think the larger job, dan, is helping CEOs, business leaders and owners to see strategic communications in all of its forms as a critical business function. Absolutely critical for their bottom line, for their revenue, for their profitability, for future proofing their businesses. Because until our CEOs worldwide see that direct correlation between what their comms team is doing and whether or not their business remains viable in this modern marketplace, until we can draw that line very, very clearly, we are not going to see the resources, the budget, the team members, the proactive strategic thinking about things like how can AI revolutionize our communications practices. None of that will get the attention and the resources it deserves until C suite leaders understand that strategic communication is absolutely instrumental to their profitability and growth.

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Daniel Nestle: I am, I'm just kind of thinking about the last time I heard that was probably this morning. And like I hear that all the time and I've been part of organizations like the Page Society or like PRSA or you know, whatever that it's all about. Like almost exactly what you just said has been the mission or one of the purposes anyway for decades. Right? So maybe, you know, maybe AI was, AI is going to do us a little bit of a favor here and help us more directly prove or show, you know, how we move the needle. And it's not to be self congratulatory, it's just like, okay, measurement has always been a thing, you know, I don't know if you know Jeannie Dietrich. Actually I just recorded with her the other day. She's going to be, I think the episode before you.

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Daniel Nestle: But Ginny, Jeannie is the founder of Spin Socks and she created something called the Peso model for communications. And you know, yeah, people know what it is, paid, earned, shared, owned. But she created that 10 years ago and you know, boy is she dynamite. I mean you're not going to find a comms thought leader like her anywhere, but she has a lot to say about the whole range of, you know, strategies of media, of all this kind of stuff. And she wrote something even today, I think, or yesterday about let's just finally just get a hold of measurement. Measurement is always the thing, you know, and if we can get there, I think you're right, you know, we can do a much better job of persuading CEOs and leaders that, that they need to have a strong strategic communications program.

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Daniel Nestle: And communications consultants are here to help them understand this because we could focus in on that kind of stuff even more. So I know that we've really gone a long time here and it's always been over an hour. I can't believe it. So you know, let's, it, let's kind of try to put a bow on this here, Ashley. And, and just let me just ask you one last thing. I guess, which is sort of a, I guess it's a two parter in some ways. It's first of all, did I miss anything that you wanted to talk about? And second of all, you know, is there anything that you are concerned about or optimistic about for the future of communications that we haven't covered?

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Ashley Dennison: This has been really thorough, Dan. I've loved chatting with you. I can't think of anything that we haven't discussed outright. But the one thing that maybe would be a good end cap, just because we could have spent a whole episode or a whole series of episodes on the reasons behind the decades long struggle to position strategic communications as a business imperative. You're right. We've been trying to crack that nut for so long and I would just love to leave your listeners with that question to contemplate. If we've been trying for decades and so many of these experts and thought leaders and visionaries that we've mentioned and discussed on today's podcast have tried and tried again, why haven't we been successful yet? Why haven't we been successful at making this correlation if we've been trying so long and so hard in so many ways?

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Ashley Dennison: Because it's on us. It's on us to make that case, to prove that case. And I would love to hear from your listeners on that too as you promote this episode as it goes out there. I think that is a conversation that's on our shoulders in the communications community to figure out. That's not something that any CEO is going to come to us and give us all the time in the world to sit and explain all the pain points and all the reasons we have got to come together with a solution. And when we have a solution, we all have to get behind it. Until we do that, we're not going to be in the position we want to be in as a profession. You asked about the future of communications. That worries me a great deal.

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Ashley Dennison: It worries me that until we figure that out and take action, take united action around it to change the way that executives think about communications, that we will be. I mentioned slashing budgets, slashing teams. We will be relegated more and more into a smaller and smaller footprint as communicators, a smaller and smaller space where we are acting essentially as order takers for the higher ups, responding and reacting to their needs. Jumping when they say jump, that will play out more and more because the executive level, the C suite, they really like the idea of automation. As you know, they really like the idea of automation streamlining efficiencies, cutting headcount in order to create these operational efficiencies and make things move faster and cheaper.

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Ashley Dennison: So until we come forward with a solution to that problem and we all stand behind it, I think that our profession and our value and our voice is going to shrink and shrink. Not to end on a sad note, but that's the call to action I would like to leave people with.

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Daniel Nestle: I think that's a very important thought and I would just add that it's largely because of that or in part because of that the necessity, the indispensability of advisors, of trusted advisors who are courageous and who are able to put it, put connect dots, put everything together and convey, nay, communicate the ideas that will move and propel a business forward are absolutely golden for the future. It's true. And those people happen to be, I believe, communications consultants.

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Ashley Dennison: Oh, what a nice bow. Look at that. You found a bow.

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Daniel Nestle: See how I did that? No, I'm serious though. I think that, look, the profession is going to change. Our roles are going to change. But one thing that is going to be crystal clear, it's going to continue to be crystal clear, is that if you're not a trusted advisor at adding value, especially as you get more senior in your career, you know, what are you doing? That's, I think that's where it goes. So, Ashley, it has been an incredible pleasure. Anybody out there who wants to learn more about Ashley Dennison, just look on LinkedIn her name will be spelled properly in the episode title. And go to comsconsultants.com it is a. And, and I guarantee by the time you're listening to this, it'll be, you know, we're recording this in, in November.

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Daniel Nestle: I, I'm pretty sure you'll hear this either at the end of December or January. I'm looking forward to seeing how the, how commsconsultants.com is going to grow and to see how the community grows and to see the things that we're going to do together. And I'm very happy to be a part of it. And apart from that, Ashley, is there any place else people can find you? Is there, are you active on the other socials?

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Ashley Dennison: I have not expanded my social presence. I am about to launch, coming soon in the next couple of months here I'm going to launch a YouTube series where I'm interviewing some of the expert consultants who are listed on our site. So stay tuned for that. Check my follow me on LinkedIn for updates regarding that. But that's our, you know, our key benefit is our diversity of expertise and experience. So I'm going to dig in just like you do, Dan, and interview people and share those insights with the world. So stay tuned for that. And thank you so much for having me today.

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Daniel Nestle: Oh yeah, it's been my pleasure. And I can't wait to see those YouTube, your YouTube channel grow and bloom because it'd be fantastic. Thanks very much.

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Ashley Dennison: Thanks Dan.

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Daniel Nestle: Thanks for taking the time to listen in on today's conversation. If you enjoyed it, please be sure to subscribe through the podcast player of your choice. Share with your friends and colleagues and leave me a review. Five stars would be preferred, but it's up to you. Do you have ideas for future guests or you want to be on the show? Let me know@dantrendingcommunicator.com thanks again for listening to the trending Communicator.