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EP 28: Working Your Way Through a Moment of Crisis in Your Business
121 Plays7 months ago
This week, we discuss how quickly you can find yourself spiraling into a crisis in your business and different ways to work through it and come out stronger on the other side. Crises and issues can come up at a moment's notice for business owners, and one certain thing - you don't know what you might need to pull yourself through it until you're in deep. Listen in as Betsy shares with Lindsay about a crisis she has faced this month in her Facebook Ads Management business, how she worked through the issue, and some new perspectives found during the situation.
Follow The Business Playdate online & come say hi!
- The Business Playdate Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thebusinessplaydate/
- Lindsay White's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lindsayw.co/
- Betsy Moorehead's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/betsymoorehead.biz/
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Transcript
Tools of livelihood: A double-edged sword
00:00:00
Speaker
But it's hard. You're in a spot where this is your livelihood and this is the tool that you use to feed your family. It's a real thing and it sucks when you feel so helpless.
Meet your hosts: Lindsay and Betsy
00:00:18
Speaker
Welcome to the Business Playdate, a podcast hosted by Lindsay White and Betsy Moorehead. Two internet strangers turned business besties.
00:00:25
Speaker
We're two marketing professionals living across the country, raising our kiddos while running our own individual businesses. We built these businesses based on our experiences working in corporate management roles with the end goal to be able to show up for our families first. And we did it. We're so happy you're here with us. Now let's get into this week's episode.
Pregnancy tales and parenting humor
00:00:47
Speaker
Hey, Lindsay. Hey, Betsy. First, if you don't mind, I think it's only fair that we address maybe why you've been so sick. There's a lot of reasons why. Well, you put it out on the internet the other day, and I've been trying not to. Oh, no, we can. We can. We can. I'm trying to think of the math. I'm at some point of pregnant when you're listening to this.
00:01:17
Speaker
Yeah. Like second trimester maybe? I don't know. Today, I think I'm almost 14 weeks. There are baby problems. Yeah. I think I'm almost 14 weeks. Somebody asked me the other day how old Mackie was and I was like, one and a half?
00:01:33
Speaker
I don't know how many months that is. Almost 17 months old. Someone said something. They're like, how old is Lila? And I was like, oh. And I'm like, she's two. And they're like, oh, well, she's just a little younger than so and so and so and so. It's like 27 months. And I was like, I don't know how many months she is. I don't have time to calculate that.
00:01:53
Speaker
Well, sorry to put you out there like that. No, no, it's all good. So yeah, it's been brutal. It's mostly been brutal for, I mean, a lot of reasons, but really nauseous at first. Then I got the stomach bug. Then I got some sort of
00:02:08
Speaker
bronchiolitis situation. What could it come from? Respiratory issues. All sorts of viruses. My children are little germ factories. So just out here living, can't take any of the good stuff. You're bringing another germ factory into the world too. I'm bringing another one in, yeah.
00:02:30
Speaker
Oh my goodness. Well, I'm very excited for you. And I'm excited that we can like talk about it now. I know. It was funny because I mentioned it on Instagram or something. And Betsy was like, I'm surprised people haven't realized this because I mean, you talked about craving Benihana, which I'm going to tonight. I am thrilled. I've definitely been
00:02:57
Speaker
I wouldn't say craving anything, but I wouldn't say not craving. I describe it as my last pregnancy is the same where I feel like Ariana Grande, where I'm like, I see it, I like it, I want it, I got it. If I think of it, I must have it. I gotta have it, yeah. I had the very typical pregnant lady cravings with both of mine, like pickles and olives and ice cream.
00:03:23
Speaker
Bless you. I'm just over here muting my coughs out. I am nasty, guys. Well, you're almost at that hopefully burst of energy stage, and we can get this spread out of here for you.
Pollen problems and allergy advice
00:03:38
Speaker
This is a total change of subject, but is the pollen really bad in Atlantic? The pollen is. It is insane. Yes, the pollen is actually terrible, and I do remember last year
00:03:49
Speaker
because this is my second spring in Atlanta. I remember last year, I was like, oh my gosh, I am so sick from this pollen. I'm going to take Zyrtec every day and I don't want to take Zyrtec every day right now.
00:04:01
Speaker
I'm not, but I do think Paulin is playing a big factor into it, because first of all, my body is not used to all these trees. I'm a Florida girl. I'm used to palm trees. Yeah, it's going to take a little while. When I first moved to Houston, I never had allergies, ever. And then a couple of years living in Houston, I was like, oh my gosh, I'm miserable this time of year. It's awful. And now I'm used to it. Really? So you'll get used to it, yeah. So we have a light at the end of the tunnel? You do. I mean, I've lived in Houston for like 13 years, though. Perfect. 14 years. All right, so I've only got to wait.
00:04:30
Speaker
11 more years. I know. But yeah, so the pollen is brutal, but everything is beautiful right now. I mean, flowers are blooming, trees are pretty. So
00:04:38
Speaker
That's nice. Everyone's getting out of their seasonal depression now that the daylight is longer. It is wild and I don't know if it's because I'm starting to come out of my sickness. I'm starting to hit the second trimester energy or if it's because the sun is out and I've been able to sit outside and I'll let the kids run around and I just pop up a little camping chair and I sit in the sun and I just nasty it.
00:05:03
Speaker
I finally feel good again. This is nice. Yeah. Oh, I know. It's crazy. Yeah, this time of year, everyone's cars have basically turned yellow. So I was like, Ryan, can you please clean out the garage? Because I don't want to have to wash my car everywhere. That's smart. That's smart. So I've been parking in the garage, which is nice.
00:05:23
Speaker
That is nice. Let's see what else is going on.
Locked out: Betsy's Facebook fiasco
00:05:28
Speaker
I'm still locked out of Facebook. I know we've been talking about that on Boxer, but by the time this comes out, hopefully I'll be back in. I mean, Lord willing. It has been a disaster. I got in after the outage happened earlier, or when was that? The beginning of March? Yeah. I got back in. I heard from meta support and I got back in.
00:05:50
Speaker
It's been brutal. I got locked out again and we can go into it or we can save it for later, but hopefully by the time this comes out, I am fully functioning back in and I can turn that damn two factor off and cater off. Well, and what's funny is, I mean, if you're just listening to this and you're not a long time listener,
00:06:08
Speaker
Betsey's whole business runs in Facebook. You are in Facebook ads manager, right? Is that what you would define yourself as? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I run. So it's not like you're just like, oh, I just want to keep up. I need to be, I mean, listen, don't get me wrong. I doom scroll with the best of us. But if my personal account went away forever, I could give two shits.
00:06:33
Speaker
I cannot get in to look at my client's ads and that's a problem. So hopefully by the time this is being aired, I'm back in or there's been a solution, but some of the solutions I'm finding are
00:06:50
Speaker
are dead ends, they're not solutions, or they like, like creating a new Facebook profile, like what should I did? But then I read it takes anywhere from two to four weeks for like new profiles to be allowed to be in a business manager or to be in an ad account, which I get for privacy reasons, but like, what do people used to do?
00:07:11
Speaker
So I have a workaround that I'm going to try to do this afternoon, but God willing, I'm back in soon. I hope so. I don't know. I know we talk about it all the time, social media and personally, professionally, whatever.
Facebook's customer service woes
00:07:25
Speaker
But this isn't that. This is the fact that I'm so, and this is why I'm so pissed off, is that
00:07:32
Speaker
People build their businesses and they market themselves on the internet. Cool. Social media is a massive part of that. But for Facebook, Meta, to be one of the world's largest media platforms, one of the world's largest advertising platforms, to have zero
00:07:52
Speaker
Opportunities, ways, whatever, to reach customer service is absolutely absurd. It is mind-boggling. And it's not like this is a surprise. It's not like, oh, this is so crazy, Betsy. We didn't know that Facebook was having problems. Your whole platform went down. Yeah.
00:08:08
Speaker
It's not a shock to Facebook that there was a problem and now people have issues because of it. And when we were voxering yesterday about this, you were like, you shouldn't have to be Googling questions that you have. They should be answered. And all you can find on Facebook, which part of it gets, right? There's millions and millions and millions, hundreds of millions of people on this platform.
00:08:32
Speaker
They don't have the capability in the bandwidth, I'm sure, to respond to everybody's complaint about every little thing that happens, right? But when you are locked out of an account or when you have a business manager tied to your account, there should be some flag, you know, on the back that lets them know, like... Prioritization? Yeah. But also, like, all that you can get to is like a how-to page on their website with very general information.
00:08:59
Speaker
Well, so part of what I do as a marketing PR type of manager for my clients is crisis management and crisis management communications.
Meta support: Waiting game
00:09:08
Speaker
This qualifies as crisis management communications. Your platform went down for a day. I'm pretty sure it impacted two-factor authentication for a lot of people. From what I'm reading, yes. From what I'm reading and from what you've been telling me, it sounds like
00:09:23
Speaker
They are aware that two factor authentication got broken somewhere in the back end during this outage. This is a crisis management issue where they're not addressing it and any sort of.
00:09:37
Speaker
rhyme or fashion that's remotely close to what should be being done. Yeah. And the fact that like when the outage happened 36 hours later, I got a response for meta support and now it's, uh, five days later from the last time I put one in and I've gotten crickets and part of me starting to worry, like, because I've sent a support ticket in like every day, either I keep going to the bottom of the queue or I am being flagged as like a spam situation. So I'm trying to leave it alone today. I'm just gonna like.
00:10:08
Speaker
I went to the ends of Facebook yesterday because I'm still logged in on my Facebook app on my phone. I was in the back end doing everything I could find. I've been posting in Facebook groups from my phone. I've been reading Reddit threads. I've been finding all kinds of stuff on the internet, people having these workarounds and solutions. First of all, no two people's back ends of their Facebook settings are the same.
00:10:32
Speaker
No. Yours don't look the same as mine, I'm sure. All of the different from in this password and security areas. No two people are the same. No two people have the same issue, exactly. It's not like it's like- Which is just so bizarre. So bizarre. Basically yesterday, I ended up finding a way to get to an ads payment
00:11:02
Speaker
area on my Facebook app, on my phone. From there, I was able to go to the ads manager support desk and submit a message. They responded and they were like, this message, this email is only for ads payment issues. I was like, this is an ads payment issue. I can't access my account, which is connected to all these ads managers.
00:11:26
Speaker
So like in a roundabout way, this is a bad name issue and crickets. So anyway, I am very hopeful that this one like contact that was given to me.
00:11:43
Speaker
is going to provide a solution come Monday next week. We're just going to keep knocking on wood and pray into the sweet Lord, baby Jesus, because it's just a pain in the ass. And like, I get it. I think I was telling you, like someone like messaged me because they saw my Instagram story about like this happening and they were like, Oh, is this your personal account? And I was like, yes. And I was kind of explaining what happened.
00:12:05
Speaker
And he was like, Oh, well I know someone who works at Facebook. He could probably fix this for you, but he's going to want to get paid. And I was like, I just didn't answer. I was like, listen, I, I didn't answer, but I was thinking to myself, yeah, sure. Let me pay somebody that quote unquote works at Facebook to get me my account back to do their job. You know, like, you know, there are services like I've seen.
00:12:32
Speaker
I mean, there are services. There are people who've made businesses on being able to get your account back. And you know what they are? They're hackers that can get you your account back. I was going to say, I was like, this seems very illegitimate. It is. It's like one of those. Did you watch Olivia? Gosh, what is that show where she was having an affair with the president?
00:12:56
Speaker
No. Do you have any idea what I'm talking about? Oh my gosh. No, but I'm terrible at pop culture and I don't watch any TV. Okay. If it's not reality TV, I don't know what it is. Basically, I cannot think of it right now. It's like on the tip of my tongue, but she's like one of the best attorneys ever. And they like, she was having like an affair with the president and all this stuff. Anyway, it's a show that was on ABC.
00:13:18
Speaker
And, um, she on her staff had a hacker, like an ex-hacker that like the FBI like found as a hacker, right? And he was like, he could do anything and everything for her. And I'm like, it's those people. It's those people. They're the ones that are making money, run a business. Yeah. Someone was like, Oh yeah, you're going to have to pay someone like $3,000 to hack it and get it back. And I was like, what? No, like a first, no, why do I pay someone so much money?
00:13:45
Speaker
to do something that sounds illegal. I don't know. Yeah. Like the other thing too, like I've talked to other people who have seriously been hacked and had like their ad account hacked and like their credit card being used and whatnot. Facebook has a zero sympathy for that. They don't give a shit. They don't care. Like there's no way of talking to an actual human and they also don't want you to create a new profile.
00:14:14
Speaker
And you know, because then it's like, you have two profiles with the same name and the same email, you know, all of that. It's like, what are we supposed to do? What are we supposed to do here? So anyway, where all of the story is, I have, I have no clue what I'm going to do, but we'll get there. It'll all work out. It'll be fine. My clients have been amazing. They all understand, but you know, a week, like Monday will be a week since I've haven't been able to be in. Yeah.
00:14:42
Speaker
And thankfully, like all of their stuff is tied to their own business managers and whatnot. And I haven't been hacked, you know, like that's the thing, right? I've been hacked. Like there's no, my account hasn't been compromised. It's just, I'm literally, I can't get past two factor authentic cater because I guess how I had it set up years and years ago.
00:15:00
Speaker
was on an app that I don't have anymore and was on through, through like a third party app, uh, thing. And there's actually like, normally you could go in through the app apparently and turn off, turn it off. If you're already logged into your account, you would think you wouldn't have to type in a two factor to go into two factor and turn it off. But I don't know. I don't know. I drank a lot of wine last night, you know, cause I was just like, I can't deal with this anymore.
00:15:31
Speaker
So that's what's been going on with me. That and I didn't get picked for jury duty and I was like so bummed. It's so funny to me that you are bummed about that. I'd be so thrilled. Well, they started calling like ranges of juror numbers and I was like in the next set that was going to get called. And then she came and she was like, okay, everyone can go. The rest of the court settled. I was like, oh, because everyone was getting called to go to the criminal court. Yeah. And I was like, damn it.
00:15:56
Speaker
I got to let it go. I was like, I needed something to keep me. Some excitement. Keep me going. I get it. I get it. Oh, boy. Exciting times over here. We got Facebook drama and pregnancies. Who knows what's next? Who knows? Who knows what's next? But I think, and we've been voxering about this too, this whole Facebook debacle for me has really thrown me in a
00:16:25
Speaker
you know, chaos, like crisis management, like mindset for like shit. Like what do I do? Like this is my business. Like I, I don't care about like the personal use of it, but like, what do I do? You know? And like, is this like a, it's like a business problem. That's very acute. Like it's a right now issue. It's very sudden and you don't,
00:16:52
Speaker
plan for this to happen because your entire business is an ads management business. It's just tricky. It is tricky and it makes you think. It makes you think about a lot of things. It shifts your mindset. One of the topics we were going to talk about today is when something like this happens and you have to go into crisis mode, what do you do?
Crisis management in business
00:17:15
Speaker
We've talked about being in a plateau, right? That's not this. This is like, oh shit, like my whole business... This is like an external factor that's changing things. ...out of my control. Sure, there's workarounds I can get to eventually, you know, but like...
00:17:30
Speaker
At what point like, like, what do you do? And, and so my mind has just been kind of all over the place of like, is like, should there be another layer of revenue, you know, source for my business or should there be, you know, I've been thinking about all kinds of things like,
00:17:47
Speaker
Should I be offering this type of stuff or should I bring on somebody who's or pay, you know, to have a retainer service of somebody who is more technical savvy with this type of like situation or, you know, I don't know. It just really makes you think. And like, I know like every business owner can probably relate with like,
00:18:04
Speaker
having an oh shit moment or like a what, what's, you know, we've talked about like the what next factor or like you have to make these decisions in your business. And when something like a crisis like this happens, which I would consider this a crisis, it's like, what do you do? And where do you go from there? And so that's kind of where my mind's at these days.
00:18:22
Speaker
I don't know. It's stressful. Even if it all works out and I get back in, it still makes you think, do I really want to be dealing with this? Well, it's one of those things too where you're, okay, so maybe you're out of plateau or maybe you're like, I need a change or whatever. I'm not saying that this is you, but just if that's where your mind is at or you're already kind of like, oh, what's next for me? And then this happens. It's like, is this a sign? Should I be getting off of like,
00:18:49
Speaker
Should I be changing things up a little bit? Yeah. My husband always, he used this analogy with me when I was struggling with leaving corporate and figuring out what was next there. He was like, you know, you'll know when your line has been crossed. You'll know when, like you'll know. And if you're not sure yet, then you're not ready to leave or you're not ready to make a change. And I damn sure knew when my line was crossed. I knew.
00:19:14
Speaker
And so I don't, I'm not, my line's not crossed now, you know, but like, it does. Like you'll, I think you'll, you'll know like when it's time for a pivot, time for a change, time for figuring out an alternative method. So to any of my clients listening, I promise I'm not going to do it. I just like, but it's one of those, it's hard. I mean, crazy. You're in a spot where like this is your livelihood and this is the tool that you use to
00:19:45
Speaker
feed your family. It's a real thing, and it sucks when you feel so helpless. Yeah, it does. It sucks really bad. It's just very, I remember I voxered you yesterday, and I was like, I just want to cry. And you could probably hear it in my voice. You were totally about to cry. I was just so fed up. And I'm definitely one of those people that when I'm pissed, I cry. And I don't know if you're that way, but I am. Not a cryer.
00:20:12
Speaker
I hated it cuz like my old corporate boss like was so not a crier and anytime I'd have to like go have a tough conversation or like I get upset about something I would start crying and she like you know would tell me in my reviews like
00:20:25
Speaker
I need to work on that. And I was like, I try. I try. Trust me. I don't want to be crying. It's just I'm passionate, OK? I can't help it. For those of you listening and not watching this, my jaw just dropped. It did drop. Oh, yes. I could tell you about all kinds of things. I can't believe that. I mean, I was too emotional. We talked about my line being crossed. Yeah, it was crossed. A lot of things there.
00:20:56
Speaker
Yes. That's why I'm not a corporate girl anymore. And you know what? You don't need to be. It never was. Let's just be real honest. Oh my gosh. Have you ever had like a situation, like a crisis moment or like a crazy something happened? I don't know. You work with like a lot of like financial things. I've worked with a lot of financial things.
00:21:21
Speaker
No, I would not say I've been in a crisis quite like this where like a tool or a resource has essentially disappeared. But I would say in like the line of work that I do, there's two things. One is I work in a very highly regulated environment. So there's a lot of rules and regulations that are constantly changing. And so that does mean a lot of changes to marketing strategies, kind of like on a quick dime.
00:21:52
Speaker
We've done full website changes on the drop of a hat because a compliance change happened and we can't talk about things the same way we talked about them before. In the industry that I work in, testimonials are pretty much like hard no. So a lot of the typical marketing strategies people would use or communication lines people would use that we can't actually use with my clients. So that definitely
00:22:17
Speaker
know, there's changes and we have to ebb and flow and, you know, work with our clients on that. But another thing too is I am very generalized. So, you know, fractional CMO kind of work, fractional director of marketing, whatever you want to call it. But in that space, there's so many different avenues. So I think it does lend some shielding from this kind of thing where
00:22:43
Speaker
I'm not, I also don't work with just one email platform or one social media platform. I work within so many different areas that I think, I wouldn't say it diversifies the revenue stream as much, but it diversifies how I can work with my clients. Yeah. No, that makes sense. But the, if I were in your shoes, that would really make me upset. I would be in the mind, the same mindset of, well, I don't know about the same mindset, but I would be in the mindset of like,
00:23:12
Speaker
something's got to change. I can't keep living like this. I can't be at the mercy of freaking Facebook. I'm relying on the internet. I'm relying on something I have no control over. It's funny as we've talked about this in a previous episode where
00:23:32
Speaker
We were like, hey, don't get legal advice from people in Facebook groups. And it sucks because you have to get these unreliable resources to give you advice at this point because going to the source is doing absolutely nothing.
00:23:45
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I, I'm, I'm just like at a loss at this point. And I think there, the fact that there is, I had the, I was doing the right thing, right? Like I had the right, the right things in place. I had two factor on my account so that it wouldn't get so that it was more secure, right? I was doing all the right things and now I can't get past it. And it's like, how is that the right thing? Right. Um, yeah, I think like having some sort of.
00:24:15
Speaker
plan in place for when a crisis occurs in your business, for your clients, all of that is so necessary and you don't really think that you need it until you need it. You may not need reactionary type of crisis management from a marketing standpoint, but internally in your own business, what are your backup plans? Yeah. What's your next move?
Diversifying beyond Facebook ads
00:24:44
Speaker
I'm not saying you have to do this. I don't want to tell you what to do. Please give me advice, yes. I mean, you really have always defined yourself as a Facebook ads manager. Maybe this is a great opportunity to spread your wings and fly and just be an ads manager. Yeah, I do. I mean, that's the good thing. You do Google ads. I do Google ads, yeah.
00:25:09
Speaker
And what could be cool is this might, this might change your holistic strategies for your, not necessarily for your clients you're currently working with, but like when you think about ad strategies for businesses, you're going to remember this, you know, and like maybe other ad platforms that make sense for their specific ad strategy will come to mind because you will be, it's just one of those things where it's like, okay, you're kind of diversifying a little bit. You're thinking a little bit bigger.
00:25:38
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. No, I agree that all these things are in my head, you know, kind of like spinning around in there, figuring out what, what makes sense and where to go from here. But hopefully again, hopefully by the time everyone's listening to this, it's all fixed and it's just the, you know, I'm just laughing about it in the, in the future.
00:26:02
Speaker
Yes, exactly. But yes, I will. When this drops, I don't think this is coming up. We're recording this mid-March and it's not coming out until the end of March, but we're getting ahead of schedule here. We are. I mean, March is a busy month. We've got a spring break. We've got holidays, all the things. I know. Our town is on spring break right now.
00:26:24
Speaker
So, thankfully, the traffic hasn't been bad because we live by so many schools. But like daycare has been, the attendance has been different because like you have like older kids that are here for like just like the camp week or whatever. And then like some of the younger kids aren't there probably because like maybe their parents are keeping them home with their siblings and yeah, I don't know.
00:26:47
Speaker
the girls had like a color war today and like all the classrooms had their like own color to pick and then they all dressed in it. And whoever's class had the most people dressed in one color, their color wins. And my four year old has been ecstatic about it. So last night I scrounged around to try to find her color was orange to try to find. Or just a tough color. And orange is like not in color that we. It's not a color I buy. Yeah. I mean, like this is like peach what I have on right now. So it's like kind of orange, but um,
00:27:17
Speaker
It's just not a color that like I normally buy for her. And so looking and looking and looking. And I finally found like a random pair of hand-me-down shorts that have like orange and purple on them. And then like this, like size three, she wears five tee now, but like a size three tee like orange shirt. I like laid it out for her. And this morning she came down and she was like, I'm dressed. I'm ready for color day. And it was so tight. And I was just like, you know what? You're going to rock with it. It's going to be great. It's Friday. You're good. It's Friday, you know?
00:27:46
Speaker
Oh boy. Well, that ended on a nice note. Yes. The Facebook rant. And you know what? If you're stuck in a spot in your business where you have a crisis, maybe this episode's for you. Maybe it is. Maybe it is. And hopefully not. Hopefully you're not in this situation though. Hopefully not. Yes.
00:28:07
Speaker
Um, well, I hope you have a lovely day. Thank you. I hope you do as well. And I'm sure I'll talk to you later, but to everyone listening, thank you guys for being here. Thank you for, um, being a part of our business play date. And, uh, if you haven't, please drop us a review. We would greatly appreciate that. Have a good week. Bye guys.