Fake Reviews, AI, and the Collapse of Brand Credibility: Insights from Gal Borenstein

Workforce Alchemy

Fake reviews. AI-generated perception. Viral outrage. The rules of trust have changed and business leaders who fail to adapt risk losing credibility overnight.  In this episode of the Mason Duchatschek Show he sits down with strategic branding expert Gal Borenstein to reveal how trust is built, damaged, and defended in today’s digital marketplace.  With nearly 30 years of experience in branding, reputation strategy, crisis management, and leadership communication, Gal explains why your company no longer fully controls its own narrative and what CEOs, business owners, and leadership teams must do to stay credible in an era dominated by online reviews, social media, AI, and public perception.  If you lead a company, manage teams, oversee marketing, or influence customer experience, this conversation delivers practical strategies you can apply immediately to strengthen trust and protect your reputation.  In this episode:  • How fake reviews manipulate customer trust • Why AI is changing brand reputation forever • The hidden danger of perception-driven marketplaces • How internal culture impacts external credibility • Reputation management strategies for business leaders • Crisis communication and rebuilding trust after setbacks • The Guardian Framework for long-term brand credibility • Why transparency is becoming a competitive advantage  ⏱ TIMESTAMPS  00:00 The New Trust Crisis Facing Businesses 05:04 Fake Reviews and Manipulated Perception 10:38 The Guardian Framework for Building Trust 17:33 Transparency, Culture, and Leadership Alignment 26:49 Leadership Decisions That Build or Destroy Credibility  ABOUT GAL BORENSTEIN  Gal Borenstein is a strategic branding expert, author, and advisor specializing in trust, reputation management, branding strategy, and organizational credibility. He helps companies navigate modern perception challenges in a rapidly evolving digital landscape.  RESOURCES  Don’t Believe the Hype: When Trust Is on the Line https://www.amazon.com/Dont-Believe-Hype-Executive-Resilient/dp/B0DP1FBH68  Beating Goliath with AI: The Small Business Playbook to Outsmarting Your Biggest Competitors https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B00J9AZ0GQ  CONNECT WITH WORKFORCE ALCHEMY  Website https://workforcealchemy.com/  Facebook https://www.facebook.com/ReverseRiskConsulting  Instagram https://www.instagram.com/workforcealchemy/  X / Twitter https://x.com/WorkAlchemist  Rumble https://rumble.com/user/WorkforceAlchemy  Dailymotion https://www.dailymotion.com/WorkforceAlchemy  YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@WorkforceAlchemist  CONNECT WITH MASON DUCHATSCHEK  Website https://masonduchatschek.com/  LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/masonduchatschek/  #Trust #BrandReputation #Leadership #BusinessGrowth #AI #FakeReviews #DigitalMarketing #CrisisManagement #CEO #BusinessLeadership #CustomerTrust #BrandStrategy #Entrepreneurship #WorkforceAlchemy

Transcript

00:05welcome to the mason duke check show and before we jump in this episode is brought to you by

00:12workforcealchemy.com helping leaders discover and uncover hidden profit leaks inside their

00:19business operations today's guest is gal borenstein he's a strategic branding expert

00:27who has spent nearly 30 years advising ceos on how to protect their reputation and scale

00:34in high-risk environments he's the author of don't believe the hype it's a practical executive

00:41guide to navigating credibility perception and leadership in the age of digital and ai

00:48welcome to the show thank you for having me so in your book you open with

00:56how the digital world has blurred what's real and what's not can you share a real example

01:03where that confusion created a big business problem of course i would use a big company example

01:13but let's talk about the fact that uh before we had distributed workforces any company would have

01:21a lot more human frame type interaction so if your manager was working in a place there was a problem

01:29you solved it by having kind of a meeting and you had a relationship that was built but really based

01:35on the idea of uh trust that goes beyond being transactional in a sense so it's not just a meeting

01:43to get something out of somebody and being nice for 30 seconds it was basically the relationship is what

01:50uh created the fabric of a corporation lo and behold i believe it was two to three years ago

01:58we all know the brand name of boing being a great company that had a very good reputation and being

02:06a safety

02:07first company and then interestingly enough the trust that existed inside the company fell apart

02:15because the management of the company and the leadership did not really take into consideration

02:21how we're listening to our employees all the way down to the floor basically where people are putting

02:28together parts and i use this example on a corporate level because it is very telling about what trust

02:35should be and what happens when you don't do it because it was a very costly mistake and all it

02:42was

02:42was an employee that was working uh in quality assurance and coming to check on a widget that was

02:51falling apart and the information between the the worker and the supervisor did not make it all the

02:59way to the executive management or the higher ups in the company in a timely manner and

03:05they maybe thought that you know it's not important enough maybe they can get away with it maybe it's a

03:11quality assurance program that checks all the boxes so they're not worried about it but what happened

03:16there was a crash then followed by investigations about what happened and the conclusion of that event was

03:26we can't trust boeing without really checking on the details because now the promise of the brand which is

03:35kind of being kind of the safest company in the world and being the leader which is actually true

03:41after airbus that you really can trust this plane to really go up and come down safely so it took

03:51possibly a year for all of the public relation the crisis communications and making changes in

03:59management to create the optics and the new kind of brand where we can say for them that they're

04:08trustworthy and they're being transparent and they collaborate with the media and if somebody

04:14complains they take the complaint then kind of expedite the process of conversation so i use that example

04:21because that is kind of help crystallize what trust today is versus what it was before before trust was

04:30something that you could break but you own the narrative about the company and you cover it with

04:35advertising maybe and a lot of slick br but now in a digital age and the age of ai you

04:44know

04:44no longer own the narrative of your company because if before covid we only had newspapers maybe and

04:52magazines and that was very influential now we have micro influencers which could be somebody that has

04:5910 000 followers on a completely innocuous uh account that doesn't have anything to do with safety

05:06or boeing but it goes to 10 000 people that then produce 20 000 comments and from there on what

05:13happens is

05:13your brand basically is being kind of uh prostituted to social media that is unregulated and it shouldn't

05:22be regulated but the point being that your digital footprint is more important than ever because

05:28whatever your narrative is when you take it to the marketplace if you don't listen to the outside

05:34and you don't incorporate your company values with the promise that you make it becomes the promise that

05:42that you don't keep that's really kind of where a lot of the issues are and in small mid-sized

05:48companies even more so because they don't have the sophistication of boeing right you talk about fake

05:55reviews and manipulated perception have you seen a company get caught in that ecosystem and how did it

06:05impact their growth well i won't name any names of course uh since i've been doing this for 30 years

06:10but i can

06:11tell you that for companies for example that use glass store which the idea was to create a transparent

06:17environment where people can talk about their workplace it hurts recruitment dramatically because

06:23the new generation that was born with an iphone they don't even go to the computer right the desktop

06:29they go on their iphone they pull up the app and they say you know let's look at the grades

06:35that this

06:35company is getting let's say a technology company is trying to recruit id people you tap and you look at

06:41the

06:42reviews and the reviews are very poor for that company and it looks like there was one disgruntled employee which

06:49is

06:50normal because there's a client in every service and you don't take that as much seriously unless it's something that

06:57turned into something ugly in the press or legal but when you get 20 or 30 reviews for a technology

07:05company that is trying to recruit an it specialist for each it specialist it costs about 10 to 20

07:13thousand dollars in recruiting costs to actually get them to to sign up and that's without the bonuses

07:20because it's a very in pursuit type of economy what happens when an entire generation which is the

07:27millennials and gen z which are kind of going to be the foreseeable future middle management to upper

07:34management what happens when they basically judge the company by the reviews and then when you see the

07:42reviews some of them are real and most of them are fake meaning somebody that doesn't

07:50wish you well puts out a review that looks original but it isn't it's created by a competitor

07:57and that happened many times where way before ai agents came to to play where i literally had to

08:05advise my client is look at the information in the review and tell me if this is somebody who actually

08:13would work for you or have the persona of somebody who actually worked here before versus saying four

08:19more employee anonymous and then give the company one star and then the ceo rating goes dramatically

08:26down so in this new age we don't control what the glass door publishes in fact they insist that

08:34everything has to be anonymous and when you have anonymous social media it really hurts the bottom line

08:42of the company and it's becomes a reputation issue that can be monetized into the loss of for example

08:50recruitment the same could be uh an ipo that goes out and then a day after the ipo goes out

08:57you have a

08:57bulletin board on yahoo finance or anywhere else where people put rumors about uh the fact that the

09:04product doesn't even work or uh i i was the coder that was involved and guess what it doesn't do

09:11how the things that it needs to do so it's very so what kind of what kind of advice did

09:16you or would

09:16you give to an employer who is a victim of that two things the first is you always need to

09:21get ahead

09:22of the news if you don't catch what happened in real time or close to near time somebody published

09:28something today you're not tracking it via social media listening which every suite like who's suite

09:34and other companies that do that even google alerts so yeah google alerts about your company and you

09:43don't catch it on in time it makes it a lot more difficult that it is one way to make

09:48sure that you

09:49have a response team that actually can verify if this is real if this is fake if this is coming

09:56from a

09:56competitor is trying to really ruin your business in a surreptitious way and the second is deal with

10:03the consequences which is go on the offense don't stay on defense most companies are advised by their

10:12very smart legal departments to say nothing because that might cause down the road uh this course that

10:21might be a liability to the company i'm in branding and pr and i can tell you that

10:25the first 24 hours of a news cycle if you don't get ahead of the store if you don't respond

10:32to employee reviews and say for example i apologize or we apologize for not implementing the hr program

10:40of having fun every friday for example but we corrected it or we're in the press of correcting it

10:46please contact us anything that sounds genuine and creates a conversation kills the sting of a review

10:56that is killing your company's reputation and you can do that by forming a tactical response team within

11:05your company depending on your size of course if you can afford having two or three people in your

11:11marketing department do that or you can use additional support from agencies that specialize

11:17in pr and strategic communications but overall what a ceo needs to have is a dashboard in front of

11:24and that dashboard includes what is the brand perception of the company and it's no longer

11:30only the good stuff that the pr agency including mine would give you where we got you into the wall

11:36street journal we got you into the washington post whatever it is let's celebrate it at the end

11:41that's not reality anymore because in the digital world every bad thing that happened goes to places that

11:48you don't control so you need to always be on the initiative and be prepared with answers that you can

11:56use

11:57to alleviate or kind of take this thing away from those companies i like to think of it as a

12:03digital tattoo

12:06that's what we call it yes so you introduce the guardian framework can you give us a description

12:12of what that is and can you maybe give us a concrete example of a company that's applying one piece

12:18of

12:18that model effectively of course first kind of the in my book uh don't believe the hype when trust is

12:24on

12:25the line in the aid of ai it really kind of uh starts by saying the world has changed but

12:31then the guardian

12:32which is a trust building framework that i kind of develop is based on the principles of collaboration

12:39transparency and really being able to produce real and smart ways of actually communicating within the

12:48company first because what happens very often is a company makes a promise that's advertising

12:55but when you look at the staff or the floor workers and then you go up to the middle management

13:01and then

13:02you go to the next part of it which is the executive management and you ask them what are your

13:08company

13:08values what is the value proposition what is the differentiation and you get three different

13:13answers that don't really jog together that's the first place to start it means your internal culture

13:18has to be very specific to build something that everyone is on the same page so what i argue in

13:27my book is that

13:28you don't start by taking care of the outside first you have to take care of the inside and make

13:34sure that

13:34everybody's on board and is aligned with the messaging that you want to get out and make sure that the

13:40promise that you make is something that won't get broken as soon as it goes out so a small business

13:46example

13:47an hvac company that advertises cooling season for ac right and they really have a great commercial

13:55and then the two technicians that show up talk poorly about the company in front of the customer in the

14:03house how does that happen it happens because there was no alignment and proper training to make sure

14:10that everyone in the company knows these are the rules it's not a policy it's actually has to come from

14:17within and then the outside world really goes to the idea of how do you measure what customers and

14:25prospects are thinking about you when they think about the word truck do they trust you in attribute

14:31one two and three for example facebook had to deal with a big crisis of communication in the past

14:39two years which has to do with being transparent about their ai and most importantly about this the fact that

14:48most of the

14:49money they make is by selling the names and likeness and the kind of content that profiles a consumer that

14:57then they

14:57can sell for a dollars or two dollars for three dollars to a marketer they will use it to kind

15:03of create a very kind of

15:05specific profile that they can advertise to but what happened is you start seeing and i don't know if you

15:12notice it but i do a bunch of people start putting kind of like a paragraph that says i do

15:19not give my

15:19permission to facebook to put my likeness or my face or my information in my chats on any ad on

15:29any type of

15:30public communications period and then people that don't quite understand how the system works

15:36are cutting and pasting it and you see it almost on a daily basis depending on the age group that

15:43you

15:43deal with that has to do with being transparent about what you're doing so facebook had to spend a lot

15:50of

15:50time on rethinking what do we owe the customers based on what the customers are saying if they belong to

15:58an

15:59exclusive group of people and you have let's say 50 or 100 friends that like to talk about movies you

16:05don't really want that information sold because it's called a private group but if there's no

16:10difference between a private group and a public group of people just that like movies that really

16:16kind of is a big miss so facebook had that situation where governance of the information was not

16:24really kind of as tight as it needed to be and the result was studies show that genetics especially

16:30uh that kind of hung facebook as a kind of a community really kind of went through that process

16:37of having to earn back the trust of the people create safety tools to avoid having fake propaganda

16:44and fake news type of videos it's still around but it's a lot tighter now and they are listening to

16:51the customers which ultimately is what most companies forget to do and what i recommend in my

16:58system the guardians the way you build trust is you ask customers the difficult questions the one that

17:06didn't give you five stars the one that gave you constructive criticism are the ones that you need

17:11to interview way before you go down the road to go to market with a new product or service as

17:19long as

17:19you have it uh you'll be amazed how many companies never actually do a voice of the customer interview

17:28i'm not talking about the did we do well on this installation did we do well on this project an

17:35actual

17:36conversation between a company person and a customer and when you miss that you miss the personality of

17:44the company but most importantly you miss the opportunity to improve and to make your company

17:50more trustworthy your product and service more solid and then you're showing by asking those

17:57questions that you are actually a trusted company that i can work with or buy their products to give you

18:06as recent as in the past three or four weeks burger king started a new kind of commercial campaign and

18:14the premise of it is showing kind of uh people that work for burger king and i believe some of

18:21them

18:21were kind of executives say let's face it our food has not been as good as it used to be

18:28we hear you and we understand that nobody likes the chicken sandwich or burger it doesn't really does

18:37what it needs to do uh to make you happy and by the way we're getting rid of the creepy

18:43burger king

18:44character character and that really is something that you don't see a lot i don't know the same thing

18:50why why would you put out the dirty laundry and say to your customers we suck and your customers are

18:58already saying it anyway exactly but in my experience over 30 years working with companies it is so rare

19:06where transparency and turning it into an opportunity to really do better happens and then having the

19:14kind of collaborative approach of knowing that your customers are you know the lifeline of

19:20the business i'm gonna piggyback on something you're saying there i'm gonna piggyback on something

19:24you're saying because for those who are listening there are people listening thinking right now well

19:28they're either the business owner or they're in the executive suite and they're saying well no one's

19:32complaining and we've got people out there listening so we must be doing a great job and they're not

19:38i will give you a very specific example when i when i moved recently i had to get new new

19:46health

19:46insurance new doctors because i moved out of state and the hospital system that i got into said oh

19:53we've got this new app and they didn't have their act together and it's like oh it's real simple it

19:57only take a couple no it wasn't simple and the people at the front desk couldn't help and they said

20:02well

20:02you need to call these people in tech support they'll make it easy so i call and i talked to

20:07seven

20:07different people not one of which had the right answer they were all different answers it was a

20:13terrible experience i spent over an hour just to do basic things like become a patient

20:19this was complete and i'm not ranting because i wouldn't give their name either completely

20:24unacceptable like and i'm not i'm tech savvy enough but i think of someone my parents age

20:29they would have been there's not they would have not had health care because they couldn't do it no

20:34one i mean they would give up and i got a email sent me about from their quality control

20:42department or head of quality control or whatever i couldn't believe it and they said hey if you'd

20:49like to discuss this give us a call at this number i did and i waited on hold for over

20:5417 minutes

20:55and at 16 minutes as far as i knew i could be on there for an hour i don't know

20:59how many people

21:00after 15 minutes or five minutes or three minutes would have said i'm going to be on hold forever

21:06and i'm not getting paid for this i'm doing them a favor by calling they would have just checked out

21:10which means someone who had a bad experience that cared enough to help them called them waited and

21:16waited and waited and got so frustrated they hung up and the executive thing see we're not getting

21:21any complaints then at 17 minutes a lady did pick up the phone and she said yes i'm in charge

21:27of this

21:27i said okay before we begin do you have the ability to affect change and fix things or do you

21:33just put

21:33together a little report and go to report to the to the executive she's like the latter i'm like

21:40oh i'm like this is what happened what must i say here to help you get their attention because they

21:46aren't listening they aren't paying attention they think this is fine and you're having and you probably

21:51think you're doing okay too because not everyone's willing to wait on the phone as long as i was to

21:55call

21:55you or to wait on the phone as long as i was and you guys think you're doing a great

21:59job when you're

21:59not it's amazing i can give you a very kind of a pedestrian example that goes right into what you

22:07just said as late as today prior to the podcast i had to fill out eight forms of privacy before

22:14going

22:14to a doctor's appointment it was all online which was a great improvement over time where you put all

22:23the information insurance all your data in ahead of the appointment which is a good thing right but

22:29most of my visits before to the same health care provider the eight pages and age forms that

22:35really kind of uh came to me as soon as i filled them out online i got a confirmation that

22:41i got them

22:42online but then when you show up in the doctor's office they hand you a clipboard with the same eight

22:49pages and you now have to be stressed and most importantly fill out the same information that

22:58you provided already online with the purpose of expediency the the idea of saving frustration of

23:06creating a better relationship so someone in that organization does not connect the dot but i can tell

23:13you're working with companies that is very common where nobody's reading the customer reviews nobody's

23:21actually reaching out to customers that have not experienced the best experience and yes like you

23:27said the most dangerous thing you can do in the digital age especially where people can complain

23:32without complaining to you directly is to really listen and the dangerous part is if you don't listen and

23:39you basically believe on your dashboard or your virtual dashboard of management that if no complaints

23:46mean we're doing great my god you're probably at a five when it comes to being trusted because

23:53constructive criticism actually means people care and that's a good thing and that's one

23:59deeper i was in las vegas about 10 months ago and i've stayed at a very nice resort with lots

24:06of stars

24:07i had an expectation of it certainly being upper level not average so my expectations were above it

24:15and it was a below average experience and i'm not one to i don't bash folks but i try to

24:21make things

24:22better and offer and i asked for the manager and she was very nice and she's like i am the

24:28highest ranking

24:29person here there's one above me but what can i do to help and i just explained the situation

24:34and she just looked so defeated because she was obviously cared and was working hard and she's like

24:41i hate to tell you this she goes but you need because i said i don't want to put a

24:44bad review

24:45on your company because i know there are good people here working hard and you have systems in

24:49place that are decisions which can be shifted and made to other decisions and i promise you that the

24:55decisions you have in place right now are causing you lots of bad reviews and bad word of mouth and

24:59and things that you can't get off the internet i said that's a very expensive way for your management

25:05team to learn the lessons the other way they could do it is your senior executives could actually go

25:09through the experience as a customer and then you wouldn't have to have this explained to you

25:12she's like i know she goes that all happens out of town above us the only way only way you

25:19can get

25:19their attention is to give a review so she's literally an employee saying go ahead ream us online

25:24because if you don't they won't pay attention and i was like yes and that is exactly what i'm talking

25:31about when it comes to internal culture uh if the culture is not aligned with being providing

25:38trusted information internally between the different levels of management uh you would have

25:45somebody that actually care uh tell you yeah go and put a bad google review because i'm trying to

25:51help you and i'm sure you felt that this person really cares they did we don't know if the manager

25:58and the supervisor and the leadership of the company ever got that note and in order to survive and thrive

26:05in an environment where you do not own the narrative the marketplace owns your narrative you have to

26:13prepare to listen to solicit feedback about what's not working not just what is working

26:20and then incorporate it and make sure that everyone on every layer in the company understand

26:26what their role is to alleviate the problem most of the time you get the excuses to technology we don't

26:34have enough personnel to answer the phone we're overwhelmed this is all bullshit and the reason

26:40it's bullshit is what's more important than listening to your customers to create trust what's more

26:48important than selling more and get more profits by doing the right thing and improving your product

26:55improving your service that's really where companies are lying to themselves and companies are lying to

27:03their customers and eventually that light catches up and it becomes either people get fired for giving real

27:12feedback or people basically get promoted to a lateral position where they'll never have to actually

27:19talk about the issue you know what story is coming it's hitting me between the eyes and we heard about

27:25when we were children and it still applies today in a business sense it's the emperor has no clothes

27:30no one wants to be the one to bring the boss the bad news so they everything's fine everything's fine

27:37the emperor has no clothes and nowadays it's the customers that are telling the emperor the internet

27:44that the emperor has no clothes because the employees don't absolutely and a positive example of that

27:51could be also go on amazon and you're looking for a book and there is a community of readers that

27:59are

28:00able to provide reviews and when you see for example a product that has only one star or two stars

28:07or you

28:07see 2 000 people that put three stars or below versus the five star which is the ideal it basically

28:16immediately make you think this product sucks or doesn't work or i don't know what's wrong with it but

28:23obviously i don't want to buy something that might not work because there's like 2 000 people saying it

28:28it must be true right that's really kind of a consumer point of view that you think that it's safer

28:38to

28:38buy something that has more reviews which isn't necessarily the case every time it could be that

28:44a new merchant is selling the same thing it could be a new innovation that nobody else is selling could

28:50be many many things but listening to that feedback if you're selling a product or service on amazon for

28:58example uh could be anything that's really your opportunity to kind of create a dialogue and

29:05figure out why is it that the review was so harsh and etsy is a very good example of a

29:12place that

29:13take that very seriously and actually follows up with people so etsy is kind of a unique business model

29:21where you buy things that are kind of funky if you will or custom ordered which is a great thing

29:28but at the end of the day they want your feedback because they want to learn better and help the

29:35small

29:36business that is selling something sell more and you can't do that if trust does not exist so you said

29:44that credibility is built across every touch point can you share an example where one weak link caused a

29:52disproportionate amount of damage absolutely i can uh really kind of go back uh to uh a client that

30:01should not be named uh no longer a client in the information technology field which is a lot of uh

30:07uh kind of of our client base and uh you know the type of people that we attract being in

30:14the washington dc area uh

30:16that really had a uh complete uh breakdown in communications in their executive management team and the

30:25leadership and it went like this we started the work of the idea of kind of rebranding that company that

30:34was the ask

30:35from the leadership from the ceo of the company when i got this call so the first thing we did

30:41we did a

30:42interview individual interviews with key managers and asked them here's like 10 attributes about the

30:49company and one of them oddly enough was is the company doing well financially the reason it was an

30:57attribute that we wanted to know was that it's that was a smaller company and we wanted to see how

31:04much communication is going on between the leadership or the owner of the company and the actual

31:10management team and guess what happened when we kind of finished the survey made sure it was

31:18non-attributional it was confidential we only shared data and aggregate and the difference between

31:25what the managers said and the ceo was job dropping the ceo told us in an interview that the company

31:37is

31:37growing and financially strong and it's preparing to acquire other companies and then the managers are working

31:47for the ceo answering that attribute question about financial stability of the company said we don't know

31:56anything so i'll give it a two a three a one imagine imagine where the ceo does not know what

32:05the people are

32:06sitting next to him or her in a room rated as a one or two and three out of ten

32:11and the ceo thinks that it's a

32:14pen that is something that happened more than once alone in 30 years of doing this but the methodology

32:23flashes out very quickly the difference between perception and reality and how do we end up we got

32:30fired our agency got fired after that meeting where we presented the results the owner of the company the

32:40ceo a very smart person uh full purposes did the most uh basically negative thing that you can do

32:49to build trust within your organization so you basically told the emperor the emperor had no clothes

32:54on and the emperor demonstrated why everyone else should keep telling the emperor that he looks great

33:00yes which means there was no transparency between the management team and the ceo and most importantly

33:08they were like on two different planets so they could have basically communicated to the staff in a different

33:16way if you keep all the information to yourself yes privately owned company can do that publicly owned company

33:23have to disclose uh certain information but the breakdown of communications happens in leadership and management

33:31and then all the way to the customer reviews of the same company that i'm talking about which were not

33:38really a bunch of happy customers not surprised so you're talking about ceos what's a decision that

33:44you've seen a ceo make that protected the long-term brand equity even though it hurt them in the short

33:50term

33:50it's kind of the opposite of that it was the ability to be transparent and being able to tell the

33:59good news

34:00and share the bad news with the employees through town halls through getting ahead of the story again

34:07if something bad happened you don't wait for the rumor mill going for three weeks you get on top of

34:13it

34:13and you put your narrative out and explain why things didn't work this quarter supply chain issues

34:21whatever it may be conversely when the company's doing well yes if someone hears it on the level of

34:29the staffer they might think well now they can give me you know five thousand dollar raise and that may

34:35not be the outcome of saying my company is doing uh better or even you know excellent it's about the

34:46fact that the ceo took his time or her time to actually sit down with the employees and say

34:53here's kind of where we are here's kind of the vision where we need to be by the end of

34:57the year not

34:58talking in quarter one quarter two quarter three and four talking to them as human beings and the good

35:04news and the bad news when they're getting communicated that way that's really the wind

35:11that monetizes the building of trust into actual dollars and cents and that's really kind of the

35:19whole dissertation if you will or the thesis of what i'm trying to spread the word on is trust is

35:26no

35:26longer just a value trust is what what drives success and failure because it's not only the

35:36inside of the company it's the outside of the company in digital ai age things happen that you

35:42don't control this reminds me of a quote from the famous lawyer jerry spence who wrote the book i think

35:48it was how to argue and win every time and he had 10 different tips in there and one of

35:52them i've never

35:53forgotten and i think it's very relevant to this conversation to the people who are listening

35:56he said anytime there's a weakness in your argument you want to be the one to bring it up

36:01because if you try to hide it or pretend it doesn't exist then people will present you and

36:07your situation in the absolute worst light possible where if you take the initiative and you

36:15state your viewpoint or your narrative from the beginning then you can have the opportunity to put

36:22yourself in the best light and make no mistake if you decide to try to hide or cover it up

36:27and wait

36:28until it's discovered that your people that your your opposition is likely to have lots of vigor and

36:35saying aha look what we found and drawing even more attention to the totally negative perception they can

36:41create so i've got one last question for you if there's one piece of advice that you could give

36:45anybody listening today what would it be and why the most important part in building trust is really

36:52kind of creating your set of values put them in the meter and benchmark where you are on these values

37:00that relate to your marketing your sales organization your quality assurance your operations and it's okay

37:08to get three out of ten when you benchmark it at the beginning but now you can develop an action

37:15plan

37:16to fix it and then come back and measure it again whether it's internal or external and if you start

37:23with that framework of just benchmarking where you are and then come up with an action plan how to fix

37:29it

37:29but have ten attributes because if you don't you're missing something like financial hr whatever it may be

37:36and then once you have it you have two things happening you got a system that can give you the

37:44real

37:44situation or the dashboard if you will and most importantly you get the buy-in of your management team

37:51because now the management team owns the parts of any attribute that is on the system or own ones of

37:58one of it the point being if you're not listening and creating kind of a situational awareness of where

38:06we are today and then you basically just move on or say well no complaints we're doing great that will

38:14be the death of you or the death of your business so first of all thank you if people want

38:19to know about

38:20you your book your company what you do what are the best ways for them to connect with you

38:24the personal connection would be check out link linkedin and request a connection gal bornstein is

38:32a name that you forget when you type on linkedin and for the people that are actually listening and

38:38watching this podcast i offer a free complimentary consultation all you have to do is mention the name

38:46of the podcast in your message and we will provide that free consultation because we believe in giving back

38:54to the community thank you for that and what's what's your website the website is born sungroup.com

39:00spelled b-o-r-e-n-s-t-e-i-n-g-r-o-u-p.com most importantly if

39:06you want to learn about the

39:08building of a trust framework for your business or give it to your ceo and get some uh feedback you

39:16can

39:16find them on amazon my two latest book that are really connected to each other is the first one is

39:21don't believe the hype which is acknowledging that there's a problem and erosion of trust and you

39:27got to fix it and the second one which got published very recently is called beating goliath with ai

39:35and that has to do with the fact that we most of us are davids when we deal with the

39:41bigger competitor

39:41we got to have digital slingshots and the book basically appeals to the small to mid-sized business

39:51owners and ceos so it is practical advice on how to fix it well thank you so much for sharing

39:57your

39:57wisdom and your experience i hope everyone else learned as much and enjoyed it as much as i did

40:01thanks so much for joining us thank you so much for having me

40:12um

40:14you

40:15you

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