Mastering Media Relations: 3 Key Rules for PR Success with Joe Buccino

Episode Summary: In this insightful interview, PR expert Joe Buccino shares invaluable lessons from his extensive experience in media relations, crisis communication, and the evolving landscape of journalism. Discover how to build trust with reporters, adapt to digital changes, and leverage AI without losing the human touch.

Joe's BIO: Joe Buccino is a retired U.S. Army colonel and former Pentagon spokesman who advised senior leaders during some of the most high-stakes moments in recent national security. He served as Communications Director at U.S. Central Command and spokesperson for Secretaries of Defense James Mattis and Patrick Shanahan, shaping messaging during crises and global operations.

He is the founder of Joe Buccino Consulting, where he helps executives and organizations communicate clearly under pressure. Buccino is the author of When Every Word Counts: How to Earn Trust, Command Attention, and Communicate Clearly in Any Situation (Skyhorse, 2026), and a frequent military analyst on CNN, Fox News, and the BBC.

To order Joe's Book When Every Work Counts use the link shorturl.at/B2COO

Joe's LinkedIn

Transcript

Robert (00:01.472)
Today on the PIO podcast, we're joined by Joe Bucchino. I'm sorry. Joe Buccino from Reagan communications, a seasoned PR professional with a unique perspective from both sides of media relationship, from his time in the military communications to advising organizations on how to work more effectively with reporters. Joe brings real world insight into what the media actually needs and how PIOs can help.

build trust that holds it under pressure. If you've ever struggled with immediate relationships, pitching stories, or navigating tough questions, this is a conversation you don't want to miss. Joe, welcome to the show.

Joe Buccino (00:42.798)
man, thanks for having First of all, thanks for doing this. It's a cool idea. There's certainly a community that could use this information and, you know, glad to be on with you, man.

Robert (00:54.388)
Yeah, this is, this show has been like a, it's a, it's a first of its kind. And there's not money that, that do specifically for public communicators. there's PR. Podcasts and stuff. This has been a, project, passion project of mine for six years now. I'm in my sixth season and it's just built every year and I keep adding more and more to it. So I truly do appreciate, you getting back to me. I know I reached out a while ago.

You got back to me and I do appreciate you guys that are in this profession as public relations people taking the time out to speak to me. do appreciate that.

Joe Buccino (01:35.234)
Yeah, man, it's about spreading the knowledge and different people have different experiences, people work in different fields. I think all of it is kind of the same stream in terms of advice and what works and what doesn't work and what you haven't seen. So the more we can get to talking and listening to each other, the better.

Robert (01:55.403)
I agree. All right. So let's go into this. When you, you think about your experience or overworked, what one lesson, can you put out there that you've learned from the media? The hard way.

Joe Buccino (02:07.522)
that information is not your enemy. So one thing I think that you learn that the kind of working in US government, and then I learned in corporate America, is that leaders look at all information as risk. A lot of them do. Any information that goes out is risk. Jim Mattis, when he was Secretary of Defense,

missed a lot of opportunities. Any information that went out about defense, he thought that was a risk to defense. When I went into Spirit Aero Systems, the lawyers looked at anything because it's a publicly traded company, as risk to that. As communicators, we can't fall into that because you're just missing opportunities to broaden your narrative. You're just missing opportunities to describe what you're doing for the customer, what you're doing for the public, what you're doing for national security.

And reporters, you know, they're all busy. It's so competitive right now because there's so many just streams of information. There's so many outlets. Everybody with, you know, a browser now considers themselves to be a reporter. They're going to report on what you're describing and they're going to report on your industry and company and your operation. And the best thing you can do to serve value, to add value,

Robert (03:08.748)
Mm-hmm.

Joe Buccino (03:30.868)
is to describe that and get in there and talk to reporters. And before you do that, build relationships with the reporters. And I think we'll probably talk about that.

Robert (03:38.93)
Absolutely. All right. Before we get into that, I want to talk about what you think has changed the most about reporters and the newsroom over the last five years.

Joe Buccino (03:49.07)
It's just gotten so much harder. It's gotten with AI, know, when everything went remote in 2020, there was a massive growth of people who considered themselves to be reporters. And then along with that, you had the podcast explosion that was triggered, you know, largely by, yeah, you've got it like the Joe Rogan sphere of podcasting.

Robert (04:13.718)
you

Joe Buccino (04:18.486)
Many people have a podcast. Every niche and every reporting lane has its own podcast now. So there's so much different information. There's so much information that's going out. It's just a lot harder for reporters to get real information. I think the PIOs and military public affairs officers have gotten worse. I think we saw a real shift in that in the

in the military during the Mattis years in the first Trump administration. And I think they've stopped, you know, kind of the trend of giving good information. know, John Kirby, who's now a national figure, he used to run the Department of Defense press office there and he was a master at it. know, whatever people think of that guy and he's a great guy, he's a monster ego, but he loves the camera, but...

He was great at giving people information they needed and just pushing it out. And, you know, we've kind of gone away from that. And so I think it's just, it's a lot harder for reporters to differentiate, you know, I'm, I'm working with a client now on AI data centers in Iceland. And so you think, well, that's a pretty unique thing, right? Building these huge data centers with renewable energy. Well, you go look into it and it's like,

There's entire publications dedicated to reporting on data centers in Iceland. So it's a really tough landscape. The readership has gone down of all the traditional outlets except for the Wall Street Journal because of the way they've positioned themselves. And it's just tough, man. Like I did a CNN hit three hours ago about what's going to happen in Iran tonight. We have a deadline. The president gave a deadline of 8 p.m.

Robert (05:50.198)
Right.

Robert (06:14.431)
Right.

Joe Buccino (06:14.574)
How many people saw it? I don't know, a few dozen. I don't know. But if I did that five years ago, it would be like 600,000. So the industry is a monster right now. is incredibly complex.

Robert (06:29.768)
It's incredibly competitive. It absolutely is. And, and I think one of the other issues is, is there's a, a series of distrust and speculation because there's so many agendas now, where there, reporters years ago, you know, when you had the, the, the copples and, and those journalists that were sitting in the room, you had a level of trust at what they were telling you.

Joe Buccino (06:44.45)
Yeah.

Robert (06:59.242)
You believed to be true, whether it was or not, you believed it. Now, I think everybody is speculative on no matter what a reporter says, whether it's true or not, or do they have an agenda to their level of reporting?

Joe Buccino (07:13.762)
Yeah. So there's a before Trump and an after Trump, and I'm not making this political, but I'm telling you, I've seen this is that, you I grew up, I grew up with the New York Times. I used to read the New York Times on the bus to school when I was in high school and it was a trusted institution. Now in the Trump era, the New York Times went from here's what's happening in the Trump White House. Now I'm going to tell you how to feel about what's happening in the Trump White House. And it's like,

I'm an informed citizen, I'm a well-read citizen, I will determine how I feel about what's Just tell me what's happening. Which is what the Wall Street Journal to its credit went to. And in fact, they've reduced word size and word count on all the reporting in the White House. A lot of reporting is like the palace intrigue of, know, Trump doesn't like this person, they don't trust this. And I don't know what that serves to benefit in terms of an understanding of

you know, policy or decisions or news. But that's, people love that stuff about Trump, which is why people buy all the Trump books.

Robert (08:19.924)
Right. You know, I think, well, people, people want to know the inside dirt. And I think that we have gotten so reality based that it's not about really the, the, the newsworthiness of something and what we need to know now. It's more of what can you tell me that I'll get a snicker out of later? Or do you agree with my personal political view?

Joe Buccino (08:46.444)
Yeah, yeah, it's a...

Robert (08:48.588)
All right. So let's, let's go back and let's get off of that. Cause we can go off of politics. We'll be talking all night. God, yes. And I, and I don't want to do the, I'm not a political person. don't like doing podcasts on politics, but so let's talk about deadlines or tighter staff or smaller. How does that, how should that reality change the way PIOs respond to media inquiries?

Joe Buccino (08:53.71)
We can do a whole podcast about it.

Joe Buccino (09:10.882)
You just got to be fast and you got to be ready. You got to be fast and you got to be ready. And in order to be fast and be ready, you have to understand the information environment within your organization. And so that's just being in the know, right? Like when I first got to Spirit Aero Systems, didn't know what I didn't know. They brought me on when the door fell off the plane of the Alaska Airlines plane over Portland, Oregon. So I didn't even know this, but...

Robert (09:24.918)
Mm-hmm.

Robert (09:35.596)
wow.

Joe Buccino (09:39.502)
My former boss and he was at SecDev for brief period, Pat Shanahan, was the CEO. He brought me on to manage that, like that night. He brought me on. I didn't even know there was a Spirit AeroSystem. I didn't even know there was a mid-exit door plug. So I got on the ground in Wichita, Kansas, and I just talked to everybody I could. Like, what's the manufacturer of this door? What do you even do with this Aero structure? It goes to Boeing. What does that mean? I went out and talked to mechanics on the shop floor. You know, they'll love talking to you.

They'll have talking about what they do. Talk to the technology offices. You gotta be fast, but you still gotta be accurate. you gotta be in the know to do that. So you gotta be in all the meetings. I go to all the meetings that I can go to. If I can get a backseat, I'm gonna go. And if I have time, I'm gonna go. And if I'm not invited, I'm still gonna go. I'm gonna wait till they tell me to leave.

Robert (10:32.692)
That is definitely an issue where at times the PIOs, especially in local government, they are not brought in. A lot of them are not at the level where they get brought in and they know what's going on in the background. And they lose, I think the chiefs and the executives in those agencies, they lose out on a strategic advisor that understands what the public wants to know. But not only that, but what we need to tell them.

Joe Buccino (11:02.902)
Yeah. Yeah. And when I saw it, our main customer was Boeing. And when I see, when I look at Boeing's comms, I always say Boeing never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity in the information space. Their comms people are relegated to like, we'll tell you what we want you to know. Everything is run by the lawyers. You might as well just have the lawyers run the comms aspect of it. And so I think

Robert (11:03.296)
as an agency.

Joe Buccino (11:31.938)
You you got to show value to be in those meetings. When I was working for SecDev for Mattis, that was really hard to do because, you know, he had all his Marines, like retired Marines, former Marines that were working for him. And they viewed the world. You know, he'd raised all of them. So they viewed the world and the media and the information the same way he did. And it took me months. It took me like, it didn't take me that long. It took one trip.

one NATO trip for me to show, look, I can add value. I can get these things reported in the way you want them reported. And once I added value, I'm like, okay, you want me to continue to add value. I need to know what's going on. need to be in all these meetings. like, well, this is TS. This is, okay, I have a TS clearance. I'm not going to go tell the New York Times what's in this meeting. You got to trust me on that. So, you know, it's about building relations with the media, but also building relations within your own organization.

Robert (12:28.876)
All right, so let's talk about building relations with the media. does that actually, what's it actually look like in practice?

Joe Buccino (12:34.528)
It takes, you don't do it overnight. It takes time. When I got to Spirit, I went to, I live in DC, but I was kind of two weeks every month in Wichita, Kansas, where the company is. In DC, I immediately had breakfast, coffee, or a happy hour with every reporter who works in aerospace. You know, just, we didn't talk about Spirit. We didn't talk about the door plug, just building relations.

I took a train to New York City, spent a week in New York City, the same thing there. I went out to Chicago, same thing there. So it's just about, first of all, just being a human, they're people, we're people, they have needs, we have social needs, we have friendship needs, we all wanna be accepted at some level. just talking to people, and you know how they talk, right? Reporters, they're chatty cat, that's why they're good reporters, they love the gossip and you get into the gossip.

And then it's like building trust. So I always say off the record goes both ways. So when I was working in the Pentagon, if a reporter, you know, there's one particular reporter, we used to work for the Wall Street Journal, she's graduated up, name is Nancy Youssef to the Atlantic. She had a story about a strike that was going to go into northeast Syria. Well, she brought it to me and then it's like,

You're trusting me that I'm not going to tell any other reporter you're on to this story. You're giving that to me off the record. And if I sense anybody sniffing around on it, I'm going to tell you because you're giving me 24, 48 hours to gain the information and give it to you. You know, in exchange, you're going to wait until I can get you the information. The strike goes in, everything's safe. You're not jeopardizing national security. So you make your you build

I think trust in some of those critical moments where you're actually going off the record with them, they're going off the record with you. And they're like, okay, this is someone I can trust. I used to do this trusted reporter list. It was nine names. And if we were going to do a strike, if we had something going in at night in the middle of the night, everything in the Middle East happens in the middle of the night in our time, I would call them, know, trusted reporters come into the Pentagon, 9 p.m.

Joe Buccino (14:59.118)
1 a.m. whatever it is, I'm not going to tell you what's happening. Something's happening and you're going to want to be in the Pentagon. And so those are my trusted reporters. And, you know, I built that trust kind of the hard way. But you got to do it over time. It doesn't come it doesn't come from just meeting them. You just do it over time. And it's like, OK, this guy's given me accurate information. He's truthful. You know, I would there's a time I told David Martin from CBS, I have this information that you're asking me.

I'm not going to give it to you. I cannot give it to you. I won't give it to you. And he's like, that's fair. I value that, that you're going to do that and be honest with me about it. Because I could have just said, shit, I don't know. But I wasn't going to do that. so David and I, you know, he's retired, fully retired now. But we worked on some sensitive stories for 60 minutes after that, and we trusted each other.

Robert (15:52.509)
And that trust is something that's like you said, it's built over years and they know that they can give you things and you'll give them things. So on the other side of that, what's the quickest way to lose that credibility with the media?

Joe Buccino (16:03.214)
The quickest way to lose it is to lie. the quickest way to lose it is to lie. If they get any sense, particularly the Pentagon press, because they all know each other, they've all been working in the Pentagon press together for the same 30 years. They kind of switch chairs. Some of them go from one outlet to another, but they all know each other. They're all these chatty Cathys. And if you lie to one of them, if you lie to Courtney QB for NBC, she's going to tell everybody.

And you're going to make all these enemies and they're not going to trust you. So just be honest. If you're not going to give them information, if you have it, but you can't give it, I have it, but I can't give it. If there's something embarrassing that happened, you don't have to tell them, but don't tell them this embarrassing thing did not happen this way. Because they're going to find out. just, they're too well-sourced. They know too many people and they're going to beat you at that. So, you know, lying is the fastest way you can lose trust with any reporter or any group of reporters.

Robert (17:02.27)
Absolutely. Joe, so from the perspective of PIO, when they want to pitch a story to the media, what actually makes a reporter pay attention to that pitch?

Joe Buccino (17:14.456)
Well, it's got to be tailored to something that is happening right now. And it's got to be tailored to a news angle. So right now I have a client who is building, I alluded to it, a massive AI data center overseas. And so everybody's reporting on data centers, right? It's where the AI growth and explosion is going. It's a real problem with expanding into AI.

But my current pitch would be, how do we harden these sites? Right now, Iran can hold the Gulf States data centers at risk. You can strike the AWS data center in UAE and knock out UAE's power, their banking systems, their pay structure, their ability to order goods. you know, even though this particular client isn't in that part of the world, you just...

I tried to tie it into that news angle. That's an urgent news angle right now. And it's so far working for that reporter. So how do you find the you get you're always monitoring the news. We're always monitoring news, we should be. And what's the stream right now? What's the trends? And how can I how can I hijack this trend for my client?

Robert (18:34.38)
I get that. And you know, I understand you're tying that stuff into what's going on in, in, in the middle East. And I could see up at Iceland, you could very well say, well, there are a lot of things that happen with the, with the trade routes going through the Chinese and the Russians going through the North Atlantic and stuff. and, I should say the, the Arctic, they opened the door up to them being targeted in the event that something were to happen.

so I, I, I see that. Let's talk about, I want to talk about, you have a book coming out, right? Is that correct? Let's talk about your book.

Joe Buccino (19:04.323)
Yeah.

Joe Buccino (19:13.646)
Yeah, I do. Thanks. Good job. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. The book is out. If you work in this field, I strongly recommend you get it. It's called When Every Word Counts. You can get it on Amazon, order it at BarnesandNoble.com, Walmart.com. So the book is in three parts. The first part describes what I call the critical moment. So for every organization or every person,

you know, because sometimes you deal with people who are going through an embarrassing public situation. What's the critical moment before a crisis? A crisis doesn't just explode overnight. There's always something that's leading to a crisis. How do you identify the critical moment and how do you differentiate an operational crisis from an informational crisis? Because they both have to be handled differently. So that kind of sets the table for part one. Part two.

is 11 stories from my career in the Pentagon, in corporate America. It's stories with a lesson learned from each one and then key takeaways at the end of each story. then chapter three, part three is called AI Will Not Save You. And AI is going to get worse at worse at doing PR stuff and providing a communication strategy and a crisis comm template. It's going to get a lot worse. And I explain why in the book.

that you're just not going to be able to offload your PR function to AI. And if you're in PR and you're offloading your strategies and messages to AI, you're losing your cognitive load and you're softening that muscle that you need. And you're going to be, you're the one that's going to be left behind in five years, not the people who are, you know, not the people who are not using AI. If you're not using AI, you're going to continue to strengthen those muscles and

If you're, if you're heavily reliant on AI, you're going to be left behind because what we've got is to rely on is the human connection, the ability to read a room, the ability to project authority when we go into a room, the ability to coach our leaders to do those things. And AI just can't do that. And, know, maybe one more thing about AI is that AI is now training AI. So what, that's doing is that it's creating more.

Robert (21:32.79)
Yeah.

Joe Buccino (21:37.662)
AI slop and more horrible content that goes out into the internet. Well, the new AI just scrapes up all that horrible content that's not human and further away from the way people actually talk. And it feeds it into the new AI. And it's just this vicious cycle of AI creating worse and worse slop, recycling it back into AI. It's garbage in garbage out. And it's just going to get a lot worse. So

People say if you don't use AI and PR, you're get left behind, and that's not true. If you lean on your human instinct, if you build out human instincts and you lean on those human instincts, you're gonna be ahead of your peers in five years, I'm convinced.

Robert (22:18.912)
You know, I, I do a thing about AI in regards to targeting government agencies or government employees. but the other thing that, that I've noticed about AI is you can use it for get to, to cover what you're missing. Sometimes if you have written an article and you're, you're not a hundred percent sure if you got the different angles covered and you throw it in there, say, did I cover everything?

It'll, it'll look at it and say, okay, you're, you don't have this perspective. So sometimes, that, that, makes it easier for you to clean it up and get it ready to go to press versus having somebody else read it, hoping they're going to get back to you with their thoughts on it, because they're just as busy as you. So I know that there are advantages to using it, but you still have to write. You still have to feel, you still have to interact with the public or with your reporters or your leadership.

AI is not going to do that. And I know a lot of agencies are hoping that AI is going to solve a lot of their issues.

Joe Buccino (23:25.484)
Yeah, I think I see like even the big PR firms are reliant on AI. And I think if you use it as a supporting effort, that's great. If you use it as the main effort, that's not good. It's not, it's not going to be good. And you see a lot of these tech companies in DC where I am are starting up. They're starting up their, their valuations. They're, making money. They're selling their tech product, but they don't want to bring in

PR people, because they don't want to, you you want to keep it as nimble as you can and pay for as little as you can. And they're doing all their AI on cloud, cloud AI or chat GPT. And that's a disadvantage to them. think, you know, bringing in somebody in-house that can see, smell, taste the narrative and the culture and the organization and where you're trying to go. And that has boots on the ground.

I think that's to their advantage.

Robert (24:27.5)
I agree. Joe, what's your thoughts of the, and I know you're a traditional journalist. So what are your thoughts about the change that we're seeing now with bloggers more being considered journalists in the same level as journalists are right now? Cause I've seen this more and more.

Joe Buccino (24:48.0)
Yeah, I mean, they're taking over. They're taking over the main publications. lot of these bloggers, I think, you... In some ways, they can be faster. Some of these bloggers are a little bit like in aerospace, a little closer to the problem. But they also don't have the same sourcing and vetting. for a blogger, there's no editor over the top of that.

that's validating sources and which is part of the reason they can move faster. But, you know, they're not as trustworthy. They're not as trusted as the Wall Street Journal or, you know, the Seattle Times is like always in the forefront of the aerospace industry because they have a guy, Dominic Gates, there who's been doing it literally 30 years. Knows everybody, has everybody on his phone and has a full editorial process over the top of them. So

You bloggers can move faster, but I just, think they get a lot of things wrong and they get half of the story. They don't get the full context. They don't get the full color. And so, you you still have to engage with them in a lot of industries. But I don't look at them like they're credentialed media because they're not.

Robert (26:10.344)
And you know, and that is a, that is a battle for a lot of law enforcement agencies when a blogger will call asking for information and you don't know them versus Adam and they haven't spent the time to get to know. And the other thing is a lot of newsrooms now it's amazing how there's so many, there's so small amount of reporters coming out of those newsrooms to handle an incident or they have to do everything from recording it to editing, to uploading it.

Joe Buccino (26:16.97)
Yeah. Yeah.

Joe Buccino (26:34.146)
Yeah.

Robert (26:40.382)
It very rarely do I see, I've seen reporters film and recorded film and edit their entire episode on their iPhone.

Joe Buccino (26:50.934)
Yeah, yeah, you know, it's just before COVID, know, for example, like the Fayetteville Observer in Fayetteville, North Carolina, did some great coverage around Fort Bragg and the 82nd and the community. It was a big, huge veteran community. There was a lot of outreach to veterans in the community. They did all that stuff. They had a full newsroom and it was a good publication. It was an important publication. They have three people working there now, three people.

And they all work from home. so, and everything, they don't, don't even have a hard paper anymore. Everything's online. It's behind a paywall. Nobody's going behind that paywall to see what the Fayetteville Observer has to say about anything. And so that really like close to the problem reporting doesn't exist in a lot of parts of the country right now.

Robert (27:43.786)
Yeah, I agree with you on that. Joe, if you could, if you could give a new PIO three rules for working with reporters, what would that be?

Joe Buccino (27:52.308)
I would say that build personal relations first, build social relations first. Second, build trust after that. And then third is, you know, be fast and accurate, be as fast and accurate as you can. you're you're you're in a you're in a new horizon, a new environment where time is so critical and

You know, if you're always in the know, like I said earlier, if you're always in the know, you can get there faster. But the key is, you know, you want to be a trusted ally who can get there fast. If you're a trusted ally who has no information, you're no good. If you're a trusted ally who gets there three days later, you're no good. But, you know, build social relations, build trusted relations, and then be there fast.

Robert (28:34.677)
Right.

Robert (28:38.069)
Right.

Robert (28:43.412)
What's one habit and experience PIO should stop doing immediately.

Joe Buccino (28:47.978)
I think telling, you know, this, the Boeing company has no comment on this matter. give them something, you know, saying I have no comment on the matter. Well, they're going to run no comment. And it just, looks very sloppy. There's a thing you can say, whatever the thing is you can say, even if it doesn't add great value, there's something that you can say. If

you know, your company's being asked about a product failure and you're saying we have no comment, it's going to land terribly in the piece. So find what you can say, find your chief technology officer who can talk about this, your engineer, your something, somebody who can talk about this and get them on the phone with the reporter. You got to take risks. Right now, it's more important to take risks than it was five years ago.

Robert (29:42.709)
And why do you say that? Why do you think that is?

Joe Buccino (29:45.826)
Because there's such a time crunch on these stories and on the reporting and there's so much different information that's out there that you've got to get into the reporters before somebody else does. And you got to get into the reporters before they publish. And getting that out very quickly requires that you have relations inside your own organization.

you know which lever to pull to talk to the press and that you've got something of some value, even if it's limited value, some value to say on the record on a story, even if it's one or two or three sentences.

Robert (30:30.078)
Excellent. Joe, is there a question I should have asked? And if so, how would you have answered?

Joe Buccino (30:36.372)
No, I mean, I think we covered a lot of ground here. think there's a lot of good information in the book. When every word counts, it's out right now. I'd encourage your followers to alter it. you know, I guess I'd say that, you know, I learned in a few cases by by failing. You know, I learned by failing. The biggest failure I had is

in was now this is now been nine years ago. The 82nd Airborne Division had this new policy on soldier suicide. And the new policy was that if a soldier died by suicide, they would not get a full honor ceremony. And I read the policy and I was like, okay, I understand this is this is trying to send a message about, you know, seek help.

We want soldiers who are suffering to go out and seek help. And the way it landed was just terrible. It was terrible. The way it landed was we don't care about these soldiers who died by suicide. Their death and life is worth less than even a soldier who died in a drunk driving accident who would get the full honors. National veterans groups came after us. It was covered in the Washington Post. We had to do a full

retraction on the policy. And so, you know, what I learned from that is read every policy and every memo as if what would it look like if the Washington Post ran this? And, you know, I learned that really the hard way. I really failed the organization in that. you know, look at everything through the lens of what would it look like if this got into a major publication?

Robert (32:24.746)
I like that. Final thoughts, Joe. What key points would like listeners to take from the interview?

Joe Buccino (32:29.464)
Key points, the first key point is order when every word counts. That's the first key point. The second one is build relations early. That's part of your job. It's one of the most important parts of your job, maybe the most important part of your job. And then the third one is take risks. And when you take a risk and you fail, hopefully you have good leadership over the top of you that will buy off on risks.

If you don't, you don't have good leaders. If have leaders that aren't going to buy off on informational risk, you don't have good leaders. But take risks and then where you fail, use that as an opportunity to grow. Anytime I take a risk and I fail, I just use that as an opportunity to go back into my mind and put that in my notebook and, you know, learn how to be a better spokesman, communicator, public affairs officer.

and then train other people on it, you know? So those would be the three things I would tell you.

Robert (33:26.536)
Excellent. Joe, as you wrap this up, do you have a piece of wisdom or a motto you live by?

Joe Buccino (33:34.337)
Yeah, I would say if there's a piece of wisdom, I would say, you know, more talking is better. would say the main motto I use is and it opens the book this way is meet them where they are. What that means is if you're communicating and you're leading one of your leaders to communicate, you're coaching one of your leaders to communicate. The first thing you've got to do is meet

the constituents where they are, whether it's your own workers, whether it's the press, whether it's investors, stockholders, meet them where they are emotionally, not where you are with this. That doesn't mean agreeing with their emotion or agreeing with their opinion on it, but meet them where they are. Think about where they are emotionally, embrace that, sit in that with them, and then move to what your action is. That's It's a key to communication.

Robert (34:29.214)
Nice. Joe, how can people best reach you if they want to connect or follow up?

Joe Buccino (34:33.294)
JoeBaccinoConsulting.com. Hit me on LinkedIn. the easiest way, honestly. Just message me and everybody's on LinkedIn right now. Yeah.

Robert (34:39.753)
And I'll put that in the show notes with a link to your book on Amazon.

Joe Buccino (34:44.908)
Love it. Awesome. Awesome.

Robert (34:46.742)
Joe, thank you very much for being on the show.

Joe Buccino (34:48.96)
I had a blast, man. Thanks so much. When is this gonna run?

Robert (34:52.173)
let me...