Campus Voices

Rick Alloway Author

05/09/2023 Added

2 Plays

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A discussion with Josh Planos, VP of Communications & PR, Better Business Bureau

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[00:00:02.850]Welcome to "Campus Voices."
[00:00:04.380]I'm Rick Alloway,
[00:00:05.280]and I thank you for your time.
[00:00:07.530]Our guest today on "Campus Voices" is Josh Planos,
[00:00:11.760]the Vice President of Communications and Public Relations
[00:00:15.300]at the Better Business Bureau,
[00:00:16.890]and he's also a freelance writer with a list of credits
[00:00:20.670]and a list of publications that is dizzying,
[00:00:23.340]including, but not limited to, Atlantic magazine,
[00:00:27.048]FiveThirtyEight, GQ, The Guardian,
[00:00:29.670]The New York Times, SLAM Magazine, Sports Illustrated,
[00:00:33.390]The Wall Street Journal,
[00:00:34.830]and The Washington Post among other publications.
[00:00:37.380]But along the line,
[00:00:38.220]he's also done quite a bit of video work
[00:00:40.620]and is also a featured sports commentator
[00:00:43.260]on CNN Philippines periodically.
[00:00:45.540]So he has certainly done a lot of things since he graduated
[00:00:49.110]from the University of Nebraska back in 2014
[00:00:52.680]with his degree from the College of Journalism
[00:00:54.960]and Mass Communications
[00:00:56.100]and Advertising and Public Relations.
[00:00:58.290]And if I am correct on this,
[00:00:59.640]you also had some studies in English
[00:01:02.160]and communications, correct?
[00:01:04.020]Correct.
[00:01:05.370]So it's been a busy academic career for you,
[00:01:07.770]and then you hit the ground running right after that.
[00:01:09.810]But help us connect the dots.
[00:01:11.970]We wanna talk about the future
[00:01:13.770]of all the various industries in which you take part
[00:01:17.160]because this is part of a series now on "Campus Voices"
[00:01:20.250]relating to futures,
[00:01:22.170]but help us sort of get from point A to point Z
[00:01:25.860]where you are now with the Better Business Bureau
[00:01:27.780]from the time you graduated in 2014.
[00:01:31.470]Sure.
[00:01:32.550]Well, when I graduated from college,
[00:01:34.440]I did not have a full-time position lined up,
[00:01:37.230]and so that gave me, frankly,
[00:01:39.960]too much time to consider what my next move would be.
[00:01:43.110]Very thankful to my mother for letting me move in
[00:01:45.780]for that month and a half.
[00:01:47.760]It was a very formative experience,
[00:01:50.040]but ultimately, where I settled on was a desire
[00:01:55.620]to write full-time.
[00:01:58.290]Whatever position that entailed,
[00:01:59.670]I wanted writing to be just the central pillar
[00:02:03.900]of whatever position I would obtain.
[00:02:06.570]And ultimately, I ended up at KETV NewsWatch 7,
[00:02:09.450]very grateful, that's the ABC affiliate in Omaha
[00:02:12.510]to do a little bit of everything.
[00:02:14.970]My position was digital editor,
[00:02:17.190]but as anyone who has ever worked
[00:02:19.170]in the newsroom could attest,
[00:02:20.550]you do whatever is asked of you on a given day.
[00:02:23.340]And in that way, it was an incredible learning environment
[00:02:27.750]for a number of reasons.
[00:02:29.640]But after then I moved on
[00:02:32.580]to the University of Nebraska Foundation,
[00:02:34.770]so a little bit of philanthropy, nonprofit.
[00:02:38.130]And from there to Grand Island Public Schools
[00:02:40.860]to work in public education.
[00:02:43.350]And then now I am at the Better Business Bureau.
[00:02:46.200]So that is more or less
[00:02:48.240]my professional journey to this point.
[00:02:51.240]I have always had a great deal of respect for folks
[00:02:54.720]who work at the same position their entire careers.
[00:02:57.750]I think that's incredibly admirable.
[00:03:00.270]I knew the moment I graduated college,
[00:03:03.570]that would not be my experience.
[00:03:05.460]I wanted to sample the fare, I suppose,
[00:03:09.120]and ultimately end up
[00:03:10.590]where kind of my heart wanted me to be.
[00:03:12.900]And currently, I work in the nonprofit space
[00:03:15.450]and I'm very happy there.
[00:03:17.610]I think where this interview taking place 30
[00:03:19.950]or 40 years ago
[00:03:20.850]as someone who had moved not only from different jobs
[00:03:24.360]but from one career to another
[00:03:25.800]would've been considered somewhat outside the norm
[00:03:29.340]of the experience.
[00:03:30.210]Whereas now we're telling our students
[00:03:32.220]that that will likely be the model of their performance
[00:03:35.280]throughout their career, that changing not just jobs,
[00:03:37.830]but entire career fields is likely
[00:03:40.830]to be what's on their agenda.
[00:03:42.240]Would you agree?
[00:03:43.890]I would.
[00:03:44.723]I think that we see, unfortunately, a lot of industries,
[00:03:48.960]hemorrhage jobs from year to year.
[00:03:51.990]There are entirely new industries
[00:03:54.180]that probably don't even exist yet
[00:03:55.860]that will present a number of opportunities for, you know,
[00:03:59.610]the next class of students.
[00:04:00.750]So certainly, I think that that would be the trend
[00:04:04.320]that we've seen in recent years.
[00:04:06.960]You started with the Better Business Bureau
[00:04:08.640]in June of 2021 as Director of Public Relations
[00:04:12.990]and Communications, and now are Vice President
[00:04:15.840]of Communications and Public Relations.
[00:04:17.730]What does your job entail, and what,
[00:04:20.130]if any such thing exists, is an average day like for you?
[00:04:24.120]Sure.
[00:04:25.020]Well, anyone who's ever worked in the nonprofit space
[00:04:27.450]will tell you, it is do what is needed on a given day.
[00:04:30.720]Some days that's turning on the lights
[00:04:32.100]and some days that's handling, you know,
[00:04:34.890]external media efforts.
[00:04:36.840]But I would say the vast majority of my work
[00:04:38.940]involves overseeing and executing all external
[00:04:42.660]and internal communication efforts, marketing efforts,
[00:04:45.870]public relations efforts.
[00:04:48.090]But it absolutely varies by the day.
[00:04:51.930]There are some seasonal work,
[00:04:53.130]there are some annual projects that we work through,
[00:04:57.150]but, you know, each day is a little bit different
[00:04:59.580]and that keeps me on my toes.
[00:05:02.250]You also are frequently a public affairs specialist
[00:05:06.090]for them in terms of being used by other news media
[00:05:08.640]to spread the word.
[00:05:10.170]I noticed in doing a little research for this afternoon
[00:05:12.540]that you are frequently asked to talk about things
[00:05:15.330]like consumer scams and things along that line.
[00:05:18.597]And I trust you're comfortable with that role as well.
[00:05:22.050]Yeah, scam prevention and outreach
[00:05:23.610]is a pretty significant tenet
[00:05:25.890]of the Better Business Bureau's mission
[00:05:28.170]to advance marketplace trust.
[00:05:29.700]And I'm lucky enough to be the spokesperson
[00:05:32.640]of our International Investigations Initiative.
[00:05:35.310]We produce semi-regular scam studies
[00:05:37.530]tackling a wide range of topics,
[00:05:40.110]but many of them pertain locally unfortunately.
[00:05:44.700]And that, you know,
[00:05:46.256]results in a great deal of media attention.
[00:05:49.440]When you were first looking at a career
[00:05:52.080]and were thinking about where you might want
[00:05:53.820]to attend college, what was on the radar at that time
[00:05:56.820]and what was it that brought you
[00:05:57.900]to school at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln?
[00:06:01.620]That's a great question.
[00:06:03.270]I grew up kind of all around the country,
[00:06:05.850]but my family put roots down in Omaha
[00:06:09.120]when I started middle school.
[00:06:11.130]And so University of Nebraska-Lincoln
[00:06:13.140]was just down the road in a sense,
[00:06:14.940]and I knew that they had a speech and debate team.
[00:06:17.880]And in high school, that was a big part of my life,
[00:06:20.370]it's a big part of my identity
[00:06:21.960]and it help paid for school as well.
[00:06:24.660]So the minute I was given a scholarship
[00:06:27.720]to the UNL speech team, I was sold,
[00:06:30.720]but I obviously was raised
[00:06:33.450]around a husker football fanatics.
[00:06:35.910]And that I'm sure played a role
[00:06:38.040]in my interest in the culture and environment
[00:06:40.830]that UNL creates, I suppose.
[00:06:44.280]And those speech skills are now coming back
[00:06:46.350]to be helpful in a variety of senses as well,
[00:06:48.900]given your work with scams,
[00:06:50.340]but also tell us a little bit about your involvement
[00:06:54.080]with being a regular sports contributor
[00:06:56.430]to CNN Philippines channel.
[00:06:59.670]Yeah, if anyone is interested in
[00:07:02.280]or on the fence about engaging
[00:07:04.590]with any sort of public speaking activity,
[00:07:08.070]whether it be speech or debate or theater,
[00:07:10.650]I would encourage them to pursue it.
[00:07:12.630]I do feel like it is a goldmine opportunity.
[00:07:15.480]Those skills extend to every position I've ever held
[00:07:18.270]and every position I ever will.
[00:07:20.040]And it's a fantastic opportunity
[00:07:22.290]to learn a lot about yourself and your comfort level.
[00:07:25.620]But in terms of what brought me
[00:07:27.330]to this kind of odd situation I have with CNN Philippines,
[00:07:33.180]I covered a basketball player
[00:07:36.120]on the Creighton basketball team, Kobe Paras,
[00:07:39.000]who ultimately transferred,
[00:07:40.710]but he was a very big deal in the Philippines.
[00:07:44.100]He has a incredible fan base, incredible support team,
[00:07:48.120]and basketball is the number one sport of the Philippines,
[00:07:52.800]incredibly passionate fans.
[00:07:55.470]And because of that, that ultimately brought me
[00:07:59.220]to a guest segment role.
[00:08:00.390]And then I guess I just never left.
[00:08:02.220]So they invite me on occasionally
[00:08:04.380]to speak about, you know,
[00:08:06.480]kind of a little bit of a talk of the town
[00:08:08.820]kind of situation, whatever sport is topical and timely.
[00:08:12.570]Some weeks that's boxing,
[00:08:13.830]some weeks that's professional basketball,
[00:08:16.350]some weeks that's tennis.
[00:08:17.550]And I'm more than happy to help them out.
[00:08:21.347]I've gained a great deal of respect for their team
[00:08:23.700]and would hope to actually get out to Manila sometime
[00:08:27.360]in the near future to meet these folks who I've worked with
[00:08:31.170]and in a sense for many years in person.
[00:08:34.590]Well, that speaks to the fact
[00:08:35.760]that you are sort of the model, I would say,
[00:08:39.210]for the multi-platform media content creator
[00:08:42.630]that we're encouraging many
[00:08:44.370]of our students here to consider.
[00:08:47.340]You're doing PR for the Better Business Bureau,
[00:08:49.590]you've been a freelance writer
[00:08:50.970]ever since you graduated from the university.
[00:08:52.737]You are a sports contributor to the CNN network.
[00:08:56.700]You have contributed at least one talk, I'm aware of,
[00:09:00.000]to the TEDxUNO series.
[00:09:02.430]You've done a variety of guest lecture appearances
[00:09:05.820]in different places around the country.
[00:09:08.280]So you seem to be comfortable touching
[00:09:11.520]pretty much any field of content creation that there is.
[00:09:14.820]Is there one that's your favorite at this point
[00:09:17.850]or that when push comes to shove,
[00:09:19.950]you sort of hone in on as the one
[00:09:21.450]you feel most comfortable doing?
[00:09:24.900]So that's a difficult question
[00:09:25.950]because timeliness of this interview
[00:09:31.003]would push me in the direction of business and marketing.
[00:09:34.260]That's taking up a great deal of my time
[00:09:37.710]both in my full-time role and my current position
[00:09:41.130]in graduate school.
[00:09:42.330]I'm pursuing an MBA through Creighton University.
[00:09:46.320]But it really does depend on the day
[00:09:48.540]and what is asked of me.
[00:09:49.440]I think writing will always be my number one love.
[00:09:52.740]But certainly, you know, some days social media is required,
[00:09:56.550]some days videography is required.
[00:09:58.380]And I do find a lot of interest and excitement
[00:10:02.580]from working in those various aspects.
[00:10:05.490]Well, I noticed looking
[00:10:06.323]over your Clifton StrengthsFinder themes
[00:10:08.700]that one of them that popped out at me was adaptability.
[00:10:11.757]And I would certainly think that is most appropriate
[00:10:14.610]given what you just said,
[00:10:15.870]where it's sort of whatever is required from day to day
[00:10:18.660]is what you're willing to do.
[00:10:20.400]And adaptability, I would suggest you would think
[00:10:23.100]would be one of the things you would recommend most
[00:10:25.230]to young folks entering into the workplace.
[00:10:28.740]Absolutely.
[00:10:29.850]Back in the day,
[00:10:30.870]a five tool player in Major League Baseball
[00:10:33.210]was really difficult to find.
[00:10:35.220]And nowadays, I would assume it is something
[00:10:38.220]of a prerequisite for folks entering into the space.
[00:10:41.640]I know that there were folks around me at UNL
[00:10:45.600]back in, you know, 2010, 2011,
[00:10:48.780]who were just at least publicly going to school
[00:10:52.350]to be a print journalist and they just wanted to write.
[00:10:55.470]And I just don't know if that position even exists anymore.
[00:11:00.360]I think that frankly, you need to have someone
[00:11:03.240]who can work a camera, can produce social media content,
[00:11:07.080]can voice a story, someone who has great typing speed.
[00:11:09.990]I think all of those skills are incredibly desirable
[00:11:14.550]and most employers, I would say,
[00:11:16.200]are looking for a combination of skills
[00:11:18.210]and not necessarily one,
[00:11:20.700]which is either fortunate or unfortunate,
[00:11:22.530]depending on how flexible or adaptable
[00:11:25.590]you see yourself being.
[00:11:27.330]Well, the thrust of this series
[00:11:28.830]is going to be talking about the future
[00:11:31.050]and where the guests in our series feel
[00:11:34.410]their individual fields or careers are headed.
[00:11:38.190]And I'll talk to you primarily
[00:11:40.890]about your work with nonprofits
[00:11:42.270]since that's where you are right now,
[00:11:43.350]but I know you've got a wealth of other background as well.
[00:11:45.390]So feel free to modify your answers
[00:11:47.280]to any of what I'm about to pose to you
[00:11:49.320]to fit any of those backgrounds.
[00:11:51.180]But from what you've seen since you graduated from here
[00:11:54.480]and moved into your career field,
[00:11:57.960]how have you seen your field change since when you started?
[00:12:03.630]Well, difficult to say
[00:12:05.370]because I've bounced around so much, I suppose,
[00:12:07.770]but at least within the nonprofit space,
[00:12:10.500]I think a desire to marry the freedom and flexibility
[00:12:15.840]that a lot of nonprofit work provides to its employers
[00:12:19.050]with the hard deadlines necessary by today's market.
[00:12:23.760]I think that there's a lot of folks
[00:12:25.140]who are being tasked with deadlines
[00:12:28.170]that they probably never have previously
[00:12:31.642]in the nonprofit space.
[00:12:33.060]Frankly, every deadline I've ever had
[00:12:35.190]since working in a newsroom has felt a lot slower
[00:12:39.810]than anything I dealt with in a newsroom.
[00:12:43.560]And that way, I find that
[00:12:44.880]to be an incredibly helpful baseline
[00:12:48.570]because everything is is slow as molasses by comparison.
[00:12:52.470]But I do think that, you know,
[00:12:54.030]the debt folks in nonprofits are asked to hit
[00:12:57.630]have certainly been ratcheted up a tick or two,
[00:13:00.900]but mostly I would say the multi-skill,
[00:13:03.240]cross-departmental responsibilities
[00:13:06.240]are not going away as far as I can tell.
[00:13:08.640]So even though I was hired
[00:13:10.980]to essentially run a communications department
[00:13:14.520]within the Better Business Bureau system,
[00:13:16.500]that also involves a great number of things
[00:13:19.620]outside of communications as well.
[00:13:22.350]So that's, I guess,
[00:13:24.090]essentially what you sign up for
[00:13:25.860]in the nonprofit space to begin with,
[00:13:27.570]but increasingly so I would say has been my experience.
[00:13:32.130]The asking to get involved with things
[00:13:33.990]like accounting, with HR.
[00:13:36.240]You know, seemingly no department
[00:13:38.250]is off limits for anyone in the nonprofit space.
[00:13:42.120]In what ways have you seen technological changes
[00:13:45.540]impact your career field?
[00:13:48.870]A great deal.
[00:13:51.330]Better Business Bureau is a very generational workforce.
[00:13:55.020]There are a number of folks who frankly,
[00:13:57.990]probably will not be employed
[00:14:00.120]by the Better Business Bureau in 5 to 10 years.
[00:14:03.210]Just like there are folks like me
[00:14:04.710]who hopefully will be.
[00:14:07.380]That's because there's any number of new features
[00:14:13.110]with regard to things like communication apps, right?
[00:14:16.290]Getting folks up to speed on Microsoft Teams or Slack
[00:14:19.290]or whatever your preference may be to, you know,
[00:14:23.160]that even just the social media concept, right?
[00:14:26.820]This would not really be a conversation 15 years ago
[00:14:30.900]and now there's a new platform
[00:14:33.330]that is seemingly being constructed each and every day.
[00:14:37.560]And because of that, I think the ability
[00:14:40.560]to juggle multiple projects,
[00:14:42.420]multiple innovations in a timely manner
[00:14:45.480]is not going away anytime soon.
[00:14:48.150]It's something that is top of mind
[00:14:49.980]for me and my team as well.
[00:14:52.440]But the technological advancements
[00:14:55.290]that have been made in the past nine years
[00:14:58.350]since I've been out of school have been vast
[00:15:01.590]and have really caused me to reflect
[00:15:04.200]on a lot of the skills that I learned
[00:15:05.700]and be grateful for them.
[00:15:07.260]Those that were cultivated
[00:15:08.580]within the halls of the UNLJ School.
[00:15:12.210]What do you think are the biggest forces
[00:15:14.730]that are driving change in your area and your field?
[00:15:21.150]Some of it is societal.
[00:15:22.440]I think you see nonprofit organizations
[00:15:24.690]maybe stepping out on the ledge a little bit more
[00:15:27.210]to advance, you know, human rights issues,
[00:15:30.990]to advance societal conversations.
[00:15:36.300]That's tricky working for the Better Business Bureau,
[00:15:38.610]I would say, who, you know, as an organization,
[00:15:41.970]it's a century old brand that is really meant
[00:15:44.790]to be impartial.
[00:15:45.930]And so that is a tricky dynamic, I would say,
[00:15:49.920]on a personal level and to the folks working
[00:15:52.320]within the BBB system.
[00:15:53.580]But I would say that, you know, any organization
[00:15:56.640]is adapting to meet the needs of the consumer
[00:15:59.340]and those are always a little bit in flux,
[00:16:02.610]even if it might seem like, you know,
[00:16:04.980]just a one-degree temperature difference, you know,
[00:16:07.890]it does add up over time.
[00:16:10.350]So I would say that a lot of folks
[00:16:12.450]just are kind of on the lookout
[00:16:14.400]for whatever's happening next societally.
[00:16:16.620]And certainly to the business owners that we serve,
[00:16:20.790]COVID was a pretty significant wrench
[00:16:23.370]that I think a lot of folks are still working
[00:16:24.840]their way through the dynamic
[00:16:28.230]of whatever full-time employment looks like these days
[00:16:33.720]to a lot of folks, right?
[00:16:35.190]I work essentially fully remote
[00:16:38.370]and that was not really an opportunity
[00:16:40.920]that I knew existed before COVID struck,
[00:16:44.880]but like many organizations,
[00:16:47.070]the Better Business Bureau is working its way
[00:16:48.810]through that as well.
[00:16:49.643]So I would say just adapting
[00:16:50.880]to meet the needs of the consumer
[00:16:52.590]and the business owners and the folks
[00:16:54.870]that these nonprofit organizations are duty bound to serve.
[00:16:59.010]We'll get back to the remote
[00:17:01.500]from home working conditions in a bit.
[00:17:04.320]Do you feel that because of the field that you're in,
[00:17:08.100]that the kinds of changes that are made
[00:17:10.320]are primarily reactive to what's happening?
[00:17:12.870]Or is there an opportunity to also occasionally be proactive
[00:17:16.560]and suggest where maybe you think the industry
[00:17:19.050]or the company thinks the industry should go?
[00:17:23.070]Well, certainly I would hesitate
[00:17:24.090]to speak for all nonprofits,
[00:17:25.680]but I would say that the majority of it is reactive,
[00:17:31.500]and try to instill a sense of being proactive for our team,
[00:17:37.530]but it's easier said than done when, you know,
[00:17:40.380]the responsibilities add up
[00:17:41.970]and the time that is required
[00:17:44.370]to tackle those responsibilities adds up.
[00:17:46.410]So I would say the majority of it is reactive.
[00:17:49.620]I have been pleased with some of the more proactive measures
[00:17:53.190]that the BBB has taken,
[00:17:54.600]but, you know, with the modern day news cycle
[00:17:58.260]being what it is, it's very difficult
[00:17:59.910]to feel like you are anything close to being ahead of it.
[00:18:04.770]Back to your adaption,
[00:18:07.050]the adaptability part of your Clifton Strengths there.
[00:18:10.410]So because I teach an ethics course,
[00:18:14.250]I'm always curious to ask this one,
[00:18:16.830]what do you think are some of the ethical challenges
[00:18:19.950]that you see in the nonprofit sector moving forward?
[00:18:25.260]Yeah, that's a great question.
[00:18:27.450]Something that we certainly deal with pretty regularly.
[00:18:30.960]As a 501c6,
[00:18:33.840]we are duty bound to serve the member organizations
[00:18:37.350]that keep the lights on for the Better Business Bureau.
[00:18:40.530]So balancing both what we feel like are initiatives
[00:18:45.750]or projects that protect consumers
[00:18:48.390]with providing value to the member organizations
[00:18:52.290]that keep organizations
[00:18:53.940]like the Better Business Bureau in business,
[00:18:57.690]I think is kind of always a conversation worth having,
[00:19:02.310]always a ledger that needs to be adjusted over time.
[00:19:07.680]Ethically, I find it very easy for myself
[00:19:12.930]in my role to go to work.
[00:19:16.710]I feel very confident
[00:19:18.270]and what it is at the Better Business Bureau
[00:19:21.510]has done, continues to do,
[00:19:24.750]by, you know, calling out bad actors,
[00:19:26.790]dealing with with fraud and then scam,
[00:19:29.520]you know, prevention conversations
[00:19:32.730]that frankly are never more pressing
[00:19:35.010]than they are right now.
[00:19:35.940]We've never monitored more scam related activity
[00:19:38.550]than we have in the past three years.
[00:19:40.440]That's simply not going to go away.
[00:19:42.720]As much as I would like to think
[00:19:44.040]that the earned media appearances that I do
[00:19:46.350]and the, you know, releases that we get out
[00:19:48.570]to the public prove valuable,
[00:19:52.200]it's playing whack-a-mole in a minefield.
[00:19:54.930]And so it's very, very, very difficult in that sense.
[00:19:57.930]But I would say it's a very easy calculus
[00:20:01.050]on a personal level to deal even ethically
[00:20:04.934]with the businesses that keep us around.
[00:20:07.710]I would love it if every single member organization
[00:20:11.370]that is BBB accredited upheld the standards
[00:20:15.510]and values that create our organization.
[00:20:18.120]The reality is sometimes those standards are broken
[00:20:22.230]and those people need to be removed
[00:20:24.180]from the organization.
[00:20:25.710]And that's, you know,
[00:20:27.210]obviously a difficult conversation to have,
[00:20:29.550]but I feel very confident in our ability to self-police
[00:20:33.660]and to ensure that we are creating a trustworthy market
[00:20:37.710]in the ways that we are able to.
[00:20:41.436]Since you mentioned the pandemic,
[00:20:42.360]you were only about, oh,
[00:20:44.760]several months into your job with the BBB
[00:20:47.160]when the world sort of shut down here for a while.
[00:20:51.600]What do you think,
[00:20:53.430]what kind of change did the pandemic create
[00:20:55.920]in the nonprofit sector in the way that you do business?
[00:20:59.520]So I actually can't speak to the precursor
[00:21:04.050]of the pandemic since I joined mid-pandemic,
[00:21:07.470]but from what I understand,
[00:21:12.486]it forced us to be a lot more intentional
[00:21:13.980]about the programs and opportunities that we provide
[00:21:16.320]to the business owners who we serve.
[00:21:19.260]You know, an easy answer would be
[00:21:22.800]that we created more remote or hybrid opportunities
[00:21:25.380]for folks to take part in things
[00:21:27.000]like Grow with Google webinar series.
[00:21:31.710]But the reality is I think a lot of the ways
[00:21:33.720]in which we dispense tools and resources
[00:21:36.120]to our accredited businesses changed dramatically
[00:21:41.580]in ways that we'll never, you know, go back to, right?
[00:21:47.460]We have a new database, right,
[00:21:49.650]that allows us to, you know,
[00:21:51.870]distribute like the dynamic seal that indicates
[00:21:54.900]if you're an accredited business or not.
[00:21:56.520]There was once a time where folks had a physical seal that,
[00:22:00.540]you know, essentially the BBB would go
[00:22:02.400]and pull it out of the business
[00:22:04.170]if they violated the tenets of the organization.
[00:22:07.920]But I do think that some of the opportunities
[00:22:10.230]that we created, everything from budgeting
[00:22:13.080]to how to spot fake invoice scams,
[00:22:16.200]which really spiked around, you know, the pandemic,
[00:22:21.513]were brought up to speed and frankly,
[00:22:22.710]it was probably much needed
[00:22:24.210]from an organizational perspective.
[00:22:26.160]If you could say that there was any sort of positive benefit
[00:22:29.520]for any organization out of the pandemic,
[00:22:31.367]it was that we reevaluated, I think,
[00:22:34.020]a lot of the programs and opportunities
[00:22:36.240]that we provided and thought long and hard
[00:22:39.120]about whether the value was what we thought it was.
[00:22:43.101]I think that seems to be an answer
[00:22:44.610]that I get from a lot of folks that I talked to about
[00:22:46.830]in varying industries that I talked to about the pandemic
[00:22:49.680]that they say, you know, there was a lot,
[00:22:51.600]that was really terrible about it,
[00:22:53.070]but we were able to grab some silver linings
[00:22:57.330]out of some things and some of it
[00:22:58.590]had to deal with looking at redundancies
[00:23:02.231]and streamlining the processes for things
[00:23:04.590]and coming to grips with the new reality
[00:23:06.780]and finding out that, well,
[00:23:08.490]there were things you could do remotely
[00:23:10.140]that perhaps you hadn't considered before.
[00:23:12.900]I know that the nonprofits may not always be seen
[00:23:15.750]by the general public in terms of growth the way
[00:23:19.230]that a for-profit industry might be,
[00:23:21.000]but certainly, there's growth in nonprofits as well.
[00:23:23.730]What do you see as some of the growth areas
[00:23:26.790]in the nonprofit sector?
[00:23:29.370]Well, from our organization specifically,
[00:23:31.620]looking ahead to the next generation of business owners,
[00:23:35.490]I can tell you that a lot of folks my age
[00:23:38.850]probably don't know who the Better Business Bureau is.
[00:23:42.545]And some of that is intentional strategically.
[00:23:45.180]Historically, we have never taken part in a national TV
[00:23:49.560]advertising campaign before the past six months.
[00:23:54.000]So some intentionality around programs and resources
[00:23:58.650]with regard to entrepreneurs, emerging business owners.
[00:24:03.330]That has been something that we have prioritized
[00:24:06.510]on a local level just because each bureau
[00:24:09.900]is its own island in a way.
[00:24:11.310]There are 97 Better Business Bureaus,
[00:24:13.320]I work for the third largest one,
[00:24:15.330]and we serve four different states.
[00:24:16.800]So in a way, we're kind of the odd duckling of the system,
[00:24:19.470]but what I do love about the BBB
[00:24:21.870]is that you have the opportunity to share resources
[00:24:25.200]in the ways that you feel are most beneficial
[00:24:27.000]to the communities that you serve.
[00:24:28.890]And so at least within the past few years since I got here,
[00:24:32.520]we've really been more intentional
[00:24:33.840]about shepherding the next generation of business owners
[00:24:37.110]through the program and what accreditation means
[00:24:41.370]for those folks and for their communities.
[00:24:45.360]Looking ahead, you've touched a little bit
[00:24:47.100]on the fact that you're likely to have some of your folks
[00:24:50.430]cycling through and the natural give and take
[00:24:53.370]of people coming and leaving in an organization.
[00:24:56.040]So thinking down the road,
[00:24:57.870]what kinds of skills do you think employees
[00:25:00.680]in the nonprofit sector most need
[00:25:03.000]to be successful in that field?
[00:25:06.630]In a lot of ways,
[00:25:07.838]I would think that these have been requirements
[00:25:11.130]for a good long while, balance, judgment,
[00:25:15.090]willingness to pivot where necessary, willingness to adapt.
[00:25:21.780]I would say the balance
[00:25:22.800]is probably a little bit different now
[00:25:24.990]than it was two decades ago.
[00:25:27.660]What folks are being asked to juggle,
[00:25:30.420]crossing the departments a little bit more
[00:25:33.780]with regard to what daily,
[00:25:35.520]you know, responsibilities look like.
[00:25:38.310]But it would probably depend on what organization you asked.
[00:25:41.220]I'm just, you know, speaking personally for, you know,
[00:25:45.000]the folks in my organization
[00:25:47.370]that at least the next generation that we're looking for
[00:25:50.430]is our folks who are willing to pivot where necessary,
[00:25:53.700]because the reality is the pivot is going to be necessary,
[00:25:56.520]and it's not going to be a slow process.
[00:26:00.300]It's going to be very, very fast.
[00:26:04.080]In that same sense then,
[00:26:05.400]are there skills or traits that you feel
[00:26:07.920]would be beneficial to anyone
[00:26:10.590]just looking at coming out of school
[00:26:12.600]and getting started in the industries,
[00:26:14.070]regardless of whether it was nonprofit or for-profit?
[00:26:16.440]Are there things that just make somebody more in tune
[00:26:20.880]with what the working world is likely to look at
[00:26:23.730]as being a successful employee?
[00:26:27.450]Yeah, you know, strong work ethic
[00:26:30.000]is never going to be, you know, a sour note.
[00:26:32.970]That's always going to be, you know,
[00:26:35.130]look to in any candidate in any role,
[00:26:37.890]someone who is ethically minded, integrity-driven.
[00:26:44.040]I do think that those, I mean,
[00:26:45.750]for every ChatGPT that can automate certain things
[00:26:49.230]that you're going to need someone
[00:26:51.180]who you can trust behind the wheel.
[00:26:53.100]And I do feel like that's never gonna go out of style,
[00:26:57.510]especially in the nonprofit space.
[00:27:00.750]Adaptability, flexibility.
[00:27:04.688]But I would say, you know, on a human level,
[00:27:06.450]finding someone who you truly can trust, you know,
[00:27:09.870]with assignments or to lead a department
[00:27:13.260]if that is, you know, what you're pursuing a candidate for.
[00:27:17.220]Since you mentioned AI
[00:27:19.080]and so many of the phone calls
[00:27:22.020]that I am getting recently are spam calls
[00:27:25.710]and automated and spoofing and all those sorts of things,
[00:27:28.617]are you seeing artificial intelligence playing more and more
[00:27:31.470]of a role in the kind of scams and other kinds of operations
[00:27:34.890]that you have to warn your business partners about?
[00:27:38.760]Without question.
[00:27:40.650]It would be so much easier if everything
[00:27:43.050]that was created by ChatGPT
[00:27:45.450]or some other language model, you know,
[00:27:49.350]had a big red sign on the top of it, right,
[00:27:52.770]to indicate where it's origin was.
[00:27:56.100]But the reality is it doesn't.
[00:27:58.830]And so when folks report their scam experience,
[00:28:03.540]frankly, they don't know if it originated with ChatGPT.
[00:28:09.600]I would say given the language used
[00:28:11.850]and some of the decoders that I know are available online,
[00:28:15.360]we know that at least some of it did.
[00:28:17.790]If you think about all of the traditional talking points
[00:28:20.430]for scam prevention and awareness,
[00:28:21.900]many of them involve looking
[00:28:23.640]for grammatical mistakes, language of origin.
[00:28:28.740]Many of these scams originate overseas.
[00:28:31.020]Well, if you give somebody a toolbox
[00:28:34.560]to create content for a romance account,
[00:28:40.530]then they can write in the language of William Shakespeare,
[00:28:44.700]then becomes a lot more difficult to suss out
[00:28:47.880]who is, you know, an actual person from a bad actor.
[00:28:51.420]And now we have ways to create entire profiles
[00:28:55.380]based out of nothing.
[00:28:57.450]So yeah, it has been a lot more difficult.
[00:29:00.510]It's very easy to trick people.
[00:29:03.960]And sadly, the shame of being scammed leads,
[00:29:10.920]I would say, north of 80% of the folks
[00:29:13.290]to not report their experience in this country,
[00:29:15.540]which I think is horrifying on a human level.
[00:29:19.200]But yeah, I do think that artificial intelligence
[00:29:22.950]has a lot of positive applications.
[00:29:25.350]Unfortunately, there are significant drawbacks
[00:29:30.300]that I think are leading many people
[00:29:33.030]to lose a great deal of money right now.
[00:29:35.190]We certainly are wrestling with it
[00:29:36.660]at the university level as well,
[00:29:38.250]trying to figure out how to positively incorporate it
[00:29:41.430]into our journalism and mass com courses
[00:29:43.710]while not just making it the quick way
[00:29:46.950]that somebody completes an essay exam and turns it in.
[00:29:49.500]But to your point about the specificity
[00:29:52.260]and how intuitive the programs are now,
[00:29:55.440]we had an example at a convention here recently
[00:29:58.440]where someone asked ChatGPT to write a news release
[00:30:02.430]and then told it when the first draft came out,
[00:30:04.837]"Well, that's good, but it's a little too passive.
[00:30:06.960]Can you make it more active?"
[00:30:08.700]And it instantly rewrote it all in active tense.
[00:30:13.260]So it is pretty intuitive in somewhat frightening ways.
[00:30:17.160]So we'll see where it goes down the road.
[00:30:19.890]Did your time at UNL or I guess I should ask,
[00:30:22.890]how do you think your time at UNL has prepared you
[00:30:25.350]for all the myriad of writing and reporting
[00:30:28.260]and media content opportunities that you have?
[00:30:33.150]I'm forever grateful to UNL for providing me
[00:30:36.060]with the opportunities that it did.
[00:30:38.580]I'm very grateful that the course curriculum required me
[00:30:42.210]to be probably more well-rounded
[00:30:45.330]than other departments might have.
[00:30:49.140]I think I would've chosen, you know,
[00:30:52.320]some different courses if I could go back
[00:30:54.300]and had the benefit of hindsight.
[00:30:55.890]But I'm very grateful for the experiences that I had
[00:30:59.550]within those halls to, frankly,
[00:31:02.460]to fail as much as I feel like I have,
[00:31:06.360]whether it be a course project or professionally,
[00:31:09.840]I did feel like I was nurtured and taken care of at UNL
[00:31:15.030]in ways that I'm very, very grateful for
[00:31:17.400]and probably in ways that folks might not anticipate
[00:31:20.190]when they think of a Big 10 university
[00:31:22.260]or any college that serves tens of thousands of students.
[00:31:27.900]Well, expanding on that then,
[00:31:29.570]if we're looking at the employees of the future,
[00:31:32.340]and you had a chance to,
[00:31:33.795]'cause I know you do talk to college classes
[00:31:35.310]and frequently our guests on campus,
[00:31:38.520]what are you encouraging today's students to take
[00:31:41.820]and to study and what skills should they pursue
[00:31:44.760]to maximize their opportunity to be a good employee?
[00:31:50.850]Any way you can find a balanced plate, pursue it.
[00:31:55.410]I think that there are some obvious skills
[00:31:58.680]that are more desirable right now, things like coding.
[00:32:01.770]I believe that there is, you know,
[00:32:03.060]like a sports statistics course or variety of courses
[00:32:07.470]in that realm that were not available when I was a student,
[00:32:10.080]I absolutely would've taken those courses.
[00:32:13.230]Finding some balance between what your passions are
[00:32:17.460]and thinking of more creative ways to get there, right?
[00:32:20.460]If you really wanna tell a great story,
[00:32:22.290]if you treat yourself like a storyteller,
[00:32:24.390]there are so many ways to tell a story.
[00:32:26.880]Find the tools that will get you
[00:32:28.800]to whatever story is that you wanna pursue.
[00:32:33.360]Ideally, it would involve a dabble of video,
[00:32:37.020]a dabble of writing, a dabble of reporting.
[00:32:41.520]You know, pursue your passions.
[00:32:42.870]That's always going to be probably my number one goal
[00:32:46.110]because that's really marked my entire life.
[00:32:49.800]But I do think that there are some courses
[00:32:53.280]that are available now that I frankly wish were available
[00:32:57.360]when I was around that I hope they take advantage of
[00:33:00.390]and I know the curriculum is asking them
[00:33:02.310]to take advantage of them.
[00:33:05.910]You touched briefly a little bit ago
[00:33:07.710]on the opportunity you have
[00:33:08.970]to work remotely and work from home.
[00:33:11.250]Do you see that?
[00:33:12.756]And that, again, was certainly amplified by the pandemic.
[00:33:15.930]Do you see that as a change that's likely to stick
[00:33:18.630]and that people are not as geographically bound
[00:33:22.350]as they once might have been in the nonprofit specifically?
[00:33:27.300]Tricky conversation to navigate,
[00:33:30.270]especially when asking someone to come into the office
[00:33:34.680]is treated punitively or viewed
[00:33:38.010]as a punitive measure by colleagues.
[00:33:42.060]I can tell you I was very adamant when I applied
[00:33:44.850]for my current role that it'd be remote,
[00:33:49.680]that it at least offer hybrid flexibility.
[00:33:53.430]I have attention deficit disorder.
[00:33:55.050]So the idea of the water cooler,
[00:33:58.740]the proverbial water cooler conversation,
[00:34:01.830]stuff like that takes me completely off the path
[00:34:05.190]and completely away from my work.
[00:34:06.780]So in a completely selfish way,
[00:34:10.020]I would say remote work has been a real treasure
[00:34:15.870]that I do not take for granted.
[00:34:17.490]I feel like I'm more productive at home.
[00:34:20.310]I know that collaboration is key
[00:34:21.930]and I intend to collaborate as long as I can
[00:34:25.650]with my colleagues, of course.
[00:34:28.080]But I do feel like in certain industries,
[00:34:31.980]they will be asked to reenter the brick and mortar
[00:34:38.010]or just the business office if productivity wanes.
[00:34:41.790]So I would encourage those who don't want to go back
[00:34:45.900]or who prioritize that flexibility to stay productive.
[00:34:51.720]It might not be in their hands, right?
[00:34:53.610]I think that because of the punitive nature,
[00:34:57.570]it becomes a situation
[00:35:00.990]you might not be able to avoid culturally,
[00:35:03.390]but on a personal level,
[00:35:05.310]I think that the productivity will went out
[00:35:07.170]and so that is my priority.
[00:35:09.567]And on a related topic,
[00:35:10.950]I know more and more of the guest speakers
[00:35:12.810]to our college within the last decade
[00:35:15.510]have begun to talk about the importance
[00:35:17.910]of the work-life balance of any particular job.
[00:35:22.530]I take it from what you've said that's important to you
[00:35:24.390]for a variety of reasons,
[00:35:25.650]but how do you see that moving forward as well
[00:35:27.993]that employees are a little more cognizant
[00:35:31.080]as you were in your specific situation to say,
[00:35:34.477]"This is important to me and this will have a bearing
[00:35:36.690]on whether or not I keep a job or take this job."
[00:35:42.180]Yeah, I've been married for two years now,
[00:35:44.970]and so spending more time with my wife was
[00:35:48.240]and will continue to be a real priority of mine.
[00:35:53.370]I think she feels the same way,
[00:35:54.600]though it might depend on the day, I suppose.
[00:35:57.930]I do think that that is a real benefit
[00:36:00.990]that came out of the pandemic,
[00:36:03.690]at least for our organization specifically,
[00:36:06.450]was a respect of work-life boundaries for folks.
[00:36:12.780]I can't say definitively that prior to the pandemic,
[00:36:19.090]that that balance was not respected.
[00:36:20.940]But I do know that it is top of mind
[00:36:23.610]for our organization now and moving forward.
[00:36:25.740]If you need to provide daycare or childcare rather,
[00:36:29.700]if you need to, you know, go to an appointment,
[00:36:33.300]with the flexibility, I think that has been something
[00:36:35.910]that has been treated with the utmost respect.
[00:36:39.600]I do hope that organizations will see it as important,
[00:36:44.430]even if it might not impact their bottom line.
[00:36:47.220]I have trust and faith in that being respected.
[00:36:51.780]But I would say it purely depends
[00:36:53.880]on what industry or, you know, employer you land.
[00:36:58.770]Let's talk about salaries and compensation and benefits,
[00:37:03.390]some of which is tied to that work-life balance again
[00:37:06.330]without asking you what your particular package looks like.
[00:37:10.710]What if that's another area in which the pandemic
[00:37:13.170]had a pretty dramatic effect in terms of industries saying,
[00:37:17.400]you know, we're not gonna be able
[00:37:18.300]to make the same kind of money we did before
[00:37:19.890]because things are different now.
[00:37:21.060]And of course that was starting prior to the pandemic,
[00:37:23.190]with the advent of the internet and the way we change
[00:37:25.980]how we get a lot of our content.
[00:37:27.960]But for folks just coming out of school
[00:37:31.620]or looking to change careers
[00:37:33.690]in the nonprofit field in particular,
[00:37:37.200]how have salaries been affected?
[00:37:40.507]How is that picture looking and tying in
[00:37:42.780]with that compensation and benefits packages down the road?
[00:37:47.220]Yeah, I certainly don't feel like the benefits
[00:37:49.680]have been limited, at least in my experience.
[00:37:53.400]I know that salaries change quite a bit.
[00:37:56.640]I mentioned that the BBB is seen as its own island,
[00:38:00.420]each bureau with a federated model.
[00:38:02.310]You can kind of create FTEs out of nothing
[00:38:04.860]and shuffle them as you see fit.
[00:38:06.450]So in that way, I do think BBB
[00:38:09.120]has been more intentional about driving demand
[00:38:13.440]for positions that have cross-departmental responsibilities.
[00:38:17.310]And in that way,
[00:38:18.390]understanding that that will require a certain salary
[00:38:21.780]that maybe was not approved five years ago,
[00:38:27.270]certainly depends on where you go.
[00:38:28.800]But, you know, the hybrid model as well,
[00:38:30.900]or the fully remote model has opened folks up
[00:38:33.480]to really pursuing talent in maybe ways
[00:38:35.670]that they didn't in previous years.
[00:38:40.680]I know that we have opened up, you know,
[00:38:42.300]some of our positions for people who do not work
[00:38:45.930]in a place where there is a physical office
[00:38:48.870]and that of course would've never happened
[00:38:51.330]prior to the pandemic.
[00:38:53.490]So I can't say specifically
[00:38:55.560]that the salaries are any better or any worse.
[00:38:58.200]I just think that they're different
[00:38:59.520]and I think organizations are thinking
[00:39:00.960]maybe more intentionally about the ways
[00:39:02.880]in which their FTEs are driving value to the company.
[00:39:06.930]Because of that naturally, you know, the salary
[00:39:10.590]will change based off the responsibilities that, you know,
[00:39:13.920]companies are pursuing in potential applicants.
[00:39:17.340]Since you mentioned FTEs, do you anticipate,
[00:39:20.250]and again, I'm not asking you to generalize
[00:39:22.380]for the entire nonprofit industry,
[00:39:23.970]but do you anticipate that full-time positions
[00:39:27.960]will continue sort of as they had before
[00:39:30.990]or are you seeing more work being done
[00:39:32.700]by freelancers and contractors?
[00:39:36.150]Depends on where you work.
[00:39:37.560]I know that if you can outsource,
[00:39:41.220]there's typically overcorrections, right?
[00:39:44.490]The trend line seems to be everybody
[00:39:47.100]says outsource everything
[00:39:48.420]and then they swing completely the opposite direction
[00:39:51.450]and say, "No, actually we just need
[00:39:53.471]a zillion part-time employees,
[00:39:55.440]and nope, let's go back to outsourcing everything."
[00:39:57.390]So it does depend on what organization you land at.
[00:40:01.710]I do think culture matters.
[00:40:03.090]I do think it's very difficult
[00:40:04.530]to create culture with freelancers.
[00:40:06.600]I say that as a freelancer myself,
[00:40:09.420]but it purely depends on the organization.
[00:40:12.870]I have not heard from my peers
[00:40:15.540]that there has been a large sea change
[00:40:20.310]toward one direction or the other.
[00:40:23.850]But I do think a lot of it depends
[00:40:26.940]on where it's that you're looking.
[00:40:29.640]So when you talk to folks about,
[00:40:31.650]or when folks talk to you and you go to these campus visits
[00:40:34.290]and other things, or you're just talking
[00:40:35.460]to your colleagues or family or friends at gatherings
[00:40:38.100]and say, "Oh, you're in the nonprofit zone,
[00:40:40.980]what's that like?"
[00:40:41.813]What do you tell people?
[00:40:43.590]What do you most want people to know
[00:40:45.510]about working in the nonprofit industries?
[00:40:48.270]And what would you say might be any misconceptions
[00:40:51.030]that people have about working for a nonprofit
[00:40:54.030]as opposed to a for-profit agency?
[00:40:57.960]Yeah, I feel like it's very easy
[00:41:01.680]to wake up and go to my job.
[00:41:03.870]I knew and I do think that there is some data
[00:41:06.780]to suggest that the next generation of college graduates
[00:41:10.260]are pursuing positions like this,
[00:41:12.210]but a purpose-driven work was very top of mind to me.
[00:41:16.920]I say that as the child of two professionals
[00:41:21.000]who did not work in the nonprofit space.
[00:41:24.480]So it is not as though, you know,
[00:41:26.070]dad worked at nonprofit job, so I work a nonprofit job.
[00:41:29.400]That was something that I really,
[00:41:31.440]that meant a lot to me,
[00:41:33.030]was working for an organization
[00:41:35.340]that pursued a mission I could believe in.
[00:41:37.560]And if that required a little bit more work
[00:41:39.540]and required me to do things that maybe fell
[00:41:43.830]outside of the primary responsibilities of my employment,
[00:41:47.400]then so be it.
[00:41:49.350]I do think that my friends who work in the for-profit space
[00:41:56.310]understand that to the best that they can.
[00:41:58.650]I do think for a lot of folks, you know,
[00:42:00.720]money is a significant factor and I'd be lying
[00:42:03.240]if I said that money was not, you know,
[00:42:06.480]an important part of every professional conversation
[00:42:09.900]when you're looking for a new gig.
[00:42:11.970]But to me, the work was always the most important thing.
[00:42:16.260]And luckily, I've landed, you know, where I have.
[00:42:22.020]I do think that my socioeconomic background
[00:42:26.160]is very different from a lot of others as well,
[00:42:28.320]and that's absolutely part of the conversation
[00:42:30.720]that I don't want to to generalize
[00:42:33.840]or overlook for reasons why people go
[00:42:36.810]into working at places that they do.
[00:42:39.840]But I do think that I always knew I wanted
[00:42:42.510]to pursue mission-driven work
[00:42:44.460]and up until now I feel like I have.
[00:42:48.030]Well, since this is a futures series we're doing here,
[00:42:51.330]what do you think when you have a free moment
[00:42:54.630]to ruminate about it, what's in your future?
[00:42:56.670]Are you sort of alluded
[00:42:58.200]that you hope you're gonna be there for a few years,
[00:43:00.270]but long range, what do you see down the road?
[00:43:04.650]You know, I do feel like my work
[00:43:07.520]is not even remotely close to being done at the BBB.
[00:43:11.730]There's still a lot that I want
[00:43:14.040]to accomplish with my colleagues.
[00:43:16.530]So I don't anticipate that changing anytime soon.
[00:43:21.120]I will always have an additional creative itch.
[00:43:24.300]That is always how I have framed freelance writing,
[00:43:27.330]has been if I could be astronaut,
[00:43:31.290]and there would be a part of me that would wanna write
[00:43:34.020]or would wanna do something completely unrelated
[00:43:36.480]to being an astronaut.
[00:43:38.010]And I don't envision that changing anytime soon.
[00:43:41.970]Very difficult probably to keep up with, you know,
[00:43:45.270]the AI models that can spit out the, you know,
[00:43:48.510]news releases and create, you know,
[00:43:50.430]a content meal out of nothing.
[00:43:53.520]But, you know, I'll do my best
[00:43:55.020]to fight that battle as long as I can
[00:43:57.690]to ensure that I have the opportunity creatively
[00:44:00.180]to pursue that itch.
[00:44:03.030]So I think moving forward,
[00:44:04.410]I would like to have a little bit more of a, you know,
[00:44:06.613]a business acumen.
[00:44:07.560]That's why I'm, you know, enrolled in graduate school.
[00:44:10.260]But I would also like to ensure
[00:44:12.270]that I can help the next generation in the ways that I can.
[00:44:14.790]So I would anticipate more effort on my behalf
[00:44:19.770]with either speaking at campuses, speaking to students,
[00:44:22.980]offering internships, things of that nature.
[00:44:28.410]And spending more time with my wife.
[00:44:30.090]I would say that that is both a short-term
[00:44:32.340]and a long-term goal of mine.
[00:44:35.010]I think priority's firmly in place.
[00:44:36.750]I think having a creative itch is a healthy thing,
[00:44:39.690]keeps you thinking about new things to do,
[00:44:41.460]keeps the boredom level down.
[00:44:42.870]And you are more than welcome to return to your home campus
[00:44:46.230]at any time to talk to any of our classes
[00:44:48.390]about all the things that you do.
[00:44:50.070]Josh, I appreciate your time today.
[00:44:51.300]It's been a pleasure catching up with you.
[00:44:53.220]Thanks so much for having me.
[00:44:54.720]Our guest on "Campus Voices" has been Josh Planos,
[00:44:57.330]the Vice President of Communications and Public Relations
[00:45:00.450]at the Better Business Bureau, and an established
[00:45:03.545]and well-admired freelance writer on a variety of levels.
[00:45:08.010]This has been "Campus Voices" on 90.3 KRNU.
[00:45:11.910]I'm Rick Alloway, and as always, I thank you for your time.

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