Traci Brown: Welcome to Fraud Busting, another episode. I am super excited because we have Carol Cambridge with us. Carol is a good friend of mine. We met out speaking, around the country and at the National Speakers’ Association. She is the person who I was in her keynote, and I had to go catch a plane, I could only see half of it. She is the only person that I’ve ever seen speak that I was super bummed I had to leave, like I almost went to go change my flight. She was so riveting.
Now, let me tell you about her. She is an expert in workplace violence. She has a law enforcement background, and she was a 911 operator for a while. She has this specialty that’s going on now which is active shooter training. It was so compelling that I just said, “Oh my gosh, we have to be pals, and I have to have you on Fraud Busting!” Carol, thank you so much for taking a little time for us today.
Carol Cambridge: Oh, it’s my pleasure. I always enjoy being in your company, Traci. It’s my pleasure to be here.
Traci Brown: Oh yea. You have the honor of being the only person, only other expert that I’ve actually pulled up on stage, cut my content, and pulled you up because I knew you were in the room and gave you a half hour of Q&A with us together. Man, that had the audience just – you’re so genius that we’re going to talk about all of that. Let’s to know you a little bit first, shall we?
Carol Cambridge: Well, thank you.
Traci Brown: Yes, yes. We’re in lockdown right now. I think people want to know, I think they’ll be curious, how’s your toilet paper stash? You doing alright?
Carol Cambridge: You know, doing fantastic because I don’t have that scarcity mentality. This fits perfect with talking about fear and fear in terms of active shooter, fear in terms of fraud, fear period. It is real funny because we were running low, and we were down to, I think, two rolls, and we had four people in the house. I looked, legitimately couldn’t find it, but I really wasn’t too concerned. I said, “You know, I just know the universe always provides. Somehow, somewhere, this will be fine.” My cleaning lady showed up. Now this was prior to lockdown.
Traci Brown: Right.
Carol Cambridge: But my cleaning lady showed up, and she got out of the car with a big package of toilet paper. She says, “You need any?”
Traci Brown: Oh, perfect!
Carol Cambridge: I said, “Yes, I do. I love you. Thank you so much.” We averted that. Then a week later, I was able to get a very large package at Costco. We went on the NextDoor app. I just said, “Hey, do we have any seniors, anybody person with a disability that can’t get out, or anybody in dire need? I’ll share this toilet paper.” We actually didn’t get to meet, but through texting and so on, got to meet people virtually that were really in trouble, a woman with MS who believed that she had COVID. We ended up taking a lot of goodies over and putting them on her front porch. Her son was with her. He was actually sick as well, and they thought he might have COVID. We got to be in service to people, have some fun, but didn’t buy into the panic. That’s the big issue around what we’re dealing with. How can we teach people to not buy into that panic and fear? Because that is really, really dangerous. It’s an enemy in any crisis, any emergency or life-threatening situation, panic and fear is the worst enemy.
Traci Brown: They say the fear is going to be worse ultimately than the virus and maybe kill more people indirectly. You’re an expert on fear. You have a lot of expertise in the workplace. Let’s see, how is it that people can keep out of fear? What’s your little nugget so that people can really, like as we move forward, because not only do we have a virus, but we’re heading towards getting back to things where . . . Are we going to be wearing gloves? Or can we trust the person next to us who is sick in the airplane? How is our brain wired and how can we start to really guide and direct that so that it’s useful?
Carol Cambridge: That’s such a loaded question and a great question, Traci. You know, due to this current situation, fear unfortunately is becoming normal. That, as you said, that is really a dangerous place for all of us, dangerous for us as individuals, as workplaces, or as a family. I think this gives everybody an opportunity. If you’re at home with your kids, teach them how to show up in a crisis, teach them about fear. Number one, you can acknowledge that you do have some fear, but you don’t want to get caught up in it. The capacity for being afraid is actually normal. Let me share two different views of fear, because there is fear that is life threatening, and that’s kind of what we’re talking about. If people are terrified that they’re going to get COVID-19, their fear is a reality. But it eats at them. It eats at their entire system. Unfortunately, what happen is it increases the cortisol levels, and when we increase the cortisol levels then we are more prone to illness and so we’re more likely to get it. On a spiritual level, we attract the things that we fear the most.
Traci Brown: Absolutely.
Carol Cambridge: We need to stay very grounded. Right now, we’re in this, what I call, perfect storm for fear. That is, no job, no money, and loss of control. People who feel that they’re in a loss of control, some operate better, some operate worse. That is most people’s worst nightmare is that we cannot control anything. It’s easy to say, just let go. Let go of the situation.
Traci Brown: Yea, isn’t that cute? That’s real nice.
Carol Cambridge: Yea. And everything will work out. Most people can’t do that. There’s this life-threatening situation and then there’s this fear. You’re a skier. I know you’re a skier. The fear of doing something that challenges us or going beyond our comfort zone, and I’m not talking about that kind of fear in this instance. We’re talking about a life-threatening crisis, type of fear. That kind of fear is hardwired into our brain, and it’s for a good reason. It gives us the warning signs that there is going to be a dangerous or a life-threatening situation. That’s part of normal brain function. If we don’t have that, then it can be a sign of actual brain damage or a sign of some form of mental or emotional illness.
What’s happening right now, this perfect storm that I talked about, we can control it. We can’t anticipate those twists that are coming and what’s going to happen, but we can control how we respond to it. I think that’s getting to the question that you asked me. What little tips do we have? When one is them is to take small controlled steps every day. Some people, when they are in this fear, they can’t move. They’re just frozen. They can’t move forward in any positive way and sometimes that can be really overwhelming to take some of the big steps that we have to. I share with people, make two lists. Make a professional list and a personal list. What steps can you take to move forward?
Let’s say you’re furloughed. What can you take right now? Is there an online course that you could do? Is there a podcast that you can create?
Traci Brown: There is!
Carol Cambridge: What positive steps could you take? Maybe you don’t actually love the job that you have that you’re furloughed from. What qualifications would you need? What sorts of things would help you to get to that next level? Concentrate on the little steps. If it’s personally, what are those personal small steps?
Now, when it happened to me, and I landed in fear a few years ago after a divorce and my ex unfortunately left me and, yea, I was kind of stupid, but he left me in a position where he maxed out every credit card that I had, emptied the bank account, froze my business, so I couldn’t even earn money through my business.
Traci Brown: That is super common. That is really common.
Carol Cambridge: Unfortunately, yes, and I should know better, and I didn’t. I landed in that spot, and I was terrified. I remember calling a friend and just kind of letting loose about all of my fears. She said, “Carol, what’s your worst fear?” I said, “Well, I guess that I’m going to be sitting on a street corner with a sign and my little dog begging for money and Milk Bones.”
Traci Brown: Right. Yea, yea.
Carol Cambridge: She’s like, “Carol, that will never happen. You have way too many friends. You have too many people that are going to help you, that you are going to take you in.” She just coached me, and she said, “Make a list of small steps and then make a list of the big things. Some days you’re going to be able to handle one thing off the big list, but even if you can’t, take small, controlled actions.” That’s one major tip I can suggest for people is to take that one small, controlled step every day.
Traci Brown: Right.
Carol Cambridge: And then . . .
Traci Brown: oh, go ahead. Go ahead.
Carol Cambridge: I was just going to say, the second thing is to quit future tripping and that’s what’s happening right now.
Traci Brown: Okay.
Carol Cambridge: People are future tripping. They’re thinking about: What happens if I don’t go back to work in six weeks? What happens in two months? Now, obviously the people who have some money in their bank account, or they have one person who maybe is working from home, is going to be in a better financial position. There are people out there right now that we know are completely stressed because there is no income, and they live from paycheck to paycheck.
Traci Brown: Yea, yea.
Carol Cambridge: They are the folks that I am most concerned about because from a psychological standpoint and just the standpoint of fearful people, desperate people will do desperate things. They’re the ones that are going to commit more fraud. As this starts going back to some semblance of normality, I know that will probably be a new normal, but as we go back there, from the perspective of employers, they have got to start paying attention to what’s going to happen because they are going to be more vulnerable to fraud. People will take steps that they’ve never done before because people are going to protect their family and feed their kids.
Traci Brown: Oh yea. Yea. And they think that maybe they deserve it, right, or there’s always a rationale. In all your, I guess, travels through law enforcement and everything you’ve heard, what would you say? What are people going to look for? What do employers need to look for? Is there a stereotype? While we don’t want to stereotype people, we need to look for certain behaviors that say, wait a minute, I don’t know if this situation is right. How do people know when they need to dig deeper?
Carol Cambridge: Right. There are definitely signs. There are behaviors that might be predictive of violence. We look for high-stress levels. This is where it’s going to get touchy because a lot of people coming back into the workplace are going to have many of these signs, that we have to be particular. I think the point here is that we have to connect with people on a human level like we have never done before.
Traci Brown: Oh.
Carol Cambridge: We have to give them permission to share their fears. Things we’re starting to look for though are things that are different than before, behaviors that have changed. Perhaps you have somebody who was always well put together, they always had their makeup on, they were always dressed appropriately for work, but now they’re coming in and they have poor personal hygiene. They’re not together. They seem to be losing it, just simple requests, they seem to be strung out, on the edge. They’re snappy with their responses. We need to pay attention in particular for people who may be dealing with painful personal issues. Right now, for instance, this is a terrible time for anybody whose dealing with domestic violence.
Traci Brown: It’s horrible.
Carol Cambridge: They’re trapped in their house with the offender. When they get back into the workplace, for instance, they’re going to be relieved and yet fearful. They’re glad to be back into that workspace away from that person, but that person is usually extremely controlling. We’re looking for those painful personal issues, somebody going through a divorce or maybe they had a bad relationship prior to this lockdown. This lockdown is going to push every issue to the end.
Traci Brown: Oh yea.
Carol Cambridge: So when they come back in, we need to be able to check with these people. What’s going on? Are things okay at home? How can we help as a company? They may be facing bankruptcy, foreclosure. They may be dealing with someone in their family who has a gambling debt, and it’s gotten worse because of the current situation.
Traci Brown: Oh yea. All that is, not necessarily, but can be a pre-indicator of fraud.
Carol Cambridge: Absolutely.
Traci Brown: Are they who you want in charge of your accounts payable?
Carol Cambridge: Yea. We’re looking for faulty decision making, inconsistent work patterns, work patterns that are different. We’re going to have to have everybody have a little bit of a break when they come back because there is going to be a little bit of an adjustment period as we go back. Where I’m concerned in terms of fraud or workplace violence is what happens with some of those furloughed people that may not be coming back. The company is calling back some of their people, maybe not a full force, and they may use this time to be selective about who they are bringing back into the workplace. If you take somebody who’s angry, somebody who’s vindictive, someone who thinks they’ve passed over for a promotion, but they still perhaps have access to privileged information in the company and they get any indication that they are not coming back to work, that’s when they can commit fraud.
Traci Brown: Well, you’ve got fraud and then . . .
Carol Cambridge: Workplace fraud.
Traci Brown: It’s a problem for sure, and then you’ve got this whole active shooter thing. We’ve put the active shooters out of business for a time here because there are no crowds supposedly. What do you think’s going to happen with that when we come back?
Carol Cambridge: I think we’ll stall for a while. I think we’re going to see results like we saw after 9/11 where people are going to come back into the workplace. They’re going to be very polite, very cautious, feeling like we are all in this together, and then as weeks progress that’s going to start to break down. We’re going to see differences when people run out of money. Those furloughed employees who’ve applied for unemployment, when that runs out, when that panic sets in, or people who don’t have the ability to seek mental health professionals. If they had employee assistance through work, but that now has stopped because they’re not coming back to work. They don’t have any avenue. They don’t have the money to pay for that help, that is when this is going to start occurring again. Whether that is six weeks, two months, I’m not sure how we would forecast that, but I do see an increase in fraud, in workplace violence, in domestic assault, and active shooters, I think will go back to where it was once we start with those crowds.
Now, the crowd issue may be delayed. We may start going back to work here in a couple of months. That may be little by little. That will be increasing. But I think it’s going to be longer for the concerts. I think it’s going to be longer for the large crowds to be getting together. We may not see that for several months. That’s probably going to delay that. Will we see a shooter? Will we see somebody who is desperate and starts shooting in smaller crowds? Probably.
Traci Brown: Is the profile, given what we have now, is the profile of someone who’s going to commit fraud the same profile as someone who’s going to start shooting, or are they just a little different? What’s your thought on that?
Carol Cambridge: They’re a little bit different. If I knew the 100% answer to that question, I’d be a multimillionaire sitting in the Caribbean with the love of my life and our dogs. You can have psychologists, psychiatrists, forensic psychiatrists, and everybody will say the same. There is no magic number or specific order to the signs that indicate any kind of violence. It’s really a complex set of behaviors. I think the people who can go out there and commit an active shooter type of incident are on the far end of the scale. Who commits fraud are on this lower end of the scale because they don’t see it most times, you correct me if I’m wrong, Traci, because you’re the expert on fraud. I’m not.
Traci Brown: Right.
Carol Cambridge: But I think they see it as they’re deserving of the money. They’re deserving of the situation. But they’re not really in it to cause violent behavior to someone else. They don’t see it as necessarily harmful.
Traci Brown: It’s victimless.
Carol Cambridge: Yes.
Traci Brown: That’s how it appears, is victimless.
Carol Cambridge: Right. They don’t see that point. An active shooter is after the victims. They want to retaliate. They want everybody to see and understand their pain. Most of them go into this knowing full well they’re never coming out alive. They want to go out in that blaze of glory.
Traci Brown: Right. They set a booby trap in their hotels rooms and their houses. That’s kind of a newer development.
Carol Cambridge: Yea. There is a huge scale and it starts out on the lower end. A bully in the workplace who may commit fraud or who commit workplace violence against someone else, it’s the same as a bully in school. The bullies online, when you see bullying on Facebook on next door or on any of these other apps, Twitter, anything else, they’re not going to do it when you’re face to face.
Traci Brown: Right. Yea. They’re too scared.
Carol Cambridge: They’re too scared. They’re too afraid. But they’ll do it in the safety of their anonymity or semi-anonymity, if we can say it that way.
Traci Brown: Right.
Carol Cambridge: That’s a lot different. There is a scale, and those active shooters top that scale. When I say they top it, they blame others. They don’t take any accountability or responsibility for any of their own actions. They think they’ve been wronged, or they’ve been treated unfairly. They have suicidal tendencies perhaps. They’ve been unhappy for a long time. There’s significant emotional despair. The other thing that I haven’t touched in that we are going to see in the workplace is suicide.
Traci Brown: Oh, really.
Carol Cambridge: Yes. We’ve already seen several suicides. This is not making the media right now, but I’ve seen probably three different cases in three different locations around the country right now where someone has killed their significant other and then turned the gun on themselves because of this perfect storm. No money, they’ve both been furloughed, they’re living from paycheck to paycheck, they don’t know -they can’t see a way out financially. They just don’t know what’s going to happen, so they kill themselves, first the other person obviously, and then they kill themselves. That’s a trend that we’re going to see the longer that this goes on.
Traci Brown: Wow. We know we have a scale where people are, and we know that employers really listening and even giving access and maybe even encouragement to mental healthcare is going to key. Going back to prevent fraud, is there anything we can do about the violence that may pop up internally with businesses?
Carol Cambridge: You know, I think it goes back again to that human kindness piece. We haven’t trained our supervisors and our managers, and a lot of people in those positions deserve those positions, but we all know there are companies and businesses who have promoted people to supervisors and managers who really shouldn’t be in that. They don’t have the emotional intelligence to manage and supervise other people. This is where it is going to be tricky. If companies want to be prepared, now is the time that they can be training their managers and supervisors on how to have these conversations, how to treat people with human kindness. You’re going to see a lot of agitation. You’re going to see fear when people come back to work. You’re going to see people feeling uncomfortable in the workplace. Nobody wants to talk about how their kids and their family have been living on Ramen Noodles for weeks. They are embarrassed by that. They don’t want people to know that they’ve been living paycheck to paycheck, so personal details may start coming out. Some people will play the victim role. Some people, that anger will begin to escalate, and when that anger escalates that’s where we have the potential for problems with violence. It could be simple things, that people work together.
In other words, I did a webinar a couple of weeks ago on fear. One of the questions that I got I thought was so profound. I need to sit down actually today and write an article on this. But they said, what can we do, those of us who are working right now, what can we do to keep our people motivated every day? How do we put a smile on their face? One of the first things you can do is how you figure out as a company what things can you do to be in service to others because as soon as we start being in service to others, we focus outward instead of inward.
Traci Brown: Yea, yea.
Carol Cambridge: That’s one of the best things that we can do. Whether you have people working now, and obviously this is not going to apply to healthcare workers and first responders who are so busy they can’t keep up.
Traci Brown: My banking clients, their hair’s on fire.
Carol Cambridge: Yea. We’re not talking about this for everybody, but for those who can, what can you do as a group? We have a lot of homeless people who are being neglected right now. They aren’t getting the food. They aren’t getting the help. In parts of the Midwest, we’re getting freezing, they had snow in the last couple of days. People aren’t prepared for that. Do you have an extra blanket you could share? Could you bring that in to work? What have you got in terms of extra food, extra anything? If you’re healthy and you feel comfortable with it, you can donate your time at a food bank once a month. My husband and I do blood plasma donations.
Traci Brown: Yea. I was very impressed, I’ve got to say, because I don’t give blood because I don’t do good afterwards for a couple days. When you said that, I was like, oh, aren’t you nice. You are nicer than me.
Carol Cambridge: My husband is way nicer than me because he’s been donating plasma, he started donating platelets years ago and helped a friend survive lymphoma as a result of that donation. The last two or three years he’s been donating blood platelets. Because of my travel schedule, I have never been able to. When I saw this opportunity, I thought, yea, okay, I can do this. Let me see how it goes. I will do that for as long as I can. But I think what happens if any one of us looks outside of ourselves, there is some way that we can be of service. I’ve suggested to people to get on the NextDoor app. A lot of us don’t know our neighbors very well, but it’s a great place to just pose the question: Is there anybody that I can go get some food for? Is there anybody who needs my help with shopping? Anybody who needs their grass cut? It could be multiples of things, but we have a lot of people who are holed up at home that just aren’t physically able or capable of properly taking care of themselves, even if it’s doing some grocery shopping for them. But companies can do that on a larger scale because it doesn’t require people to bring in a whole lot every day. It could be let’s do a one week thing at work where every day, maybe Monday, you bring in extra toiletries that you don’t need, Tuesday you bring in extra blankets, Wednesday extra socks, t-shirts, anything like this. Really, if you work as a group at work, you can come up with some great ideas to keep people motivated that isn’t going to be costly but gets us out of that self-absorption.
Traci Brown: Exactly. You know one of my clients, I’ve seen, it’s done so well. Alliance Data, they service all of your credit cards. Let’s say you have an IKEA credit card or Victoria’s Secret. You don’t call Victoria’s Secret to take care of your charges. You call Alliance Data. These people are on the phone all the time, and they’re dealing with angry people and trying to resolve problems. They do so much good work in the community. They have such a loyal following just with their employees because of it. It’s part of the culture. That’s going to decrease your violence. It’s going to decrease your fraud. Understanding there is a bigger global ecosystem that you’ve got to create. Not to say that if you have fraud it’s your fault, but you need to stop and say, okay, wait, how did this happen? How did we help create this? Whether it’s policies or whether it’s are you really creating loyalty from your folks? I think that’s a huge key.
Carol Cambridge: Oh, it’s huge. I call it creating a compassionate culture. If you don’t already have that compassionate culture, what can you put in place? Just checking in on your employees, I’ve heard some horror stories. People are now working from home. Some companies are checking up on their employees. No, no, no. The calls should be to check in on your employees.
Traci Brown: Oh, okay.
Carol Cambridge: Not check up on them, but check in. Speak from the heart, not your brain. Find out how they’re doing. Find out how their kids are. Is everybody getting on each other’s nerves? You’re right on with that, Traci, creating a culture of compassion. If you have a compassionate culture, you don’t have a fear-based culture because you can’t have both.
Traci Brown: Oh, exactly. Oh yea. I’ve worked in plenty of those fear-based cultures, and we see it now. I used to work in food production management, former lifetime, and now who’s struggling but these food plants that are shutting down, like the pork plants and things like that. That’s because food manufacturing is a fear-based industry. It just is. It’s confrontational with unions versus the company. I’ll tell you exactly why, the sick people showed up to work and infected everyone else because they were too scared not to. For sure, I know that. While I don’t know the details of the specific situation, I’m pretty sure that’s what went on.
Carol Cambridge: I’m confident that you’re correct.
Traci Brown: Okay. Let’s just touch on, because I’ve seen you do it onstage, and it’s so amazing, because we’re going to need this information moving forward. What do we need to do in an active shooter situation? What is the one thing people need to know to keep themselves safe?
Carol Cambridge: Such a loaded question.
Traci Brown: I know. I know you could do three hours on it.
Carol Cambridge: Very quickly, I think we need to train ourselves ahead of time as to what to do. The first few seconds are really what’s important. If you think you’re hearing gunshots, you need to take some action. You need to start moving. But in the first few seconds you need to stop and push that cognitive part of your brain. Where are they coming from? Where can I go? What can I do? Much of this needs to be preplanned. If you’re in your office, you need to know what your first exit is and your secondary exit is because what will happen in those moments is that fear takes over and we tend to freeze, not because we’re fearful but because we haven’t planned. We haven’t trained our brain what to do. Take a second or two to process. Keep low. If you have an exit that you can take that’s a place of safety or to get you to a place of safety, start, crouch down, in a zig-zag pattern, and the toughest part of it is you’re going to see and run into other people who are also frozen, who cannot move, and you’re going to have to make a very quick decision. You can say, come with me, attempt to pull them or take them with you. If they don’t come, if they’re frozen, you have to leave them behind and head for safety. A lot of people aren’t prepared for that and will stay there. Some of us will panic. Some will want to fight. Others will completely freeze. The more we think through things, the more we can be prepared in terms of teaching our brain what to do. A lot of us have false information. Our kids know more about this than we do as adults because our kids . . .
Traci Brown: This happens in school.
Carol Cambridge: Exactly. But as adults, we really don’t know what to do. If you have a place that you can hide, then hide, but ultimately, your goal is to get out if you can in a safe way.
Traci Brown: I don’t do a lot with guns. I didn’t grow up with firearms and the whole thing. One of the things I learned from your talk is that you don’t often know where the gunshots are coming from. When you said that, I was like, really? And then I heard some shots. I was somewhere out, and I was like, oh, I don’t know where that’s coming from. Tell us about that versus like where to run.
Carol Cambridge: Right. We don’t know and the sound of gunshots is going to be dependent on a variety of things: The type of weapon that’s being used. Are we talking an automatic, a semiautomatic weapon, a pistol? They’re all going to sound slightly differently, and they’re going to sound different inside. If you’re used to going to a gun range, for instance, you may be familiar with the sounds of gunshots, but it’s going to be very, very different. If you’re in a warehouse, for instance, that has a lot of aluminum, it’s going to sound very different than a gunshot in a building that has a lot of concrete walls. It’s going to sound different if there is a lot of glass that’s smashing and so on. The sound kind of reverberates, depending where you are, and it’s very difficult. We as human beings have a very curious nature, and unfortunately, what we are learning is that many people who have not heard a gunshot before, in their curiosity, they think it sounds kind of like a car backfiring. Is that what it is? No. We’re inside. That couldn’t be a car.
Traci Brown: Yea. I have to think about it. I’m like, was that really a . . . ? What else could that have been?
Carol Cambridge: Yea. A lot of people will mistake fireworks for that, especially if they hear something outside. Because we’re curious in nature, we run towards the gunshots, and that’s one of the things that we have to train ourselves not to do. Until it’s verified what it is, you want to be going away from that noise, now going towards it in any way.
Traci Brown: Yea. If it’s bouncing off the walls, the sounds, then what’s the best plan? Just go somewhere other than where you are, or stay?
Carol Cambridge: Again, it depends on the particular situation. This is the problem. We could have 25 different situations, and I could teach you for 23 of them, and the one that you would end up in would be the two that I didn’t share with you.
Traci Brown: Yea.
Carol Cambridge: That’s why this becomes so difficult. If you have the availability of getting out, you hear gunshots which you think are coming, say from the far left portion of the building, you need to know what exits you can go out on the right hand side of your building. Then the problem is that as human beings we tend to do the same things the same way. We’re creatures of habit. If we’ve always entered the building from the left, and we always exit the building from the left, we don’t pay too much attention to where those other exits are. That’s the preplanning that I was talking about.
Traci Brown: Got it.
Carol Cambridge: Know where those exits are because you might need to know where they are. Let’s say after all of this, we’re out and we’re in a shopping mall. Most people have no idea what to do if you’re in a shopping mall. They hear the sound of gunshots. Your best place, as much as I want to say, yes, you need to head outside, but it might be to get inside a store and try to head to the back. Most of those stores in a mall will have a back exit, whether it leads directly outside or whether it leads to a hallway that then takes you to a major exit, because that’s how they get all their deliveries.
Traci Brown: Right, right. Through the back. Yea. Oooh, that’s a good tip. I never thought about that. Oooh, I just learned something huge. I feel . . .
Carol Cambridge: You feel a little tiny smidge safer?
Traci Brown: I do. I feel a little safer.
Carol Cambridge: The other thing is we have a tendency to follow the crowd, so if you have a whole crowd, and this is what happened in Las Vegas, people are all sort of pushing in this big crowd to get away, there is nowhere really for people to go. In that particular instance, there was nowhere for people to hide. Let’s say you’re in a mall. I want to keep my shoulder as close to the wall as I can because then if there’s a crowd, I know where the next exit is. I know where the next entrance to the next store is. When the stores start shutting the doors, or I get pushed down or shoved aside, I’m far safer to be with my shoulder against the wall and have some familiarity than all the screaming, shoving, and pushing that’s going to occur because if you’re on the outside, you may even be pushed over the railing if you’re on the second floor or the third floor.
Traci Brown: Oh my gosh, that is . . . See, this is the part of your keynote that I missed. It was this part. Carol, you have been fantastic today and such a wealth of knowledge. I’m so happy that you took the time to join us.
Carol Cambridge: Well, thank you Traci. I admire your work so much. What you do around fraud and identifying liars is something that every company, every human resource person needs to have at their company because it’s fascinating. I also can listen to you for hours, one of the Traci Fan Club members. It’s fascinating and it really saves a lot of money. We can save lives and we can save money.
Traci Brown: We just pay attention differently. If we pay attention to what you talked about. I talk about lie detection all the time. You’ve got to cover yourself. Pay attention is free. That’s the thing. It’s not about some fancy computer program. Just pay attention. Be human and start to notice what’s going on.
Carol Cambridge: That’s the number one key for active shooter, by the way, is being aware of your surroundings. Pay attention. Be aware. Most of us are so busy with our lives. We’re focused on multiple different things. We’re just simply not aware, so when we go back into the workplace, whether it’s fraud you’re concerned about, workplace violence, any of these things, paying attention and being aware of changes, differences, differences in behavior, that’s the telltale signs that supervisors and managers need to pay attention to.
Traci Brown: Got it. How can people find you? I’ve got to tell you, you’re at the top of my list of speakers to recommend because you’re just riveting onstage and this is stuff everybody needs to know. I’ve never seen an audience so sucked in. How can people find you? Tell me all that information.
Carol Cambridge: You’re very sweet. Thank you. Our experiential program on active shooter is right now one of the most requested programs because it gets everybody involved. Anybody listening that wants to reach out can find us on the web at TheStaySafeProject.com. They can search for us on LinkedIn: Carol Cambridge and the Stay Safe Project. Or you can give us a call at (623) 242-8797. We also pick up the phone the old-fashioned way.
Traci Brown: How about it.
Carol Cambridge: A lot of ways to find us.
Traci Brown: Oh good. I really hope people do reach out because I’ve got to say, if they’re not, they’ve got their head in the sand and it’s just riveting, riveting program. Make sure you reach out to Carol. Make sure you do it.
Carol Cambridge: Thank you so much, Traci. I’m very honored to be with you today.