Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own. In my years working in public relations , the most painful conversations I have aren’t with companies in the middle of a crisis. They’re with companies calling two weeks after one — when the damage is already baked into Google search results, employee morale has cratered and customers have already made up their minds. The pattern is almost always the same. A small problem festered for weeks or months without anyone paying attention. By the time leadership noticed, the window to contain it had closed. Here are five reputation crises I’ve seen play out repeatedly — and how a PR agency on retainer would have changed the outcome every single time. These crises don’t start with a headline — they start with a blind spot Most business owners think of crisis PR as something you activate after a story breaks. But the crises that cause the most lasting damage are the slow-building ones.…