Protect Your Brand from a PR Crisis with Dr. Jay Feldman: An EOFire Classic from 2021

0:01Light that spark fire nation JLD here and welcome to entrepreneurs on fire the only daily show interviewing the world's top entrepreneurs seven days a week. Today, we're pulling a classic episode from the archives, and we'll be breaking down protect your brand from a PR crisis. To drop these value bombs, I brought Dr. Jay Feldman into EO Fire Studios. Jay is an osteopathic medical doctor and founder of Otter Public Relations, a PR company with more than 30 employees internationally. And today, Foundation, we'll talk about how if you want to build something huge. It requires complete dedication.

0:35And number two, avoid posting your political points and thoughts because it may lead to a crisis. And number three, consult, get help, and be prepared. And oh, so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Jay and our sponsors. If you've ever considered launching a show on YouTube, I may have the solution for you after launching a very successful show on YouTube in 2024, MicroStrategy Today. I've learned a lot on what it takes to create a successful show and have launched a one-on-one mentorship program called YouTube 100. If you wanna jump on a call and learn more about this program, shoot me an email, john at eofire.com.

1:12This is the year of YouTube. Let's go. Jay, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. Oh, what is up, Fire Nation? Super crazy to be here. and regarding success, you know, I was at a conference with you a couple of weeks ago here, and this was really cemented in my brain. And all of my friends disagree with this, but my thought is there's a couple of different levels of success, right? So to create a dynasty like you've created here with EO Fire, you really can't, I mean, balance is not a real thing. You need to be fully dedicated to your cause while you're building.

1:54While you're in that build phase, all of the things that recreationally come on the side need to be sidelined while you're in build phase. So a lot of people believe in work-life balance. You can do both. You can raise a family. You can enjoy your hobbies. But if you want to build something huge, like what I'm trying to build, like what you've built, it really requires full dedication. I know that's controversial. A lot of people will disagree. But those are my thoughts. I found that to be the case. I needed full, absolute focus on Entrepreneurs on Fire during the early years to get it to where it got to what I like to call escape velocity.

2:30But here's the great thing, Fire Nation, and I'm not saying it happens to everybody, but it does happen. Once you reach escape velocity, what happens? Well, you lose gravity and now you're just kind of floating in space and you're like, oh, this is kind of easy now. And I'm not saying it's easy and I still work hard at times, but there's definitely a different level at year 10 that I'm at now than years 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. So let me tell you, the work that I look back on was tough, but man, was it worth it to get to where I'm at now. And we're talking to Jay about protecting your brand from a PR crisis.

3:09I've already teased the bullet points we're going to be chatting about here today, but before we get into those, I want to hear your story. How did you go from Dr. Jay Feldman to a PR, public relations agency owner? Thank you for the question. And it's a little bit personal. And I haven't actually done this on a podcast yet. It is probably the worst thing that's ever happened in my life. So I'm excited to be talking about it with you today. And hopefully me sharing this story is able to help somebody who has been through something similar, maybe is going through something similar now. But, you know, my whole life leading up to being a doctor was essentially dedicated to being a doctor.

3:50You know, it was my entire identity. It was my social media. It was all of my friends and family. I was Dr. J. And also had an entrepreneurial side to me as well, right? Like my year in between, I started a company. In medical school, I had started another one. None of those were big companies by any means. But I had the bone. But anyways, through medical school, through residency, I had a pretty substantial social media following around the medical field, health care. And I was relatively outspoken, probably careless at times, but talking about issues that you shouldn't have been talking about until you're probably done and safe, such as abortion, such as my thoughts on circumcision, just random things that we talk about in the medical community.

4:40and I had finished medical school. I had landed the residency of my dreams. It wasn't everything I cut out to be, but I was on the way. And randomly, one day I was on a date with my girlfriend. My phone started blowing up and it turns out I was going viral. There was a thread on Twitter, a thread on Reddit. Some woman from across the country had been building a case of my social media posts since 2007 when I was like shadowing doctors, including, you know, me as a kid in a Native American headdress and costume. And it, man, the list goes on and on. But essentially everyone from Twitter and Reddit were calling for me to lose my job.

5:21And I was working for Adventist Health at the time. And, you know, it eventually worked. I was suspended from that program. And during that time, I hired a publicist. I hired somebody to come in and help me. I had no idea what I was doing, what steps I should take next. And that publicist cost me an arm and a leg pretty much everything that I had saved up. Ended up doing a horrible job, giving me all bad advice, and crippled me and made the whole thing worse. I think I ended up, and I was forced to leave that position. I just got to ask, because I'm curious, what was the worst piece of advice she gave you?

5:59The worst piece of advice that she gave me was to take interviews with the media. So at this point, it had gained traction enough where the local media was calling me, asking me to come comment on the topic. And I think the worst piece of advice she gave me was to actually go get in front of it and talk to the media. If I wouldn't have done that, I don't think they would have had enough of a story to run. And I don't think it would have blown up into as big of a deal as it was to cause that end result. It's kind of like adding fuel to the fire in a sense. Exactly. And when we have clients now who are in active crisis and they're coming to us like, man, things are starting to boil.

6:37We need help. The first thing that we say, and now we work with publicists who are much more experienced than myself, are go quiet. Go quiet, scrub. Don't talk to anyone. And I found a publicist on Upwork that seemed like she was trustworthy and just ended up being bad advice after bad advice. And I ended up paying for it in the long run. But it was that experience, you know, identity stripped from me. I'm sitting at home, girlfriend broke up with me in severe depression, not knowing what to do next. That kind of sparked my, you know, I'm going to learn the media. I'm going to learn how to get out of this, defend myself, and hopefully defend other people.

7:17And that's when I went into kind of the rabbit hole of the media. And that's how Otter PR was born. And now we're 35 employees, two offices, and according to Inc. 5000 Standards, one of the fastest growing PR firms in the country, which is pretty incredible. That's unbelievable. And Fire Nation, it was born out of a media crisis of Dr. J Feldman's own. I mean, and that is such an insane story. Is there anything you want to share about that story, about that crisis before we move on to some real strategies and tactics? Man, just kind of the mentality of the crisis. And I know, especially after working in this industry for as long as I have now, I realized that I wasn't alone.

8:03This happens to influencers. This happens to thought leaders. This happens to brands every day, sometimes multiple times a day. And the best comfort that I had in that publicist was pretty much pointing that out and letting me know that I wasn't alone. So if this does happen to anybody, stay quiet, find someone trustworthy to help you and know that you're not alone. And most of the time this will blow over. But that's all I've got in the specific, you know, events of the crisis. You know, it's crazy is, you know, my family and friends who are watching this whole thing unfold thought it was ridiculous.

8:37list. Like, how could this be happening over the information that they shared? It was nothing criminal or sexual. It was just kind of things that, you know, I definitely regret doing as a kid, but things that I feel like most of my friends did as a kid, not to underplay the messaging, but it can happen to anyone and it can happen for any reason. So that's really the key there. So true. And that's what I want to kind of make sure we move into next. Cause you experienced are firsthand, you've built a business around it, and you believe that brands right now are at risk of a media crisis. And I can tell you, Fire Nation, if you're a brand, you are.

9:14What exactly do you mean by this? So brands are at massive risk and influencers are at bigger risk. So as a brand, my recommendation for anyone listening, if you have a company, and I know most of the people listening do have a company, is to be apolitical. Do not post your political points, thoughts, as strongly as you believe in them, all of that opens you up to crisis. But more than that, more than sharing political opinions, sharing posts, it can go as simple as your spokesperson having a mugshot or an incriminating picture of them from when they were still a teenager. I've seen some really incredible things come to the surface from a long time ago, end up boiling and causing either the CEO to resign and then pretty much blackballed from business going forward.

10:06But brands really need to tighten up and not just their current communication and past communication, but looking into anyone who's a face of that company. And that is a kind of a scary thing because a lot of CEOs, a lot of high performing individuals do tend to be outspoken. Even the people at the conference that we spoke with, you know a lot of them had been canceled were actively being canceled uh but one of the kind of beautiful things about you know owning your own business and being a ceo is it's hard to take things away from you if you own them like joe rogan's canceled every other day but he owns his audience he owns his platform no one can take that from him uh and that was one of the problems with my situation was I was under the control and management of an institution.

10:55It was much easier for them to cut the cord than it would be to go to bat for me. If someone has control over you and can make that decision and can pretty much trim the fat and call it a day, you're going to tighten up even more because you're at the highest risk. Fire Nation, we're going to talk about some really important stuff. We're going to talk about preparing for a crisis, how to respond specifically, and then the aftermath when we get back from thanking our sponsors. One of the reasons I chose podcasting as a focus for my business is because it gives us complete location independence.

11:26At the start of every year, we get to take out the calendar and plan epic adventures across the U.S. and abroad. We've done a 90-day European adventure with just our backpacks. And last year, we did a 23-day river cruise through Europe that was incredible. So if you're like me and love to travel, don't let your home just sit there while you're away. Host on Airbnb. Even though you might be thinking that hosting will be overwhelming, especially while you're traveling, think again. With the co-host network, it's easier than ever. Now you can hire a high quality local co-host to take care of your home and your guests.

12:04They can do everything from creating your listing to managing reservations to messaging guests and providing onsite support. So if you've got an extended trip coming up and need a little help hosting while you're away, you could hire a co-host to do the work for you. Find a co-host at airbnb.com slash host. Let's talk YouTube. Have you ever considered launching a show on YouTube or do you currently have one that's struggling to gain traction? I may have the solution for you. After focusing on audio for 13 years, I launched my first YouTube show in late 2024 and have seen fantastic results, over 12 ,000 subscribers.

12:42Every show getting well over 10 ,000 views, all 100 % organic, zero dollar spent on promotion or advertising. That is the beauty of YouTube. If you create the right content with the right cadence, YouTube will make sure it gets in front of the right people. My show is called MicroStrategy today and I'm having a blast creating content on a daily basis because it's on a topic I love about a company that I truly admire. What excites you? What fires you up? If you want to launch a show around that passion or improve your current one, I'm launching an exclusive coaching program called YouTube 100, where in 100 days, I will mentor you one-on-one, and together we will create a show that you love and that's successful.

13:22I hired the best mentors when I first started and have learned so much along the way. I'm ready to help you ignite your show and let YouTube do the heavy lifting of building a meaningful audience that will allow you to grow and monetize your show in ways you might not currently think possible. If you want to jump on a call and learn more about this program, shoot me an email, john at eofire.com. Put YouTube 100 in the subject line and we'll schedule a time to chat, j-o-h-n at eofire.com. This is the year of YouTube. Let's go. So Jay, we're back and we've already gone through a few things around these topics, but I really want to start doing a deep dive for Fire Nation to really get what they should be doing at every one of these steps.

14:08What can we be doing right now to prepare for a PR crisis? Sure. You know, crisis planning, I think, gets the wrong connotation. Crisis planning is not just for giant brands who have to figure out what any angle of attack could be. There's a lot of thought leaders. There's a lot of companies out there that have skeletons in their closet, have people with information that they're worried about, maybe fired a disgruntled employee, which is usually the most common situation that we get as a firm. And there's not a crisis yet. But there's a lot that they can do in advance of a crisis to prepare for something that might happen.

14:51For example, someone releases photos or information they have about a company doing shady business practices. Being able to, as a firm, come in before something happens, either talk to that person or take action to prepare for that to unfold, is much more effective than waiting for an active crisis and putting out a fire. It's fireproofing something rather than going in with the fire hoses and trying to put out the fire. So that's the biggest thing. It's hiring someone to come in and do not only conflict resolution but messaging who's going to speak, cleaning up the skeletons in their closet, any dirty laundry that they might have, and past communications and past people that they've worked with.

15:36And then also trying to mitigate any damage with people that are angry. Sometimes the CEO, and most of the time the CEO, is not the best person to be trying to put out their own fires. It's going to be somebody else. So true. And Fire Nation, I mean, this is the thing. You know, I think in the Army it was a lot of P's. I can't remember all of them, but it was prior planning prevents piss-poor performance. And there was actually a bunch more P's in there that I'm missing, but it's preparing. It's getting ready. It's knowing that, hey, this isn't coming out of left field, and then all of a sudden you're blindsided.

16:06You don't even know a person to call. So huge step in this process. Now, let's kind of go forward a little bit. And let's just say that a crisis does happen. How exactly should we respond? God forbid you're in an active crisis, which happens. The first thing that you should do is, again, go quiet and find a professional that you're going to talk to, to consult before you make that first initial message. Usually we get people before that happens. Usually we get people who have already made those comments, already made those communications, and now we're trying to clean up their mess. But go quiet.

16:42Go quiet as soon as you can. Find a professional. Number two is going to be accept all responsibility. Another common mistake that we see people undertake is to defer responsibility. Point fingers at somebody else or lie in the worst case scenario. make up something, blame somebody else or say that you didn't actually do this thing or say that this thing was caused by another purpose. If you get caught in that lie, things get much, much worse. And then the last step, which is also going to be guided by a professional, is going to be resolution. So not only did you learn from this, but now I'm going to take this action to better myself, better my company, and serve the community in which I offended.

17:23So three steps. If executed properly, people will hopefully forgive you, move on, and you'll grow and become a stronger company or a person through it. But those are the steps to follow. It's going to be silence, accept responsibility, and then do something about it. So critical, Fire Nation. And I love how you gave that specific example of how you were actually given the exact opposite advice back in your crisis day. And that just gave them the lead that gave them the spark that gave them the ammunition to go ahead and say, okay, we have something here. I mean, can't you just kind of picture like some station manager being like, we can't run with this.

18:04We got nothing. We've got a crazy woman who's collected tweets over a decade and doing all that. Like, like, but now there's like, oh, well, we've got this guy trying to defend himself. And he kind of made this mess up when he was talking and he said this, it was really controversial and that. And let's run with it. Let's go. Don't give the fuel to the fire. So let's talk aftermath because you've dealt with aftermath and, you know, here you are here to live another day. So it obviously wasn't deadly. What happens after a crisis? Yeah, and that's a great question. I have dealt with it, continue to deal with it, and now help others deal with this as well because obviously I'm not alone.

18:40So in the aftermath of a crisis, you know, the worst part about it isn't what happens online. It's what happens to your personal life and your identity. So a lot of times as a brand, you may be forced out of business. You may have to rebrand. You may have to look back at things, figure out if you need to replace a CEO. So that could be a potential aftermath. But I really want to talk about the aftermath online, which is your true kind of permanent record, which is Google. Because when someone interacts with you for the first time, whether they're going to do business with you, they're going to put your name into the Google machine and see what comes out.

19:17And in the event of a crisis, a true crisis where the media gets involved, the news gets involved, there's going to be not only negative reviews, Reddit threads pop up, Facebook threads pop up, news articles pop up, and just the nature of human brains and negativity. If I were to search John Lee Dumas on Google, obviously you're all positive, everyone loves you. But imagine there was two negative articles in that first page. Which one do you think I'm going to click when I search for you? It's going to be the negative one. Totally. And it's going to be really hard to fix that because that's how our brains work.

19:52So that's where we come in. You know, if somebody's got a negative presence online, whether it be a negative review, a thread, a Facebook conversation that Google is pushing up to the top because that's what people want to read and interact with, we come into play and do some positive manipulation. try and optimize social profiles drive traffic to those drive traffic to the good things that you're doing and optimize more good things that you're doing so hopefully over time those things will outrank the negative and once we get something to second or third page it's usually not a worry anymore because people aren't diligent enough to go to the third page of google but that can really hurt people's personal lives business lives i mean if you were a spokesperson or a thought leader and you're trying to go on dates and that believe it or not that girl's going to google you and if she sees something shady that you did you're not only going to not get that date but you're going to not get that sale you're going to not get that business partnership and everyone that you meet from now on is going to is going to see that it's going to really negatively affect your life and i dealt with this personally i still deal with it to a degree.

21:02And it hurts. It's pain. It's hard to fix. But it's a very real problem that people are dealing with. And people need help with this. And it's not, you know, I don't want to say it's not all justified. Some people are evil. Some people deserve to be canceled and have people see this about them. But not everybody does. And most of the people that we work with, I would say all the people we choose to work with, are ones that we're not deserving of having to deal with this day in in, day out, because it is painful and it is something that takes a while to come back from, both emotionally, both including business, including personal relationships.

21:41It's a lot. And I've seen people deal with this, people that totally did not deserve it, some people that did on different levels. But no matter where you are in that spectrum, you need to have a plan. You need to know how to prepare. You need to know how to respond. And you need to know what the aftermath's going to look like. So Jay, let me give you the microphone now. I want you to take this home for us. Give us the one big takeaway that you really want to make sure Fire Nation gets from everything that we talked about here today. Then share how we can connect with you, your company, your brands, and any call to action you may have for us.

22:18And then we'll say goodbye. Thank you, John. And to start, I don't want to keep talking about crisis. I actually want to pivot a little bit and talk to the entrepreneurs out there. Because this, you know, from the outside looking in is the worst thing that could possibly happen. And at the time, to me, it was as well. When this first happened to me, I lost everything, my identity, my job. I was no longer calling myself a doctor just out of pride. Family had kind of given up. And, you know, my girlfriend broke up with me. I had no money, just everything. All piled on all at once. Had no idea what to do.

22:54But in those moments, really something beautiful was born. I think this is a Tony Robbins quote. Life doesn't happen to you. It happens for you. Looking back at it now, because of what I built, that never would have happened. I never would have had the motivation to work 14-hour days, seven days a week for two straight years to build this massive company. It was because of kind of that horrible thing that had happened, my desire to help people through this and my desire to kind of reclaim my identity as somebody who is successful and can give back and can serve and is not a horrible person. And I feel like a lot of successful entrepreneurs have something similar.

23:34Maybe it's not what happened to me, but the longer that I've done this, I've heard other stories. And a lot of people who have built massive companies with massive ideas have had some sort of hardship. So sometimes when you're pinned against a corner, that's when the best ideas hit. That's where the best motivation stems from. And that's what it was for me. It was a massive silver lining. But then I'll pivot here to takeaways for crisis and people dealing with this. My biggest takeaway is, me especially, I didn't think this could happen to me. I didn't even know this was a thing. I wish I was aware of this and I wish I had prepared for it.

24:14But you can't go back. So if you're listening to this and you know, you're a personal brand, you're a thought leader, you're an outspoken entrepreneur, or you own a company and you're not the face, take this seriously. We live in a really dangerous world right now where the Twitterverse and the Redditverse and the media is the bigger you get, the more they're out to get you. The more you have to take, the more they will try to take and bring you down. So don't make the assumption that this isn't going to happen to you. Make the reverse assumption and take the steps that you need to mitigate any problems that could happen.

24:50You know, scrub anything that you think could cause problems. Apologize to people who are out to get you because all it takes is one person, one skeleton for everything that you've built, everything that you've worked for to come crumbling down and everything alongside to come kind of crumbling with it. So, you know, whether it's us, whether you want to speak to me about this, you know, I'm happy to talk absolutely free to anyone. It's not about the money for me. It's honestly about helping people go consult, get some help, uh, and prepare because this, you could be next. And it's as morbid and scary as that is.

25:23It's a, it's a fact that we live in nowadays. We have to be very careful with how the media and people operate. And I'll leave you with that. Sorry to end on a negative note, John. I hope people found some value here. And to connect with me, best place to do it is on Instagram. I respond to all my DMs. Let me know that you found me here. It's at Dr. Jay Feldman, D-R-J-A-Y-F-E-L-D-M-A-N. And if you're curious about our PR firm, it's Otter PR, like otter, like the cute little animal, PR.com. And John, thank you. Thank you, Jay, because Fire Nation, this is something that you need to have as part of your planning.

25:59You know, we talk about how are you building a 360 degree fortress that's protecting you from things that can and will happen. And this is one of those things you want to make sure you have an understanding of, you have a person to know to call. So you obviously have otterpr.com at Dr. J Feldman on Instagram, because you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. You've been hanging out with JF and JLD today. So keep up the heat. And head over to eofire.com, type J-A-Y-J in the search bar. His show notes page will pop up with everything that we've been talking about here today.