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The Bigger Stage w/ Matt Stone is a conversation series about leadership, relationships, and the stories that expand influence.
Matt Stone sits down with CEOs, founders, leaders, and creatives to explore the human moments behind growth—how trust is built, how visibility changes responsibility, and how storytelling becomes a leadership skill as stakes rise.
This show is for entrepreneurs and leaders stepping into bigger roles, bigger audiences, and bigger impact—who want to lead with clarity, credibility, and connection, not performance.
The Bigger Stage - T.J. Winick
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[00:00:00] For decades, the visibility game was about ranking on Google. earned media helped, but it was often treated, as a credibility bonus layered on top, and now that calculus has flipped.
[00:00:12] More people are asking ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, the questions they used to type into the search bar are now going into those types of platforms. those tools aren't crawling your website in real time or reading your latest press release,
[00:00:27] They're synthesizing answers from, a vast body of published, credible third-party content. it's now the raw material that AI uses to describe you to the world.
[00:00:39] I have a client who's been spending $20,000 a month on Google Ads, now putting more budget into public relations He's seeing his ROI plummet because more people are looking for his expertise on AI search, platforms,
[00:00:56]
[00:01:00] My guest today spent two decades as a broadcast news reporter, including six years as a correspondent for ABC News, Nightline, World News, Good Morning America, learning how a story gets built and who it can bury. Now he's on the other side of it. As founder and president of Essex Strategies, TJ Winick helps CEOs and organizations of all sizes protect the asset that takes years to build and only minutes to lose.
[00:01:26] He's the award-winning author of Reputation Capital and describes himself aptly as both the hunter and the hunted. Today, TJ and I are talking storytelling under the highest stakes, how he builds a narrative and shifts it depending on what's on the line, what makes a story reporters can't ignore, how storytelling gets you into trouble and back out, his keys to breaking through a crowded market, how to ask questions that pull better answers out of others and yourself, and why earned media is no longer a [00:02:00] nice-to-have now that AI is replacing traditional search.
[00:02:03] I can't wait for this one. TJ, welcome to The Bigger Stage.
[00:02:07] Matt, excited and happy to be here
[00:02:10] Oh my, that is two of us. We have so much to get into and so little time. I hope to, that this is only one of multiple conversations that we can capture and share with people, 'cause you have such a wealth of experience in an area that I think is so important for every leader today, and aspiring leader, to know. But first, I do like to go back a little bit, and I think I saw something betw- it was in your book or some other material that I read, how you ended up working at ABC. I know that ABC's not your whole story, but there was something about an internship. Was it 1994? Tell me the story of how that started and, and what that meant to you at the time.
[00:02:50] Yeah. Thank you, and again, great to be here. I really have a nice bookend to my career in that I started my journalism career [00:03:00] and ended my journalism career at West 66th Street in New York City up by Lincoln Center, for folks familiar with the area. I attended a small school, Colby College in Maine, and it turned out that a graduate, Curt Gowdy Jr.,
[00:03:15] was the executive producer of the Wide World of Sports, the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat, for those who remember the program. And so, I got an internship, uh, when I was a senior in college in New York working on figure skating, auto racing, whatever other sports the program was covering at the time, and that really inspired me to pursue broadcast journalism.
[00:03:43] I produced, uh, for a while. I was at ESPN. I was at America's Most Wanted. I was at the History Channel. Uh, and then I started building my broadcast career on air, including Fort Myers, Florida, Pittsburgh, my hometown of Boston, [00:04:00] and then ended up, uh, at ABC News, first at the Washington Bureau covering politics, public policy.
[00:04:07] I was there for three years and then got transferred to New York in 2010, and, uh, covered the markets and more general assignment reporting, as you might expect, uh, from the world headquarters, and left ABC News in 2013, early 2013, and that's when I, uh, crossed over, you might say, into strategic and crisis communications
[00:04:31] through the magical door into a whole new world. But you didn't really leave it behind because you're just on the other side of the s- same coin. It's, it's, it's finding stories, it's crafting stories, uh, and narrative. Um, that switch between going from off-air to on-air, what was the biggest revelation you had when you started having a camera in front of your face?
[00:04:56] I think it was that every [00:05:00] word counts, and that you need to think about how the audience is going to interpret what you say. And you need to think about how the least charitable or the least generous audience member is going to interpret what you say. So when I was covering a story, especially in Washington around politics, campaigns, public policy, I was very careful to be as, objective as I possibly could that the reporting was as straight down the middle it could be and that I wouldn't be accused of being in the bag for one side or the other.
[00:05:47] Right. How does that square in your mind, and we're gonna get into this, but, uh, I do a little stream of consciousness, just threads that come up for me, and I like to ask in real time. there's this narrative out there, [00:06:00] especially with social media and a l- and a general m- distrust of a lot of traditional institutions, including traditional media, for better or for worse.
[00:06:10] Um, but a lot... There, there is a belief that y- authenticity is more important than being polished and perfect. And in fact, we have evidence of people who have become quite successful saying and doing what would previously be absolutely, you know, m- beyond unacceptable, like just d- death knells in their career and their company, but they get away with it.
[00:06:37] So how do you square the, that experience that you had? 'Cause the reporter needs to be ideally unbiased. Well, we're all biased, but, you know, fair, right? That's what you're getting to. But how should a founder and a CEO approach that line between being safe and appearing and be appealing to a [00:07:00] broad audience, but also letting people in on who they really are?
[00:07:03] W- how do you help people navigate that?
[00:07:06] Well, if I'm reading between the lines here, Matt, it, it seems like you may be alluding to some political leaders. and,
[00:07:12] Oh, no. I, who, who might you be talking to
[00:07:15] and what I would
[00:07:16] about?
[00:07:17] is that is very different, right, from, from private industry, from journalism. Uh, there's a belief in politics that you're better off being strong and wrong, uh, than weak and right. I think when it comes to authenticity and business leaders, audiences, stakeholders can forgive a CEO, a leader who's not the most polished speaker, as long as they believe that they're being authentic and they're telling the truth, right?
[00:07:54] I often tell folks that if people perceive what you're saying is hollow or [00:08:00] is forced or maybe you're only saying it because your lawyers told you you're gonna have to say it, then y- might be better off saying nothing at all. when you say something with genuine care that's authentic, audiences see that too, I think that's what every leader needs to strive for
[00:08:21] So maybe that's why. You talk in your book and, and elsewhere about the role of empathy in having successful communications. Can you just talk about that? And have you ever worked with a CEO who just struggled... I mean, some people are less empathic naturally. They just don't, they don't have it, or they don't have high EQ, and they don't feel the other side very well.
[00:08:42] What, how have you... What have you observed in that with CEOs and, and how have you helped them to channel that?
[00:08:48] Well, I, I think that's right. I, I think there's compassion and then there's real empathy, right? Which is putting yourself in someone else's shoes, whether that's the patient's, a [00:09:00] student's, a customer, a, a board member, a parent, what have you, depending on what the organization is and, and what your mission is.
[00:09:10] I think that leaders, the C-suite, sometimes the internal culture is so strong and there isn't enough of a focus externally on how the product or the service is impacting those you serve. There's much of a focus on earnings. There's too much of a focus on, uh, getting people to be as productive as they possibly can, but there isn't enough time spent really understanding the impact that the organization is having on those it serves.
[00:09:49] And I think that you, you need to understand the daily experience of those folks that you're catering to, otherwise you can't truly understand where are the [00:10:00] pain points. Um, you know, how can we improve our service or our product so that it really, you know, serves individuals better than it actually is. I, I think that you really have to have an objective source, whether it's somebody on the outside, consultants like you or I, that can, you know, share the perspective from outside the bubble.
[00:10:26] We're not drinking the Kool-Aid the way some of our, you know, internal colleagues are. And so, and that's not a negative. I mean, a lot of marketing and communications professionals in-house at organizations, they are brand emissaries, right? They are instructed to share the good news, to be ambassadors for the brand.
[00:10:47] But when the arrows are pointed at them, for instance, when they really need guidance on how to navigate those situations because, like you said, you know, it takes, [00:11:00] I think it was Warren Buffett who said it takes, you know, 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to, to lose it. And so you always have to be aware in building your brand and building that goodwill that could be tested at any moment
[00:11:14] Yeah. Yeah, it's fascinating. I could go in so many different directions. I was just writing down a few things as you were talking, too, 'cause I've got this clear list now of things that I think our audience would be most interested in as I'm hearing you explain that. Um, I wanna begin, and, and I'm thinking about the founder CEO who's maybe in the first few years of the company and they're starting to do more speeches and they're realizing that their words and their writings are actually getting out there, and people are coming up to them and saying, "Oh, I saw what-- I saw an interview you did."
[00:11:47] And they're starting to see that mirror back that, "Oh, it's not just me in my little, in my little, uh, share office anymore. Like, what I'm saying has consequences." And so I think [00:12:00] that's where someone like yourself can be so useful to be mindful of that. Um, hopefully get them... Steer out of, you know, stay away from problems, and if you get in a problem, get out of it, hopefully.
[00:12:10] So, but let's first talk about just your perspective on earned media, 'cause you mentioned this too in your writings, why you believe earned media is more important than ever. Um, someone might be thinking, "Why should I bother with these media sources? And by the way, I get inundated with pay-for-play media. I can be in all these magazines and newspapers that are shells of themselves." Make the case, TJ, why should I care about getting reporters to write stories about me when e-even if I think no one's reading anything?
[00:12:43] Well, I'm gonna quickly pivot to AI after I, uh, provide a, a, a quick answer to, uh, your question, which is that reputation, people care about certainly monetary capital, they care about [00:13:00] human capital, they care about all types of capital. But reputation capital, the name of my book, is one of the leading indicators of not only how a brand will be viewed or a leader will be viewed by that are most important to them, but it will also determine how they weather the inevitable crisis that's coming, you know, whether they think it is or not, and when perhaps when they least expect it.
[00:13:32] Um, some crises you can prepare for. They are, know, a slow burn. That's what we call them issues, and we try to keep them from escalating into a crisis. Uh, but the reputation capital you build through earned media can help you survive those types of, you know, monumental, maybe even existential, uh, moments.[00:14:00]
[00:14:00] And so, earned media does, Matt, is that it builds a reservoir of trusted third-party validation. And we talked about some of these, you know, major outlets that some folks say, "Gee, I don't have any need for them. Um, either they're biased or that's not what, you know, 20-somethings or 30-somethings are reading."
[00:14:30] fact is, is that if you work with real brands, they're regional, whether they're national or global, outlets, The Wall Street Journal, right, the Financial Times, The New York Times, The Washington Post, LA Times, those all matter to my clients and they matter in a big way, along with the business journals, along with the industry trades, along with new media, right, like Substack Lives or [00:15:00] other venues that they can appear online, Yahoo Finance, et cetera The, the concept around earned media and why it's important is because when someone appears that type of space, the audience, whether it's subconsciously or consciously, is reading it or watching it or listening to it and saying, "Wow, they could have talked to anybody in that particular industry or with that particular expertise, but they chose this individual.
[00:15:34] That must say something about that individual, s- something special," and it elevates them to a certain status. Maybe not once, maybe not twice, but certainly the more swings at the bat they have, the more people are going to recognize that this is someone who needs to be paid attention to. I said I was gonna pivot to AI.
[00:15:58] Is that okay?
[00:15:59] Yeah, [00:16:00] I, I would expect you to.
[00:16:01] Right. you know, for decades, the visibility game was about ranking on Google, right? Search engine optimization, owned channels, a well-optimized website. You know, earned media helped, but it was often treated, I'd say, as a, a credibility bonus layered on top, and now that calculus has flipped.
[00:16:23] more people are asking ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, uh, Google, the questions they used to type into the search bar are now going into, into those types of platforms. And so, you know, here's the thing, those tools aren't crawling your website in real time or reading your latest press release, your owned media.
[00:16:44] They're synthesizing answers from, you know, a vast body of published, credible third-party content. What I was just talking about, news coverage, trade press, analyst reports, expert citations. That's earned media, and it's now the [00:17:00] raw material that AI uses to describe you to the world. And so this, you know, GEO, generative engine optimization, is the reason why earned media is now more important than ever.
[00:17:15] And a lot of people that have been spending ... I have a client who's been spending $20,000 a month on Google Ads, is now putting more budget into public relations because he understands. He's seeing the, his ROI plummet because more people are looking for his expertise on these AI search, uh, platforms, which I just, just talked about.
[00:17:40] What I'm seeing with you and to other, um, PR professionals that are coming from various different lanes, is that actually PR is more important than ever. And I'm seeing the super highly qualified PR person as, um, becoming more and more of a thing.
[00:17:56] I mean, like a highly specialized, someone who doesn't just do [00:18:00] the standard PR package, pay me a gazillion dollars every month to kind of see if I can get an article. Like really, truly becoming a partner, um, and figuring out where creative ways to get you into the conversation. How... Yeah, go ahead.
[00:18:13] Did
[00:18:13] you have something?
[00:18:14] say that, the, the challenge is some clients view earned media as a one-time hit in the paper. Great, you know, we made it in you know, local daily, but where does it go from there? Well, we know that for a long time, you know, what you do with it, how you leverage it on social media a major piece of the puzzle, right?
[00:18:46] That more people can end up seeing a piece on social media than in the original source, especially if you, let's say, if it's broadcast, you cut it up into clips, if you put some spend behind it, [00:19:00] if you're clever about how you share it. Now, you have to look at it as having a really long tail because it's that kind of coverage that is then indexed by these platforms and which is drawn on to help describe you to individuals, users on Claude, on ChatGPT, on Perplexity, on these different platforms because it's making you, again, describable to those individuals so that they understand what you're about, and so that third-party validation has, I would say, short-term impact, medium-term impact, and long-term impact
[00:19:43] That makes a ton of sense. Okay. Now we're not gonna get into the crisis part of it. I know Reputation Capital talks a lot about crisis, although there's a lot of other great, you know, communication skills and other information in, in that context, and we'll get to some of that. But I wanna talk about, because you [00:20:00] were a, a practicing active reporter on that side of it for so long, and now you're on the other side of it, you have a unique perch and position to talk about how to be a reporter, how to attract a reporter to your story, how to get them, incentivize them to write it.
[00:20:19] So let's talk about how do you get someone to write your story and write it in a way that's gonna be, you know, positive for you? And I don't mean a puff piece, I just mean that it's going to help you. Uh, what, what, what do reporters think about, a business reporter, a travel reporter, whatever ni- niche in the industry?
[00:20:38] What, what are some things that they think of when they're scanning all these millions of options that they could choose?
[00:20:44] Yeah, it's a really good question, and it certainly differs by beat and, you know, if someone is a long-term projects reporter, like, uh, consumer or investigative, right, or a medical reporter as opposed to, you know, someone on [00:21:00] a general assignment re- beat who may be turning around stories in the same day, maybe even within a few hours.
[00:21:06] Um, but I would say that every narrative starts with the same question, and that would be, you know, what do I want the audience to feel or what does my client want the audience to feel and even do next? That is, what do we wanna make them feel, or is there a call to action, right? So, and I think that this habit certainly came straight from the newsroom because a script that couldn't answer the question why should someone care in the first 10 seconds or so was killed, uh, immediately, and I, I think I still run things, through that filter.
[00:21:52] So, you know, again, it differs by objective, but I think if we're talking about earned media, uh, [00:22:00] pushing out positive news or thought leadership, right, it's often built around a hook, and that hook can be, this news timely? Is there a conflict or tension? Is there new data that's been released that, that tells a story in a quantitative way and we're gonna help tell it in a qualitative way, right?
[00:22:25] You always see those stories that are about a new piece of data, and yet the picture will be of an individual who sort of exemplifies or symbolizes what that, you know, data point says, whether it's about, you know, the price at the gas pump and you'll see someone filling up their tank on the New Jersey Turnpike, whether it's about a social service being cut and you'll see the individual whose programs are losing funding, you know, maybe at home in their living room.
[00:22:55] So you always wanna personalize it and, and that means [00:23:00] finding a character, a real person is what we call them, that no one's ever seen before, that can really carry the story in a way that's human and makes people feel, feel the impact of the story with their heart and not just with their head, because we, we tend to remember things a lot longer when we, uh, feel them in an emotional way.
[00:23:25] Uh, and so We, I think about them through this lens because, you know, like you yourself said, you know, this has to catch the reporter or the editor's attention when they may have dozens of pitches in front of them at the morning meeting. I remember I was in one newsroom, you know, I think our editorial meeting was, like, at 10 o'clock in the morning, and we'd have dozens of pitches to choose from.
[00:23:51] I mean, things from the newspaper, things, uh, from, uh, you know, individuals had pitched to us, stuff that we had been tipped off about, and we had to [00:24:00] decide what was gonna make the most compelling newscast for our viewers and, you know, what was the most important, right? What would reach... What would be the most important to the greatest number of audience members?
[00:24:10] And so that's how we, we, we thought about it. I, I think when we're talking about reputation building and thought leadership for CEOs, we're thinking about building around one consistent sort of set of key messages or narrative and how can those be repeated over many, some small, some big moments, right?
[00:24:33] We're talking about, uh, bylines, opinion pieces in, in the newspaper. We're talking about podcasts. We're talking about, uh, panel or speaking opportunities. And so, again, I, I think the, it's the rule of seven, right? Folks need to hear something seven times. Uh, that may be a little antiquated at this point, but folks need to hear th- something seven times in order for it to really stick.
[00:24:58] so I [00:25:00] think that that's how I think about a, let's say, a thought leadership or a, a true PR campaign is how are we going to this same message, the same, uh, urgency across multiple channels? People talk about omni-channel strategy, and I think that that's the way you have to go, which is working with a college president, for instance.
[00:25:23] I've had him on News National, I've had him on, um, I've had him on, uh, the local, uh, public, uh, radio station here in Boston. Um, I've heard- had him in, uh, local newspapers, I've had him on online, I've had him on Substack Lives, podcasts. I mean, you really need to reach, you know, news consumers where they are.
[00:25:48] And if you're trying to hit a particular audience, whether that may be philanthropists or, you know, parents with prospective college students, then you need to obviously be a little [00:26:00] bit more strategic about where you're going to meet them. The nice thing about, let's say, these large, uh, metropolitan newspapers, which, you know, we've discussed, like The New York Times, The Boston Globe, et cetera, those reach a large swath of people.
[00:26:14] And so you can be certain that, you know, you're going to hit a, a few of your key audience groups by appearing in those, those particular, uh, outlets. And even if you're not reaching them initially, again, whether it's through promotional pieces, marketing collateral, social media posts, things like that, you can really leverage that visibility, that credible third-party validation.
[00:26:40] Yeah, and it, it reminds me of, uh, that, you know, people who say, "Oh, legacy media or the newspapers or these big publications, uh, you know, they just don't matter anymore. It's all about independent media." I'm like, well, if you pay attention to independent media, half the stuff that they're writing is refurbished stuff from The New York Times and CBS, and they're reading articles from [00:27:00] traditional media a lot of the time.
[00:27:01] So it's still the baseline, and then it gets distributed out. And so, um, to your point, I guess where I'm going next in my head is content. How much does your content, however that is, whether it's on Substack or you're on TikTok or whatever, how can that influence or impact your ability to sell a story to a journalist?
[00:27:27] So are you saying my content or my client's content? In, in which, in which way are you, you
[00:27:35] Thank you
[00:27:35] for calling me out on that.
[00:27:36] I'm always putting myself in the perspective of the founder CEO. So founder CEO's company, and he's getting told and his team's getting told constantly every day a gazillion messages about marketing and social media, you gotta put all these, make more content, right? And he's thinking or she's thinking con- you know, at some point you just go, "Ugh, content, content, content." So how does your content [00:28:00] out there, what role does that play? Put us in the minds of a reporter looking at your content considering whether doing a story that you want them to write
[00:28:09] Well You know, I, I, I think the fastest way that a CEO could potentially get picked up for, let's say, an expert quote or, uh, an interview request by what we in the business called newsjacking, right? Which is taking a timely issue in the news and offering your perspective. Now, will it get, noticed, you know, at a higher rate if you're offering a contrarian point of view or a unique point of view?
[00:28:45] Yes, because then you're not just another voice in the crowd, right? You're offering a unique perspective and take on an issue in which maybe there might be a lot of, you know, common [00:29:00] reactions or thoughts around why it matters and how it's making an impact. So what I would suggest to CEOs is what your industry is, what are the developments that are happening, uh, whether it's within your company or whether it's outside your company, you know, in the industry writ large, what are the economic impacts that could, um, have, you know, a cascading impact on not only your business, but your clients and your customers?
[00:29:34] And, and talk about those types of things. They don't need to be a five-minute, you know, speech on, you know, every facet of what it is that took place or what the potential implications could be. You could jump on, you know, Instagram, TikTok, whatever your platform of choice is, and do something for a [00:30:00] minute or two.
[00:30:01] And then, you know, hopefully you're following the right reporters or the right reporters are following you, or you can tag them, and you can put it out there. And that way, reporters, when they're saying, "You know, gee, I got an hour left. I've done my initial reporting. I need to fill this out with some expert analysis or insight," they may go on social media or their colleague may say, "Hey, did you see that this CEO said this thing?
[00:30:28] I think that that's a really interesting point I hadn't heard before." And before you know it, you're getting a request for, you know, a, a, an interview and you're being asked some really interesting questions, which as long as you answer them in a way that's insightful, unique, and most importantly, helpful for your brand, then it can be a huge win-win.
[00:30:53] And so I think, you know, I've started doing my own TikToks recently because I- talking about crises in the [00:31:00] news and how to navigate reputational risk because, you know, what I'm finding is, yes, people want authenticity, they want interesting content, right? They want A way to understand the world, a lens through which to interpret events that don't make a lot of sense to them.
[00:31:19] And so, you know, no matter what it is, whether if you're in fashion or you're in consumer goods or whether you're in food and beverage or whether you're in the law- big law, whatever it is, you're providing context for people at times when they don't know quite how to make sense of, you know, an issue, a topic, a, a narrative, something in the zeitgeist which they're supposed to be thinking about or at least have an opinion about, and they're really looking for, to others, to leaders in the space about [00:32:00] how they can form their own opinions or at least understand both sides of an issue
[00:32:06] Yeah. Uh, it just occurs to me that one of the, one of the things that almost any founder can really do is help people understand the world better. Whether you have a fintech app or you have an HVAC company or whatever, you're, you're operating in the same world that we are living in, and so you're impacted by some of the same forces.
[00:32:24] So you have a perspective through the lens of your company that helps people understand the impact of climate change, uh, on energy, uh, prices, for example, on, I mean, all the different interconnectivity of things. And I think the more people can... What I'm h- hearing you say that's sort of stirring something up in me, a truth that I've been sitting on, is that, you know, every company that's doing business with some other people, which I hope you are if you've got a company, you got some perspective, and that will help clarify something about this crazy world that we live in.
[00:32:58] So you too can [00:33:00] be a thought leader, whether you realize it or not
[00:33:02] Uh, we're all subject matter experts, right? I have certain subject matter expertise in the core industries that I have a real depth of experience. when it comes to the crisis work, that is more of a playbook, muscle memory, call it what you will. I've navigated so many of these situations with brands over the years that I r- in, in a lot of those situations, I rely on my clients to be the subject matter experts, and then I have the crisis experience and the expertise to help guide them based on this experience.
[00:33:41] And so, know, for us, marketing, thought leadership, second nature. it's like speaking Swahili for someone who is working in medicine or for someone who knows how to fix a [00:34:00] car. I don't know how to fix my car when something goes wrong. I take it to a shop. And so everybody has some sort of subject matter expertise, and that's, that's, you know, the value that we offer to, others
[00:34:17] I mean, you can take that and, and turn that into a highly relevant and engaging story. And that's really one of your... I think about the, uh, I think in your book you talk about your first client when you went to the other side. I think it was your first client, which was the stores where they fired an employee for using a weapon to fight off an, uh, a robber or s- right?
[00:34:39] It, and, and they refused to reverse the firing, basically. There was p- I remember the story. There was public outcry, how could you fire this employee who was just trying to protect themselves? But they had violated the policy of the company by having a weapon on them, yes?
[00:34:55] And
[00:34:55] you solved that how?
[00:34:57] well, you know, I hadn't been out [00:35:00] of journalism that long, and so I could still envision me covering this story by talking, uh, to man on the street, is what they were called at the time, MOS, uh, interviews, uh, concerned citizens, certainly, uh, advocates of the Second Amendment talking about how, you know, this individual was only trying to protect themselves, and if the company fired this individual for protecting themselves against a robber, a would-be robber, that the company clearly didn't care about the well-being of the employee.
[00:35:40] And the perspective I brought to it was because that's going to be the reaction when we respond or when we put out a statement, we need to talk about how it's because the company cares so much about the employee that it [00:36:00] cannot have their workers putting themselves in a position where they may be at risk to be seriously injured or harmed or, you know, even killed because they had a weapon on them should something go wrong.
[00:36:15] And so that was the narrative, and I think we were successful. There were some protesters across the street, uh, from the convenience store, but all in all, ended up being a one news cycle story, and that was it. And so I think, you know, your brand is going to receive coverage for a less than optimal, uh, situation, wanna try and limit it to one news cycle and, because that will mean that you responded properly in many cases, as opposed to getting the response or the apology or whatever the reaction is wrong, and then that being the second and third day story.
[00:36:57] That's what you want to avoid.
[00:36:58] The thing about that [00:37:00] is, is that you could look at that as spin. Like, we're just gonna flip it on its head and figure everyone gets it. But doesn't there have to be some kind of legitimate truth behind the spin in order for it to work? Because I remember-- I think the reason why that flip of no, it's, it's because we actually care about safety, because their insurance company was telling them statistically speaking, the i- the o- the, the statistics bear this out.
[00:37:26] I studied this as an undergraduate, believe it or not, that if you have a weapon, uh, if you have a gun, you are far more likely to die as a result of having a gun in your hand because you are a bigger threat, the other person's gonna more likely attack you even harder, or you might hurt yourself with your own gun. And so actually having a gun statistically does not make you safer. It ma- it does the opposite. I wonder if, if just people kind of n- when you flip it, does it make people think, "Oh, wait a minute. It looked outrageous that they would fire someone for protecting [00:38:00] themselves, but no, there's truth to it." D-does there have to be truth to it, or can you really spin your way out of something with nothing, with nothing?
[00:38:07] I, I, I have to admit, I, I cringe when people call me a
[00:38:15] Yeah
[00:38:16] I always, always ensure that my arguments, statements, uh, persuasion is always based on truthful, objective information. The policy of the store was that if someone comes in and robs you, you hand over the cash. You don't put up an argument, you don't fight, you don't put yourself in danger, and that's the safest way to escape situations like that unharmed.
[00:38:55] Sure, you see, you know, surveillance video on the news of [00:39:00] independent, right, convenience store owners pulling out a baseball bat or pulling out a gun or a taser. I mean, they can do whatever they wanna do, but when you have a large chain of stores like this, know, they- it's, it's, you know, managing risk and they don't want anything happening to their employees, and so they made that decision.
[00:39:22] And so I think that, you know, that's the type of argument or that's the type of calculus you described it that they were counseled on. But then in a situation where they're under attack for this type of, for this type of incident, oftentimes I think brands don't think about, "Well, why did we, you know, make that...
[00:39:49] Why did we make that calculus? Or why did we have to fire him?" You know, he violated our policy. To just say he violated our policy, that's what I think probably more than [00:40:00] 50% of brands would say in that situation. But I said you have to explain the policy says and why was the policy written in that way.
[00:40:13] That's not, don't think that's too far in the weeds because people understand. And in a day and age where people see, know, corporate entities as one big monolith, uh, to give a, a human explanation or perspective, to put a human face on an entity like that at a time when one of their employees is losing their livelihood, I think is very important.
[00:40:42] frankly, it's important from a recruiting standpoint and a culture standpoint that we're not gonna... You know, if you were thinking about bringing a weapon to work, I didn't expect that we'd be going down this path. But if you, uh, were expecting to bring a weapon to work, you better not because, you know, uh, you too [00:41:00] will be fired because this is just not a that we can, we can stand for or have any, you know, patience for
[00:41:10] I, I really like that you picked up on that, the pejorative of spin, because I meant it that way. And I, I... We don't have a time to really get into the deep crisis, like communications, you know, I don't know if you wanna call it vertical or whatever. But there's, there's a deep well of things we could go into on crisis, but I thought that story captured it well. And, but what I was more intrigued by was the fact that the, quote-unquote, "spin" that someone said, "Well, that was spin," but I didn't see it as spin because I know the facts behind it, and actually the way you repositioned it was based on solid things. But that's where the empathy comes in. So you gotta start with, what I took away with is first start with the empathy.
[00:41:53] We understand why you'd be upset that we fired someone. A- and who
[00:41:58] wants... And w- you know, [00:42:00] however, we have bigger considerations here, which is that we have a policy bec- what you're saying is we have the policy because it's actually ultimately safer for the employees, and we can't make exceptions otherwise our employees are
[00:42:13] put at risk. And so when we're thinking about telling stories, um, what I think is really important for founders to keep in mind is you might see people out there on social media who seem to be able to get away with, or in politics, get away with just saying absolute nonsense. Don't think that applies to you. Uh, you know, and so
[00:42:35] having the right partner like yourself to help you navigate that so that it isn't treated as cheap spin and is given serious consideration, to me is really important.
[00:42:47] That's, that's really where I was going with, with
[00:42:49] that.
[00:42:49] I, I don't, I just, I don't believe that you can necessarily bend truth your will. I think someone [00:43:00] like Roy Cohn would probably, uh, disagree. But I do think that, know, the folks that I work with, you know, they have their particular point of view. It's about explaining that particular point of view.
[00:43:12] Uh, I don't engage in character assassination. That's not, that's not part of my playbook. but I do think that a lot of the folks I work with, you know, when I get a call, they say, "You know what? We screwed up. we need to just sort of explain it in a way that is, um, believable, which is understandable to those that really matter to us.
[00:43:43] so we wanna make amends, we wanna apologize, we wanna show them that we're gonna do better next time. So can you please help us navigate, you know, this particular crisis, whether it's just simmering or whether [00:44:00] it's, you know, the pot is boiling, because we need to lower the temperature, and we need to, as I said, you know, do a mea culpa.
[00:44:09] So sometimes that's if they're under investigation by the government, that is essentially talking about how you're cooperating with, you know, a, a government body. Other times it's that you're making, you're in conversations with those who believe that they were harmed. there has to be, especially when the, there, it's pretty clear the narrative is that the, the c- the client is at, you know, at fault here, they're the ones who need to go out of their way to be humble, to, you know, not dunk on someone just because they are the David, uh, versus the Goliath in this story.
[00:44:58] They need to be, coming back to [00:45:00] our, you know, discussion around empathy, they really need to be authentic, and that's often, you know, a, a big piece of the way out
[00:45:11] Yeah. We've got two minutes left, so I wanna make this super fast. I have two questions for you. One, if I'm a founder CEO and I am thinking, "You know what? I, I really do need some PR help. I under- I get it." And, um, how do they find the right PR person for them? What should they be looking at? What questions should they ask to, to vet their PR person?
[00:45:33] So this is what I would do. I would find a PR firm that has expertise in their industry or with like organizations. I would... I mean, you could look at who your competitor uses, but that firm will typically be conflicted out because they can't be... Sometimes, you know, firms can work with people in a, a same, uh, industry, but oftentimes if direct [00:46:00] competitors, that, that will not work.
[00:46:01] So, uh, who has experience in your industry? Uh, you wanna ask them, uh, what types of stories they've placed, and could they give you examples. Um, I think you wanna make sure that there's a personality fit. A lot of these firms are similar in terms of maybe what they can achieve, but it comes down to who do you wanna partner with on a day-to-day basis, who do you like, who do you vibe with.
[00:46:26] also, are you gonna be, uh, are you gonna be not only working with sort of the junior staff, but are you gonna have senior counselors accessible to you when you need them, especially with larger firms I'm talking about. And then, um, finally, you know, ask for a couple of their current clients and see if, you know, you're able to call them for references and ask them about how they've enjoyed, uh, working with this particular firm.
[00:46:56] I think that's a pretty comprehensive formula for making sure that you're [00:47:00] working with the right partner
[00:47:01] Fantastic. I think, yeah, that sounds like great advice. Finally, because we're out of time, where can someone follow you and how do they connect with you?
[00:47:11] So I'm on LinkedIn. I have a fairly decent presence there. Uh, my website is essexstrategies.com. That's E-S-S-E-X. That's named after the county here north of Boston where I was born and raised and, and now live. and I'm also on TikTok, uh, @tjwinick and, uh, on Instagram at Essex Strategies, so, come visit.
[00:47:39] TJ, an absolute joy and pleasure and a, a, at a abundant, like abundance with you. I, I really don't know even how to begin because there's just so many different lanes I wanna go down. But I think you've been really helpful for people who are trying to navigate the, the narrative game these days. And, uh, let's do it again sometime.
[00:47:57] I really appreciate the opportunity, Matt, and [00:48:00] always happy to come back.
[00:48:01]