AI Is Quietly Rewriting Your Reputation (And You Don’t Even Know It) | Kristi Piehl

Introduction [0:00]

Charles Eide: Even I struggled to be like, I like Will Smith now that made me not like him. But would you have liked him if he would’ve come out right away and said, I’ve got anger issues. I reacted in a way I shouldn’t have. And unfortunately the whole world saw it. Like you might have liked him better, but that isn’t what he did this week on cleared for takeoff, I have Kristi Piehl the CEO of Media Minefield.

Kristi Piehl: We’re gonna uncover the secrets of public relations. We really believe that everyone has a story to tell and it’s our job to understand the story, communicate the story, and leverage all of the possible mediums that we have to do so. And then we have a line of work around crisis. The last stat that I read, 69% of businesses have been involved in some kind of crisis, and yet like 23% have some kind of.

Charles Eide: Plan. So there’s a big gap of companies who had no plan that got in the middle of a crisis, and the result of their brand to their product and to their business was probably heavily damaged just because they didn’t plan ahead American Eagle Jeans, what could they have done better? So they took all sorts of heat.

When people said, okay, you’re making some kind of racial statement here. You see what I did there? Right? And many people think kind of down, it did impact [00:01:00] store sales, and I think Sydney Sweeney’s brand took a big hit. I think brands and agents and PR folks and publicists forget at times that if you don’t clean up your mess when you have the opportunity, it’s just gonna sit there and expand.

Kristi Piehl: But the best way to prepare for having some kind of crisis is to.

What is Public Relations? [1:20]

Charles Eide: Kristi Piehl, welcome to Cleared for Takeoff. Thank you. It’s such a pleasure to be here. It’s great to have you. I have a question for you. PR is one of those things that encompasses a lot of stuff, but if there’s anything I’ve learned, especially from you, is that PR is changing fast and it’s probably never gonna stop.

AI’s Impact on PR [1:43]

Kristi Piehl: How is PR different now than maybe the way it used to be? It’s rapidly evolving. Like every industry like yours, like anyone who’s listening or watching, it’s constantly changing. And artificial intelligence has only accelerated the change. [00:02:00] And if you ask 10, even owners of PR firms, how do you define pr?

They would give you 10. Different descriptions, which makes what I do a little bit difficult because you show up in my office and say, give me some pr, and that might mean let’s do an event. Well, we, that isn’t what we do. We can get you pressed for your event. We can do all of your social media, we can help message it.

We can make sure that nothing goes off script, but to some PR firms that that is what PR is. So even when you meet someone who talks about public relations, you have to start with what does that mean to you? Yeah. And then how has that changed? And it has, as I mentioned, AI has changed everything. And for us, there are two terms that are new.

To most people and it’s REO and GEO. And that has completely shifted public relations to where I say, and we talk about it’s a [00:03:00] renaissance for public relations. And some of the things that were old, traditional, are new again because of ai, which when you think about it as kind of a mind bend, like how can the influx of AI and how it’s changed the world mean that some things that used to work.

Charles Eide: Work again, but that’s really what’s happened. It’s kinda like fashion, is it like coming back in? Like there are things that used to work really well that stopped working that are maybe effective now. It’s like when my 23-year-old son shows up at our house wearing something that I’m pretty sure my husband wore when we were dating in high school.

Kristi Piehl: Yes, it’s like that. It’s new again. I know I see my daughter walking around with these like jeans that are cut super high with these super wide legs and I’m like, that went out of fashion. And then when Skinny jeans. Okay. So what, what is pub like to you? What is public relations? Public relations broadly is ensuring, uh, the message that is created is the message that is received [00:04:00] and that the brand or leader or people involved or product involved is displayed, communicated in a positive light.

Hmm. And positive is the goal? Positive is the goal. And there are PR firms, and I know some and have with different clients, worked with them who are in the business of sort of the dark arts of pr, where you wanna make sure that what is out there in the negative realm is intentionally negative or intentionally harmful.

That’s not the kind of PR stuff that we do. We’re all about the positive and we always talk about we wanna be for things not against things. And like any business, there are folks who wanna play on all different sides. That’s just where we are. We also are industry agnostic at Medium minefield, which is pretty unique in that we really believe that everyone has a story to tell and it’s our job to understand the story, communicate the story, and leverage all of the possible mediums that we have to do so.

Charles Eide: Mm. Uh, I’ve heard the phrase, uh, [00:05:00] you know, any news is good news even if it’s negative, but you don’t think so. What? You know, you asked me when I was a news reporter, I might have said, well, that’s true, Charles, but now doing what I do. Yeah. There’s some bad news. That’s just bad news. Yeah. That’s really difficult to recover from over time people eventually forget, but my goodness, there are even some scandals happening right now.

I don’t think anyone wants to be involved for one second with names like Jeffrey Epstein. No, nobody wants a Google search to put your name next to that anywhere. So there are some things that, boy, I, I don’t know how you recover from, do, do you think they’re keeping those Epstein files hidden for some reason?

Kristi Piehl: Oh, here we go. Here we go. Uh, you know, I suspect, I didn’t know we were going this route, but I’m like, well, now that you brought it up, I will, I will not lie to you, Charles. When that first all started, I was like, please, please let none of the clients that we have be anywhere involved with this because [00:06:00] Yikes.

So, no, we have, just to be make the record clear, I got nothing to do with the file. I don’t want any of my leaders, any of my clients involved. I think we’re gonna see more names. I think over time we’re going to see sort of why all of those folks were drawn there and what the original intent was. And you know, it’s a little bit like the Kennedy assassination, right?

Charles Eide: Those files and all that came out. When it was declassified, I suspect our kids will be reading books about stuff that we we’re not gonna know. It’s kind of scary if you think about, because I, I, I would imagine that there were people that were involved that didn’t realize the gravity of what they were a part of.

I mean, it sounds like he was pretty deceptive. I, I can’t, I, I can’t imagine. I, but back to your point, like you don’t want to, there’s certain things out there you just don’t want to be associated with. No. And you may not know about them for 20 years. So you’re saying just live a squeaky clean, you know, don’t go to any islands on [00:07:00] jets with weird guys perhaps for any reason.

Kristi Piehl: And, you know, it was funny, someone asked me this yesterday. Hey Christy, what if one of your clients would have gotten an invite from an influential person? And would have been there and not known. Mm-hmm. And they would’ve shown up in these emails. And I said, well, that’s actually not what I’m worried about.

Because if someone, if that happened, you would write an email back, I had no idea what was happening there. I will never attend again. My lawyer will reach out to you or something. But it’s the people who went again and again and again and again, and knew what was happening and have a, a bigger PR reputation problem.

Charles Eide: I’m sure there were people that got an invite to a party and went, oh, I’m out. Uh, but there were people who didn’t, people who were like, I’m all about this. Yeah. When’s the next one? Oh, no, thank you. And these, I mean, some of these must have been pretty big people. I mean, people that probably don’t want that coming out.

And that’s probably why we’re not hearing much, I think. I don’t know. I think we’ll hear [00:08:00] more. Oh, it’s so, it’s so crazy. Awful. And it’s crazy what an inflammatory thing it has become. It’s just so awful. I mean to, I’ve watched some of the. Uh, Netflix documentaries and the different accounts, and I have kids.

Kristi Piehl: You have kids. I can’t imagine. I I, it’s just horrifying to me and the victims. It’s just horrifying. So whoever was maybe, uh, involved over and over again, maybe they get what they deserve when it comes out. There’s that, there is that, except I would say on behalf of the victims who I’ve heard, you know, talking that because there aren’t more people in jail, maybe they aren’t getting what they deserve.

Charles Eide: Yeah. Yeah. I didn’t know this was going to Jeffrey Epstein, but it’s a, it’s actually a really relevant topic. And later I want to ask you some like PR disasters that have happened. ’cause I would love to get your take on some of those. I want to, I wanna move back into. What, what PR does for a [00:09:00] business, what it does for a leader, because I think, I mean, a lot of us, we get approached by people doing types of different types of PR all the time, right?

I mean, anything from social media agencies who are like, yo man, I’ll blow up your Instagram. Mm-hmm. For you to, you know, firms that are like, I’ll have you published in Forbes next month. Mm-hmm. I mean, I get these types of reach outs all the time. What I’m trying to understand is what is the benefit to working with a PR firm?

Kristi Piehl: Does it even matter? And then is it something that you need, I mean, obviously you’re in business, so it’s something some people need. There’s a big gamut of what I think any company needs when it comes to public relations. And at the entry level, there are folks who can, can do it themselves with a, an understanding of why it matters and what they need to be thinking about.

And then there are some [00:10:00] companies who ignore it and think, well, if we ever have a crisis, then we’ll worry about it. And the reality is, if you’re waiting for the crisis, and the last stat that I read, 69% or something of businesses have been involved in some kind of crisis as they would define it. And yet, like 23% have some kind of plan.

So there’s a, there’s a big gap of companies who had no plan, got in the middle of a crisis, and the results to their brand and to their product and to their business and to their own reputation was probably heavily damaged just because they didn’t plan ahead. So when I think about pr, I think about not just.

Charles Eide: Worst case scenario because as I mentioned at the beginning, we’re in the positive world of pr, but the best way to prepare for having some kind of crisis is to focus on the positive stories and the day-to-day reputation, and what are, what are the leaders thinking? Because it’s no longer about, look, the brand can have thoughts [00:11:00] and ideas and no, that isn’t gonna work anymore.

Kristi Piehl: Really what people wanna see is what does the leader care about? Think about involved in. And if you and the company put out the same social media post the same day, same time, your post is going to perform much better than the companies. Because the company is a brand and people expect the brand is going to talk about itself in sort of a vanilla E way that is self-promoting.

People expect a person to show up with feelings and thoughts and thought leadership, and there are many people who are watching entrepreneurs because they have built businesses, then they’re really interested in that. So that’s something that evokes humanity and brands and. AI written content can’t evoke humanity or emotion, which is why PR is so critical and humans involved in PR is paramount.

Authenticity vs AI-Generated Content [11:55]

Kristi Piehl: So do you think with the onset of AI and you know, content that’s quickly [00:12:00] generated through chat, GPT, Orrock or any of these tools, do you think that that type of stuff has a place in PR or is it like. Look, that stuff’s not effective. You need humans doing this. So AI is, is excellent at, you know, taking a, a, a bunch of content and giving a social media post.

Charles Eide: It’s also excellent at, Hey, I’m thinking about this today. How could I turn this into a social media post? However, when people cut and paste and put that in any kind of algorithm, the algorithm on a social platform will serve it less often because like any high school teacher, it can recognize something that is written by AI as opposed to something that is written by a human being.

Kristi Piehl: So, ai, I think about AI as a, as a place in, in social media content creation as, okay, looking at a blank page is daunting for many people. If I have a few ideas and a few bullet points and a few sparks of something, or a bit of research that I can access [00:13:00] quickly, well then that is going to make my content better and more effective.

Charles Eide: And, and that is how social media can be almost like a grad student assistant. That can allow the leader or the thinker or the expert to do what they do best, which is think things. Only humans can think and feel things only humans can feel. Yeah. It’s, it’s interesting how much garbage has infiltrated my LinkedIn feed.

Mm-hmm. You know, you, you’re flipping through LinkedIn, you’re like, ai, ai, you know, and then you’re like, oh, an authentic post written by a person. Mm-hmm. I’ll read this. Mm-hmm. It’s almost, it’s amazing how in just like two years or not even, we’ve, we’ve learned to tune it out because we can recognize it.

Kristi Piehl: We, we can tell. Do you think there’ll be a time where we can’t?

No, that’s a great question. I, I think it will continue to impact what I do, what [00:14:00] you do, what everyone does. However, I don’t know how, how it’s going to be able to. Put the emotion of a human being or the, the next, I mean, let, let me back up. So as we all know, if you put something into a search engine, it’s, it’s capturing what other people have thought or said or published.

Charles Eide: And what humans can do is think the thing that no one has thought before and feel the thing that only they can feel based on their experience. And so will AI ever be able to cross that and to think things? I want to think before I think it, I that’s, that’s a little scary. Yeah. It gets into that like a GI topic.

Kristi Piehl: Yeah. And you’re like, oh my gosh, the machines are taking over. Yes. But at the end of the day, what are we trying to do? We’re trying to connect with people. Right. Maybe that’s why our BS meter goes off when we see ai. Because we know that isn’t how humans speak. And, and really in my line of work, and when I said [00:15:00] it was the, you know, the renaissance sort of of of public relations.

Yeah. What do you mean by that? Yes, I think about it. So it used to be that, you know, you could sort of buy your way to the top of a Google search. You could buy your way to followers that aren’t real, and people now can tell, because the, what I mean by that is if you put anything in a Google search, it used to be several years ago where sponsored ads would, would be first, well, now the first thing that’s gonna show up is what Gemini has created.

And it’s a summary. And brands and leaders have to put out consistent messaging so that what Gemini decides is true. Because then humans are gonna make decisions based on what the machines think. What Gemini thinks is true needs to have the audience take an action that the business or brand or leader wants them to take.

So it’s really critical to put information into social media, into the system. Yeah. Website, blogs, earned media, getting news interviews, being [00:16:00] published in different places that are legitimate as opposed to, you know, not, not real outlets because AI is going, okay, I recognize the Star Tribune, I recognize the New York Times.

I’ve never heard of this other thing over here, so I’m not gonna even include that in the results. So when it comes to legitimate news sources, that matters. That matters a lot. And when a, a company or a person says that a consistent message over and over again, AI is going to pick that up and flag that even.

Uh, it used to be even a couple of years ago, if you, if you got a news interview every 10, 11 months, every couple of years it would be recognized by Google. Well, AI is finding results it really likes within the last month or so. Hmm. So, so current. It’s current and it’s constant and it’s credible. So it, it has shifted because the name of the game now is get the machine to give results to humans that you want humans to get to.

And even this, this has happened with some of [00:17:00] our clients. If they had the name of a business years ago and they never changed a website and they just left it set out there, but the leader was associated with it, then they started another business, then they started another business, and then maybe they had something happen that they aren’t, they wished didn’t happen.

And all that’s still out there. AI is gonna find all of that, and it may or may not come to the most current business, it may or may not find the right person. It can be kind of a mess. So when I talk with leaders and do key keynotes across the country, this is the stuff I’m talking about. Leaders need to have a consistent message.

Charles Eide: Social media is a fantastic tool to deliver the message, and it needs to be authentic and humans, because at the end of the day, it’s human beings that are working for people, making, buying decisions, consuming content, and they don’t want to be overly filtered or fake. Those days are over. Yeah. I’ve heard people say, you know, the news is dead, and you know, you see layoffs happening at these news stations.

Kristi Piehl: Mm-hmm. And they’re thinning out the number of people. Mm-hmm. But [00:18:00] it sounds like even if they’re changing their methods, the credibility that news inherently has makes credibility for whoever’s being featured by it through the search of. GPT or whatever it is. So you’re saying being on the news still is good Will people, you know, 1984 when people sat down to watch six o’clock news, the numbers of people watching the news was absolutely higher than what it is now.

That’s true. And we’ve seen, you know, many news stations and organizations go outta business, cut their staff, and they also can do more with less. Like many, many businesses can do more with less. Now the needs are different. However, what 1984 didn’t have that we have now, and I mean 19 80, 40, the year, I’m not talking about a book or like some kind of futuristic, but in 1984, the year, what it didn’t have is the ability [00:19:00] for that news clip to be put on different social media platforms, to live online, to be found later, to be cut apart, to be leveraged, to be helpful to a business, a brand, and a leader.

Charles Eide: For perhaps ever. Hmm. I think about the news and how much it’s changed. I mean, I remember during COVID we had this, uh, small firm outta Chicago help us because when COVID happened, people still needed events. They just had to shift online. And so we had this firm outta Chicago. We tried, and they were putting me on news all over the country.

Kristi Piehl: I was zooming for all these things, talking about virtual events. And, but what what ended up happening was I was put on these, you know, news websites. The segments were up and they lived on, and now when you search me, those things still show up, you know, and I don’t, it must be because, you know, Fox in [00:20:00] Nevada has a lot of credibility, or the New York Times or whoever, and you’re saying that the AI engines are giving heavier weight to those things than they are your website.

It’s, it’s such a combination. So if you were to, let’s pretend this is, this is sort of a good test case. Let’s pretend that you had done nothing, no other content since you were talking about virtual events only in 2020 and props to the Chicago firm. ’cause that was a great strategy. Uh, so you did all these news interviews and then you had put nothing new on your website.

You hadn’t update, updated the content. You weren’t active on social media, you didn’t have this podcast. Your company hadn’t put anything out externally. Anyone who looked you up would think that all you do is virtual. Hmm. Events. So that’s why it’s all of us change. We evolve, our strategies change, our thoughts change, right?

Our businesses change. So it, it is no longer good enough to do a three month, a year long campaign about this thing we’re doing. Because if, if you, if you stop, [00:21:00] then that’s what will be true even now. Mm. So you’re saying stay to stay relevant, you have to constantly be putting it out there. That’s probably why it’s so important to be posting regularly.

Charles Eide: A hundred percent. A hundred percent. It’s so interesting. I, you know, one of the biggest frustrations I continued to run into when I was working with the PR firm was that we’d have these calls and they would be like, Hey, so we need to come up with some ideas. You know, what ideas do you have? And I’m like, I don’t know.

I’m in the events business. Aren’t, what ideas do you have? How, how do people, how do organizations come up with good ideas that are newsworthy, ideas that are positive? I mean, obviously the people that listen to this run the gamut. So what, like what would you tell someone who’s trying to think of newsworthy things?

Kristi Piehl: That it’s not just like, well, look at us, we do great events and yet another great event we did, and it’s, you know what I mean? It’s like creating newsworthy [00:22:00] content is, is a thing. Mm-hmm. 

Creating Newsworthy Content [21:40]

Kristi Piehl: How do you, how do you cook up ideas that are gonna catch and then the, the credible sources go, that’s cool. Let’s feature that.

It’s a dance and it takes a lot of ideas oftentimes to get the one at a certain time that a reporter is going to latch onto. But to, but to your point, and, and it ties back to the kind of renaissance concept, is that several years ago, press releases weren’t really performing like they are now. And so if you do a great event, putting out a press release is going to get picked up by the search engines and is going to be more valuable than it was five years ago.

Charles Eide: So that message of, look, we just did this amazing event for this company and you can attach your brand to the company who hired you. A press release is an awesome outlet for that. That will work. But a news station is gonna be like, yeah. No one cares because the, their audience doesn’t, doesn’t care. Their audience wants to know, you know, what’s, how has AI shifted events and how, why would anyone go to an [00:23:00] in-person event, for example?

Kristi Piehl: So it, it is important for PR folks who are pitching and for people who are trying to come up with ideas. If you’re trying to get publicity in a specific town, for example, a local market. What do people, what are people there talking about? So, at Media Minefield, we have clients all over the country, and I sat in with a team earlier this week because at different times throughout the year, I pop in on different meetings so that I can help coach the leader, but I get to hear what people are thinking about and talking about, and I love that.

So it’s, you know, football season, super Bowl season, and as people are in, okay, we’ve got a a, someone we’re trying to get news for in, um, pick a city. Boise, Idaho. That’s not real, but let’s just pretend it’s Boise, Idaho. A place that in theory doesn’t care about the Super Bowl, doesn’t care about March Madness, for example.

However, it’s likely that there’s someone who went to high school or went to college or some, has some connection to Boise, Idaho that is playing in some of those games. And those [00:24:00] people in Boise, Idaho really, really care. So how can we connect what people in Boise, Idaho care about to what everyone in the world is talking about and offer some thought about that, because that is going to be interesting.

That’s going to be value. That’s an opportunity to add thought leadership into that conversation. And also, it’s really important to know half of the country at different times are dealing with really difficult things, whether that’s crime, whether that’s weather, whether that’s, um, some kind of massive layoff.

All of those things dominate. What a, a. A co a part of the country’s talking about, so to show up with like, we did this amazing event, and by the way, there’s a blizzard, people are in the ditches and someone just got killed because of the weather. Well, then you, not only is it not gonna get picked up, but it’s bad for your brand.

So now you have someone in the news organization going, who are these people? How insensitive. So it is a dance of [00:25:00] knowing what are people talking about? What do people care about? What are the main points? What are the main messages this company wants to put out there, and how can we make a connection that helps the audience and helps the business?

Charles Eide: It, it, it seems like such a, not backwards, but like a, an indirect way to market your company. Right? It’s, it seems indirect, like take crisis and all this other stuff out of it. If you wanted to use PR simply as a marketing tool mm-hmm. It seems like it’s not, it’s a very, it’s a weird marketing tool, right?

Because it’s. You have to come up with thought leadership stuff and stuff that’s relevant to humanity, not necessarily your business or your industry. Right. It’s, it’s, yes. And like how do you get the news to be like, that’s interesting. You can’t just be like, well, we manufactured more widgets this month than we did last month.

Kristi Piehl: Don’t we make great widgets? By the way? It’s like, blah, no one cares. So, okay. That’s a, it’s, this is a good, [00:26:00] this is a good tunnel to go down, so you make widgets and no one cares that you made more widgets this year than last year. So I would say, okay, tell me who do your widgets help? Because every person who builds anything is building it first.

Some human purpose. And even if we make gas tanks that go in, uh, in cars. Okay, so you’re gonna be able to talk about fuel, you’re gonna talk about tariffs. You’re gonna be able to talk about the impact of the price of steel. You’re gonna talk about the how, uh, electric vehicles have impacted the market you we’re gonna be watching, really, specifically the different car sales numbers.

We’re gonna be thinking about are people driving more, are they driving less? So those are the, so does it help me sell more gas tanks? Yes, it does. How? Because you’re gonna be able to have this content, which puts you as a credible leader in your space and in your industry where you likely have competitors.

Yep. So you’re going to be seen as a credible authority figure who is engaging with the public, who the [00:27:00] media thinks is a credible authority, and you’re going to be able to say to the sales team, Hey, I know that that vendor was deciding between us and these people send them this video clip because it positions us as a leader.

Charles Eide: Yeah. So it’s, it’s creating content that is making you somebody that’s validated. By an external source, which your own internal marketing can’t do. So what, when, when, like one of the big things that is like this deep question I’ve always had about PR is. 

Media Relations and Credibility [27:08]

Charles Eide: Is, is it just pay to play where it’s like, I hand your company, you know, 20 grand and you guys go out and find a journalist who will take five grand and write an article?

Kristi Piehl: Like, is that a thing? Oh, my little journalist heart just broke. Charles. No. Yeah, maybe, but not, not how I play. Hey, say if you run this story, we’ll make sure you, uh, might have some extra money in your Venmo this month. Like does that happen? Oh gosh, I, I hope not. I was a working journalist for 12 years. I think at Media Minefield we have like hundreds of years of [00:28:00] experience of, of journal.

Former journalists. I think we had, I dunno, five, six, 7,000 news interviews across our clients last year. We do this all the time. I hope not. Now, are there pay to play things like, can you pay to be on someone’s podcast or someone’s paid show? Absolutely. That’s different than the local news, than national news, which is therefore earned.

D is it important? The reason that you would hire a PR company is because they would have all the relationships. They would be spending all the time knowing what X, Y, Z journalist is doing. And also in industry publications, who the players are inside of an industry, which is really important to media.

Charles Eide: For some companies, it may be more important to be seen in the niche media where all everyone in your industry is paying attention to because your buyers are paying attention to that and they’re not in mainstream media. So if I just pop on, uh, CNN or Fox or any of the big news networks, national, right.

A, B, C, [00:29:00] whatever. Mm-hmm. And I see a, a really great piece about a, a business doing something, uh. How much of the, is that the, the reporter or the journalist truly finding stuff on their own and coming up with great national newsworthy content versus content that spends kind of packaged and handed to them mm-hmm.

Kristi Piehl: Through a great PR firm? Like is, is all the news and the stuff we’re watching all pretty much escorted through a, a public relations group? Or are you, are you watching stuff where their journalists are truly going out there and drumming up ideas on their own? It’s, it’s a mixture, I would say, you know?

Charles Eide: Yeah. I’m also a media consumer. I lo I love news and I love what people are talking about. I watched a story yesterday that we had no part in. It was a national news story and it was about a different kind of school. And I was thinking about, okay, that was a great PR firm that got that school publicity and the journalists did their job because they also pointed out [00:30:00] all of the pitfalls in an, and the story was all about AI education, where there are no teachers in the room.

Kristi Piehl: Hmm. Like fill in the blank of what you think about that. But it, they did a great job with the, the PR firm got that story. I’m sure it was a pitch No way is some journalist in New York thinking about this school that’s, you know, somewhere in the south. But they went and found someone who said, gosh, I really worry about this.

So a a, any good journalist, even if a PR firm has shepherded a story through, is going to ask hard questions, especially national news now. Maybe not local news because they just don’t have time. They get to work in the morning. Okay, by six o’clock or 10 o’clock I needed to turn this story. So you don’t have oftentimes to do that sort of thing.

But to me, the role of a, of a PR person isn’t just the pitching. It’s also making sure that. Whatever message the person who’s interviewed is going to say is accurate, on point, helpful, beneficial, and authentic. Because in this day and age, if you show up as one [00:31:00] person on a news station, your employees are gonna be like, uh, that’s not no glass door.

I left. That’s not him. I would like, I would like to make a He was coach. Yeah. I would like to make a complaint. So it needs to be sort of the best version of you that helps the business and it has to be authentic, which is such a tension in the world right now. How do you do those things at the same time?

Charles Eide: Well, I, I keep thinking of what you were just explaining. Where someone hires a PR firm, they shepherd this story up, it gets picked up and you pay this PR firm, you know, they’re on a retainer, whatever. Mm-hmm. And the journalist decides to look at the, the side that might not be awesome for the business.

Kristi Piehl: What do you do? I mean, couldn’t they create more problems? The journalist could, could cause problems if, well, how do you keep the journalist on the happy side of things, you know? Any of our stories that we have, [00:32:00] I think there’s two things. So the, what you’re talking about is taking a story to a journalist who spends time, putting it together and creating a narrative that, that’s one part of, I think pr, which is valuable.

And I’m gonna answer your question, I’m not dodging it. The other part of it that I think we see more with our clients is getting them on to be a, an expert, doing an interview about a specific topic as opposed to, so fill in the, you know, financial, someone in the financial services interest rates, cuts, okay.

All over the country. Every new station is gonna be looking for someone to talk about interest rates, cuts, or, or, or an interest crate interest rate increase. So we want our financial professional to be the person that’s the go-to financial expert in X market. So that’s far less risk. Sure. ’cause you’re basically bringing them to the table as the expert on whatever’s relevant in that sector.

Sure. And the journalist is like, this is gonna be a slam dunk. ’cause I know when we get Bill on the phone or on tv, he’ll be great. It’s yes. And that’s a lot of what I think [00:33:00] great PR is, especially because you have the opportunity to do it over and over and over again. So the referencing and creating you as an expert in your field from a media perspective really is a stronger goal than one-off stories and stuff like that.

Charles Eide: And the one-off story’s fantastic if it is legitimately something that is newsworthy. And we always have to prepare our clients and we, any good PR firm would say, okay, if we’re gonna do this, here are the risks. They’re likely gonna talk to your competitor. They might say this, so let’s just have a plan for that.

Kristi Piehl: And, and as long as it’s accurate. It’s fair. We get into, we have issues and we have over the years, and lawyers have been involved at times, when a reporter goes down a path that is false, not just not true, I mean not just like, oh, it, it’s not good for our client, but like it’s legitimately false. Like it’s motivated by a drive to prove something or, or they did read, they didn’t do all of their homework.

Charles Eide: That’s gotta be frustrating and that is frustrating. There are paths and we’ve had headlines [00:34:00] changed and we’ve had stories taken down and it, it doesn’t, we certainly like to avoid those, but we’ve been in business 15 years, we do all this all the time. So you could, you, you could go to a media and be like, Hey, if you don’t want legal problems, you’re taking that down.

Kristi Piehl: I’ve, I personally have had a meeting with a publisher. And said, this is the facts. This is what was published. This is damaging. My client is ready to lo to bring lawyers. And it’s a fair case because they’re not public figures. So it’s li liable and it’s, I can, we can prove it’s damaging the business and it’s not true.

Your choices are, change it. I’m all for fair coverage and accurate coverage, but I’m not gonna allow for lies or the lawyers will call next. Mm. And I’ve had headlines changed be, and it’s because it’s true. The master of changing headlines. Kristi Piehl. Oh, there it is. There. It’s, I love that. Change my business cards.

Authenticity and Personal Branding [34:40]

Charles Eide: So there’s [00:35:00] always this thing about like lately. I feel like the last few years, the word authenticity is this. Like, you need to be authentic and show up. Like when we had Maha on the podcast, she talked about showing up authentically and be the same person on Twitter as you or X as you are on, uh, on the news or on, you know, in the office.

Kristi Piehl: Mm-hmm. Right. Same person. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. But then there’s this other message of like, well, with pr we’re gonna control your image. Mm-hmm. We’re gonna coach you. Mm-hmm. We’re gonna make sure you say the right things over and over and over. The same way we know that it’s buttoned up, which seems to me like it, it’s like it’s, it would be like orange flavored water instead of like water with orange Piehl in it or whatever.

You know what I mean? Like one of them tricks your brain into thinking it. The other is truly the real thing. Mm-hmm. You know? How do you balance authenticity with controlling the image and the message? [00:36:00] They seem to be like. Fighting each other. I, to me, I think about authenticity as being true to yourself.

And the reason that I think some leaders really struggle with it is because they can’t define who they are, what they believe in, what they stand for, what they’d fight for, what they die for, and an effective leader. Knows all those things about themselves, and that’s how they run their life and they run their companies that way.

When I think about being controlled, I think a brand needs to have a message, needs to know who they are, what they do, and the leader’s authentic persona fits into that and augments it and elevates it. But I would never want any of our clients to show up human beings as some kind of vanilla version of the brand.

Mm. And we see these folks out there, we see interviews with them, and usually someone, especially a national news person, will like, thanks so much for joining us. We’re gonna, you know, go to commercial because it’s, it’s just not good. It’s not valuable. So you wanna make sure [00:37:00] that yes, you’re authentic. But we, we’ve had this before.

We have, you know, clients that use really colorful language. That’s who they are. Okay. That I’m not going to try to tell them. Never use colorful language. That’s who you are. I know you don’t use it with your kids. Um, so we’re just not gonna use that. In the next podcast you go on. Okay, we’re gonna, we’re gonna try to keep that four letter word out of that.

And that isn’t making them less authentic, but it would be damaging to the brand for some brands, if that was how the leader was showing up. Some brands, that’s awesome. The more colorful language, the better. Right? Snoop Dogg has made a career and it came back from a crisis by being completely 100% authentic.

Charles Eide: That’s great. Most leaders don’t have a Snoop Dogg kind of reputation going. Do you ever run into, you know, earlier you said like, uh, you know, the person showed up on the news all like polished, but then everybody else is like, that ain’t the guy I know. Do you ever, do you ever have that happen? Where the leader is being [00:38:00] called out for not being the person they really are.

Kristi Piehl: And then you have to be like, maybe we should help you, who you really are before we start putting you out there. There’s a heavy coaching that would prepare and a leader, and we usually can kind of, you know, sniff it out. But I did, I will say early in my career, I, my first big national contract happened because I was getting publicity for someone and someone, a competitor came over and said, you’re making this person the best version of them.

Charles Eide: And, and that’s not really who they’re who I know them to be. Hmm. So if you can do that for this person, what would you, what would it look like if you did that for people who were true experts in their field? And that, for me was a big, like, aha moment. I, we sort of can select to some degree and vet at, I mean, it’s gotta make your life more difficult.

Kristi Piehl: Mm-hmm. If you’re trying to. Put someone out there who’s an absolute jackass, you know, around the office or in their [00:39:00] personal life. And I think, I don’t, I’m not in any way defending Glassdoor, so don’t even, like, don’t DM me and tell me how much you hate Glassdoor. But unlike 20 years ago, I mean, I, when I speak, and I used to use this clip, I don’t anymore.

I might again now the Devil Wars Prada too is coming out. But there’s a fantastic clip in Devil Wars Prada where, you know, Meryl Streep is, uh, sitting across the desk and Anne Hathaway walks in and Meryl Streep is just a horrible human being to her. And Anne Hathaway kind of sheepishly walks out and.

And yet Meryl Streep was very successful and many, many leaders, male and female at that time could be complete jerks and treat their people terrible. But what power did the Anne Hathaways of the world have? They could go to the bar, they could complain, they could tell their friends, they could tell their family, and their sphere of influence was small.

Now, every employee has the worldwide web and all of social media and platforms like Glassdoor to say, [00:40:00] Hey, this isn’t who this person is. Don’t work here, and here’s why. Now, I, that’s not threatening. That’s not, I’m not trying to scare people, but that’s just the reality. So when I’m in rooms of CEOs in different places in the country, and many of them are 55 and older and became very successful at a time when it didn’t matter, hmm.

This is a hard concept and they don’t like it, and I don’t blame them. And I tell them, I grew up my parents saying, put your head down, do your work. Don’t tell anyone about it. The good things will happen. That isn’t how the world works anymore. So we can say, this isn’t fair. I don’t like it. Totally fine.

But that doesn’t make it not true. Any leader needs to understand what their influence can do on the positive, on the negative what, what employee influencers, which is a real thing. We do all sorts of media, uh, all sorts of social media training for employee teams because that’s a power that can be unleashed by a [00:41:00] leader and by a brand that people are still kind of afraid of.

But the employee influencer matters. We all at restaurants, you know, go on, whether it’s Open Table or Yelp or Chat GPT and look up, tell me about this restaurant. And if it has a lot of negative reviews, we’re probably gonna take pause. The same thing is true with leaders and businesses. You sort of have to show up who you are online, in person, the same human being.

Now, can you have a bad day and can you say to an employee or a customer, like, I’m really sorry, we made a mistake and I wasn’t at my best. A hundred percent the public is forgiving. Even in these big crisis that I think we’re gonna talk about, the public can be forgiving, but if you show up like that every day, that’s just who you are.

Charles Eide: And if you embrace that and you wanna show up and be a jerk, other jerks will work for you. That’s fine. Don’t try to be someone who you’re not, but you have to know who you are and then you need to reflect that out into the world and you can’t do good. It is interesting to think about the, the, the power that the people now [00:42:00] have.

You know, these big companies really do, I mean, it probably changes the whole culture of business for the ones that wanna survive. Of, of, of figuring out how do we actually create a, a real place that people actually like, the leaders in the management. Like we were talking in the Green Room and you said, people don’t quit companies, they quit.

Managers or leaders. Mm-hmm. You know, it’s so interesting because it’s true. I mean, we, I’ve been on Glassdoor and I’m like, oh my gosh. Like, what an amazing, very scary but amazing tool. Rate my CEO rate, my professor rate, my, I mean all these, they’re out there. Right? And it is true that employees have power and, and the employee who’s been with you for 25 years might have less external power than your intern, because your intern might have much bigger social media networks and much bigger reach now, different kind of audience likely.

Kristi Piehl: But if you still reach, still reach, and if your leadership team [00:43:00] isn’t active on at least LinkedIn, you’re missing an opportunity and your competitors are gonna figure this out because we’re probably out there training them how to do it, and employees have significant, significant reach. 

Reputation Management [42:08]

Kristi Piehl: So that, that brings me to the reputation.

Mm-hmm. Right. That’s a word you use a lot, it’s reputation and managing your reputation versus earning your reputation. Mm-hmm. Tell me more about that. So when we think about reputation engine optimization, REO, or just reputation in general, it’s about, first of all understanding what is out there. What is your current reputation?

That’s doing searches, having Google flags, asking, you know, chat, GPT or whatever your favorite, um, AI tool is about the company, about the leader, and knowing what’s out there. So once you know what’s out there, and that is important, what is the reputation? What is the story that people would tell about you to themselves if they just searched you?

That’s [00:44:00] important. But then also what do you, what do you want that to be? What would be beneficial if the reputation turned into this? How would that help you? How would that help your business? And is it authentic? Because a marketing team can’t tell you what your reputation should be. A marketing team can’t tell you what you should or shouldn’t be doing that is going to not work.

However, once you know here, here’s what would help the business. If it showed up this way, and it might be, gosh, if I was featured in the New York Times, it might be if I had a a, a keynote at a, a major thing. It might just be, gosh, if I could even just have a presence, if I have a common name and if when someone searched me, I actually showed up.

Charles Eide: I mean, everyone is starting at different places, but knowing where you are, where you want to be, and then taking the correct steps to bridge that gap. Because reputation matters and it’s about digital leadership, which I talk about in the book, digital Leadership, which leaders need to be just as comfortable speaking.

Digital Leadership and Legacy [43:49]

Kristi Piehl: On social media, and by speaking I mean creating content and, and being a [00:45:00] thought leader on social media as they do in a lunch or back to 1984 at a three martini lunch. You know, it’s, it’s really important that the one-on-one that used to be valued and is still super important, and I’m not in any way saying that isn’t a skill.

You also need to be able to show up online. So digital leadership is critical because for many leaders, especially people leading large teams, they’re not going to interface and large global teams or even domestically across the country. They’re not going to have conversations with all of their employees or all of their stakeholders or all of their investors.

In person, but those people absolutely will be watching and heavily interested in what they’re doing online. So the digital leadership is one thing, but then the digital legacy is critical because what we put out now leaves breadcrumbs to tell a story that our kids, our grandkids, the future investor, the future employee will all find and it will, they’ll be making decisions about us.

Even. We’ve had folks come to us who have been very successful and are [00:46:00] retired and want to get on certain boards, but the boards or the PE firm is vetting based on social media backgrounds and social media, uh, what they can find online about them. So it isn’t, and and it’s one of these things, Charles, that you can’t decide like, I’m gonna retire tomorrow, so I’m better.

Gosh, I kind of went on a couple of boards and I kinda want the grandkids to think that I did some cool things. So now I’m gonna start. Like, no, you, you start now and you drop the breadcrumbs to tell the story and really incredible things will happen. It’s just a hard thing to predict what those incredible things will be.

On my podcast, I talk to people who are using social media for good, and it’s people who have gotten incredible jobs by what they’re putting out on social media. People who have changed lives, that people who have saved lives, I mean, really big, incredible things. People whose businesses has have been built, who are making incredible amounts of money because of what they’re doing online.

And the thread that all of them have, which is [00:47:00] why I talk about it. In Flip Your Script, the book and the podcast, it. None of them started out to be an influencer or to make money. They just started out to be authentic and to put their thoughts out into the world. And good things came back. And I don’t wanna be a Pollyanna and like just go out there and be positive and crazy, amazing things will happen.

Charles Eide: But sometimes it does. I mean, that’s, I started this podcast ’cause I just was, I wanna meet great people, have great conversations and I’m naturally curious, but the number of good things, even in the four or five, four months we’ve been doing this is unbelievable. Mm-hmm. And it, it’s not even through masses and masses of people, but just through hiring.

Mm-hmm. I mean, we’ve hired some people that they’ve come to the table and been like, I wasn’t looking for a job and I heard your podcast. And I was like, I wanna work at that company. Mm-hmm. And I was like, oh my gosh, what a, like a sideways result. Mm-hmm. But like, so incredible. Mm-hmm. So they, it is [00:48:00] interesting and I, what I want to understand is.

Kristi Piehl: How consistent is consistent enough, right? Mm-hmm. When you talk about, you were saying these breadcrumbs and like, how consistent do, do, do you need to be? Is this something where it’s like, well, in a perfect world for, for a company, you should be on the, you know, news this much and you should be publishing this much and you should do this many LinkedIn posts.

I mean, how much is enough? Mm-hmm. It sound, it, it, it, honestly, it feels like it’s never enough. It’s. Daunting. And I think people get paralyzed by the, oh my goodness, wait, I have to do what? So I’m gonna do nothing because it’s too much. Yeah. So I think really this is very general and we’re all about customized strategies and customized messaging.

So I, I don’t wanna, you know, everyone should be doing this ’cause that’s not at all what I’m saying. However, it’s really important to take one public facing action a month. So could that be a blog on a website? Could that be a [00:49:00] podcast interview? Could that be a news interview? Something that is validated and is external?

Now is a, an article that you write on your website validated? No, but it is external. So something that is ex with an external purpose once a month, I think is a great place to start. Many companies. Have the kind of thought leaders in their organization, they can be doing much more than that, but I think that’s a great place to start.

Secondarily, social media. 

The 1-3-5 Social Media Rule [48:16]

Kristi Piehl: I talk about the 1 3 5 rule, and that on LinkedIn is something that LinkedIn has said is a proven effective formula. So once a week, write a new post on LinkedIn. Okay, so one new post a week, one new post a week, every week, like three other people’s posts. Okay? So once a week, like three posts, I made a mistake.

Take it back once a week, make three comments. Okay? So you three comments. Three comments. It’s one [00:50:00] post, three comments. Yep. And five likes and five likes. I am crushing that game. See, and you probably have great engagement. I see your content, people are engaging with it. Yeah. And if I meet you or if I see your social media content, it aligns.

Yeah. Yeah. That’s so, that’s so good. It just feels like you’re like, I don’t know, should I be, should I hire a team of people and publishes stuff every single day? But you’re saying at a minimum, one new post a week, three comments on other people’s stuff. Mm-hmm. And then five likes. Mm-hmm. That’s not that bad.

No. And if you get on social media, whatever platform you’re on, and you hate your feed. And I, I realize you said it earlier, there are some where you’re like, oh, come on, you people sometimes just put out, you know, junk, junk. But if you generally hate your feed and you get online and you feel like the best or the worst version of yourself comes out, your blood pressure rises, you think that all of humanity is going to hell in the next 30 seconds, [00:51:00] you have a responsibility in that because the reason that those people are in your feet is ’cause you let them in or you’re searching things that are making you hate the world.

So, and, and when I talk about, you know, three, doing three comments, three comments that intentionally are positive, three comments that tell someone that their politics are wrong, they’re, they look bad, they are a terrible human being. That’s not what we’re talking about. We’re talking about three positive uplifting things and five likes on things that you actually agree with.

And not, if you go to this negative, if not negative, that does nothing for your mental health. It does nothing for your company. No. In the aftermath of the murder of Charlie Kirk, there were the, uh, New York Times reported there were more than 150 executives who lost their jobs because of political things that they said in the aftermath of that.

So what you say online can impact your career. And again, I don’t, I’m not trying to scare people, but you have to show [00:52:00] up and understand that you represent a brand and you represent all perhaps, thousands of people’s jobs. And showing up and hating on someone is not good for business. So it’s kind of like what grandma always said it is, which is if you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say anything.

Charles Eide: See, back to like when your kid shows up wearing vintage clothes, everything old is new again, Charles. Okay, so big companies. That do billions of dollars a year, hire your firm. Mm-hmm. To represent and smaller. Yeah. And well, no, I know, I know. I’m thinking on the extreme though. Yes. Uhhuh, they hire you guys.

Mm-hmm. But they could build their own internal teams and firms and whatever, but why don’t they, why do they hire a firm? Like what, what’s the, what’s the magic? Mm-hmm. At that size of a company. Every company that we work with that is from 500 million into the billions, they have an internal team that we’re working with.

Kristi Piehl: [00:53:00] So when we come in and totally take over, you know, marketing, PR for a company, they’re not at that size because there’s so many internal messages that need to come out. So much marketing, product development, all these things. So we come alongside them to remind them and to help them create content that is externally facing, facing, and is a, uh, shows that company and that leader in a positive light and an authentic light.

To a larger audience. So they’re thinking about their current buyers and maybe their next buyers and, and we’re thinking about future employees, potential employees, and other second degree, third degree folks who not just might be interested in that business or that leader, but could benefit from learning from them.

Because anyone who’s running or on any kind of C-level leadership team, VP level at a big company, those folks have incredible careers. And most, most people, [00:54:00] especially the folks who work with us, who at that level of their career, they say, you know what? I really someone, I’m here because someone helped me.

I got here because someone at one point said, you know what? I see something in you. And if it wasn’t for this person, I wouldn’t be here. And I wanna do that for someone else. And social media and thought leadership and articles, all of that is a new medium for folks who want to give back and want to make a positive impact.

Charles Eide: To do that in really meaningful ways. 

Internal vs External PR Teams [53:20]

Charles Eide: So these companies though, when they hire you, which obviously you have a whole skillset on your team. I mean, you have a lot of people that do a lot of cool stuff, but the, are they, are they, are they working with you also because the relationships that your team has that maybe that company’s internal people don’t have?

Kristi Piehl: I used to, when the company started, so after my journalism career ended and I started the company, it initially was just about earned media. I was a journalist. I know how to get press. I was always frustrated my whole [00:55:00] career and no shade on traditional PR firms. Uh, I was always frustrated when the first time a PR person would come through, the newsroom was on a tour.

Charles Eide: With a client, there’s no way that you understand how media works, how to pitch, what the reporter’s thinking, what the news cycle is, what time their meetings are, how to write, how to think about web copy if you’ve never, if you’ve never interfaced with that industry. So when my company started, it was very much about, I wanna disrupt this industry because PR shouldn’t be something that is very expensive.

Kristi Piehl: But there is no line to ROI and a lot of pr, it has that reputation. It’s one of the things I hate about my industry. So we really were in the, in the business of creating messages and helping our clients. Get positive media coverage and, and elevate their, elevate their message to a larger audience that then they could leverage with their different marketing efforts.

But that was 2010. [00:56:00] So the world has evolved and we have an executive social media line of work and with trademark on how we do social media for executives. We do a lot of training for leadership teams. We do employee influencer training, and then we have a whole line of work around crisis and helping companies prepare for crisis, but also deal with an active crisis.

Yeah. That’s, uh, a skill set that probably most companies don’t have internally and, and internally, I, I tell this to folks all the time, leaders, if, if you are gonna have hand over your personal reputation to an internal team, you’re giving them your passwords, you’re letting them see all of your dms, and you’re allowing them to have free reign on your feed.

Charles Eide: That isn’t something that should be handed over lightly. Your reputation should not be handed over lightly. So when I talk to folks and I say, you know who, who are, gosh, very experienced folks who get really uncomfortable with this, they would never have someone in their early twenties plan their [00:57:00] vacation, create their will, help them sell a house.

Kristi Piehl: Help them buy a house, even buy a car. So handing over a reputation to someone who doesn’t understand the magnitude, the magnitude of job, of what they’re trying to do is a risk. And should an internal team understand the brand messaging? Absolutely. Should that team be responsible for, uh, helping the leader craft their birthday message to their spouse?

Yeah, probably not. That’s probably crossing a line that we don’t wanna cross. So, and also helping the leader think about, you know, we have folks come to us when they’re two, three years out from selling a business and know that by helping elevate the brand visibility on social media, that will increase the valuation of the company.

Charles Eide: Like, there’s all sorts of studies about, that’s a real thing. Well, they’re not gonna tell their internal team, Hey, I, I’m gonna sell this company in a couple of years. So. Could you guys like, make this worth more money? And by the way, y’all might get [00:58:00] fired. So that’s another time where, you know, folks are, are coming to us.

So there’s a strategy there where they’ll say, Hey, we’re thinking about selling the business. How do we juice this thing up? Mm-hmm. In the next couple years. That’s amazing. Uh, I, you know, I, I’d like to just ask you, you know, rewinding back to the beginning mm-hmm. You know, and you’ve got this beautiful book we’ll talk about in a minute, but how, how did we end up here?

Kristi Piehl: Like, 

Kristi’s Journey from Journalism to PR [57:17]

Kristi Piehl: what made you leave journalism and then start this business and then be such an advocate for the industry? It would be inauthentic to say, this was all my plan, Charles. That that would not be, that would be the filtered fake version. The real story, which I am proud of, frankly, I. Although it was the darkest, you know, one of the darkest, I can’t no longer say the darkest time of my life, but one of the darkest times of my life I walked in, I was an investigative journalist.

I had [00:59:00] literally in the, in Twin Cities media, and I have it framed just to remind me, uh, in my office, me holding two Emmys in a full page picture, the Emmys had just happened and I had won these two Emmys, and it was the same. Month that that came out that I walked into my, I walked into the my TV station at the time and got brought back into a boardroom and there was manila envelope and my boss, her boss, hr, an attorney and a box of tissues.

And I was one of 20 people who lost my job. And the whole investigative unit at the time went away. That was in late 2008. So that was a couple of economic crisis ago, depending upon how you count them. And I suddenly was a 30 something year old with two little kids, a husband who traveled all of the time in Minnesota.

And all I had ever done is journalism. And at the time, that’s what I thought. That was a limiting belief. I now know because I have been an entrepreneur [01:00:00] in various fashions my entire life, and I sat with that for a long time. Uh, what do I do? How do I reinvent myself? I was on unemployment, it was, gosh, I, I, I got job offers and I, I got the opportunity to do really cool things, but it wasn’t what I knew and my soul was next for me, and I didn’t know what that was.

Uh, I have a, a strong faith and I spent a lot of time volunteering. I worked at my church really part-time just to sort of like a palate cleanse. I worked six hours a week and it was really refreshing in just this period of time of how do I figure out what I’m on this planet to do? Which is a really big, difficult kind of question.

But that’s what I was wrestling with. So I took a class at my church and it was, uh, what do you, how do you take your passions and your experience to help other people? And that was, that was the class, and that was what I was stuck with because I knew that as a mother with little kids, I had given up a [01:01:00] lot.

For my career. And I, I knew what was wrong and I knew that it wasn’t who I was, but my identity was so ingrained in being a news reporter and being, I was doing some work for Good Morning America. Like it was fun. I was meeting presidential candidates. It was like, lovely. But I knew deep down, like, this isn’t really who I wanna be at this point in my life.

And I wasn’t brave enough to walk away and I, I wish going back, I guess you can’t wish that, um, I don’t have any regrets, but it would’ve been helpful had I recognized it and said, okay, on this date I’m going to quit. As opposed to like, here’s the rug and we’re just gonna pull it out. But I probably needed that.

So I took this class and I knew that I was no longer gonna miss holidays and birthdays and that sort of thing. I also knew that I wanted to tell people’s stories and use my news background and, and I knew that I was going to. Kind of solve this PR disruption, disrupt the industry sort of thing. And I, I was stuck there and I knew I [01:02:00] didn’t wanna go into PR because like I said, I don’t, I don’t like pr, I don’t like traditional pr.

So I was in this class, in the church basement, and if you’ve ever been in a church basement, like think about this cinder blocks and the ugly paint and like that was it. And the question was, what do you know so well you could teach someone. And I was like, news, I can teach people how to do news. And the company was like, here’s the name of the company, here’s what we’re gonna do.

It was right there. I picked my kids up from the, like childcare at the church. I called my husband, who’s in New York at the time and said, I’m gonna start a company. It’s gonna be called Medium Minefield. And he said, great. And within 30 days it was legal in the state of Minnesota. And I joke, and it’s true, it was harder for us to get our rescue dog than it was to start a business.

Uh, because you can fill out the paperwork and I. Started the business, 50 bucks a website, business cards, and I was off and running. Yeah. And now you’re disrupting the whole industry. Why? It’s so cool. I, that’s my aspiration, [01:03:00] Charles. That’s my aspiration. I mean, do you think, do you think when they let you go, I mean, just looking back, do you think that was just God’s plan for you?

Like he just pushed you. He was like, this is what you gotta do. At the time it was so hard. It was the, like, one of the best days of my life. Yeah. Because it was the push that I had to have to figure out who I am and, and what I’m supposed to do. And I love media. I loved, I’m so grateful for my time in news.

I learned a ton. 

Learning and Growth Mindset [62:07]

Kristi Piehl: And as an entrepreneur, I mean, I have since gone back and gotten a master’s because I was missing some kind of classic business skills because I could run a business and think about a business and innovate, and I knew enough to be dangerous. But there are some classically trained things that I was lacking that I, I needed.

I was, I’m an English, an English major, English lit major, which, uh, I has, has served me well. However, in news you’re taught, and in journalism, you’re taught that you don’t have all the answers. And your job is not to have the [01:04:00] answers. You have to go find people who you ask. You ask the questions. Your job is to ask good questions, and then you let the story take you where the story takes you.

And in being an entrepreneur, it absolutely was about, I don’t know, the answers. Like, I’ve never done this. I’ve never looked at a p and l before. I don’t know how this works. I’m gonna go find people way smarter than me with experience, and they’re going to help me. So that served me well. I have met entrepreneurs who feel like they have all the answers.

Charles Eide: They know everything about everything, and, and you. You can’t, I feel like the more I learn, the more I realize I don’t know anything. Right. And people are amazing, right? Yeah. I mean, yeah, I, the, the going and getting your master’s, that’s pretty amazing. I, I, I didn’t even go to college and I’ve had to learn the hard way.

I mean, yeah. The, the collapse come from like lots of pain though, because I’ve had to learn the hard way. In fact, I’m still learning from my CFO. In fact, I talked to her the other day and I was like, would you be willing to teach me [01:05:00] like how to understand finance better and. Thankfully she’s the most amazing CFO on the whole planet.

Kristi Piehl: And she, uh, she was like, absolutely. And so I’m, I’m always looking to learn, especially when it comes to finance, but kudos to you for getting the master’s degree. That’s pretty freaking awesome. It’s always something I’ve wanted to do. I just didn’t know exactly what kind of program and how to do it and when to do it.

I graduated about, uh, just over a year ago. Yeah. And I, there’s many different ways to get an education, and I appreciate that you said that you, you didn’t go to college because I think that’s absolutely a path to take, but what you have that other people don’t have is, uh, curiosity and the willingness to say to someone, I don’t understand.

Charles Eide: Yeah. And the minute that I think in anyone’s life, they think they know all of the things about all of the things. They become completely irrelevant. Yeah, no, I know. And it’s kind of annoying to deal with people that know everything, right? We, we’ve been around them. I know a couple of ’em. Yep. Okay, so I wanna talk, before we finish, 

PR Crisis Case Studies [64:33]

Charles Eide: I want to just [01:06:00] get your hot take on some PR disasters.

Kristi Piehl: Oh, here we go. And, and this is this, you know, we can, we can forensically or we can just topically whatever you, you know, where, wherever your head’s at. But I would imagine when things go wrong in public relations and you’re sitting going, Ooh, here’s what I would’ve done. The first one I wanna start with is 

Coldplay Concert CEO Incident [64:56]

Kristi Piehl: I wanna start with the CEO at the Coldplay concert.

Oh. Because, although tragic and really hard to see happen, there was a lot of lessons there, a lot of, a lot of lessons in many different aspects, but. That affected him and his family mm-hmm. That affected her and her family that affected the company. Mm-hmm. Big time. And so from a, it also affected Coldplay.

Mm-hmm. Positive or negative, I don’t know. But what was your take on that when that all happened? Like what, what went wrong? I mean, we know what went wrong, but what, what could they, the company have done [01:07:00] better? The leaders. I think that’s the, one of the best examples, and I use it all the time when, uh, I speak to folks of how the, a leader’s behavior decisions can impact a company negatively or positively.

That’s an epic example of negatively. And what they did wrong, the, the company waited, they didn’t respond. And so in that vacuum of time. Of, okay. They’re caught on video. They’re recognized. It’s spreading like wildfire across social media and they say nothing. So when people don’t have a story, they make one up and they fill in the gaps.

You’re saying like the public? The public. Yeah. The public can fill in the gaps and then what happens? People started finding out where she lived and what her name was and who her kids are, and they did the same for him. And the company said nothing and no comment is a comment. So if the company would’ve stepped in earlier and said something, uh, they could have mitigated to some [01:08:00] degree.

Even if, if, if the board chair would’ve stepped in earlier, I imagine the investors are pushing them. But there is this old playbook and I think we’ve, we see it anytime there’s a crisis or anytime there’s a major world event, you used to be able to wait and you’d say, okay, we’re gonna get some lawyers, we’re gonna get some PR folks, we’re gonna get the investors.

We might get a focus group and we’re gonna figure out how all this works. And then we’re gonna respond too long because the public Yeah, it’s 20 seconds as fast as a share button. Yeah. And they can even go to chat. GPT have chat, GPT make something and they can put it out there faster. So they waited too long is lesson number one.

Then the second mistake that was made that everyone I think can learn from is the leaders then went silent and deleted their social media. Mm-hmm. So instead of saying, now this is not a well scripted perfect. Sort of, I did just put you on the spot. You did so, but something, you know, give us the gist, the gist, uh.

I’m [01:09:00] struggling with a personal issue. I have handed over leadership to X person. No damage will happen to the company. I’m going to take three months off and get some therapy, and I want to work on whatever it is my, my life, my family, whatever. Thank you. I am so sorry to everyone who I hurt. Hmm. That’s a human reaction.

It is taking responsibility for hurting people. It’s understanding that as a leader, a lot of people depend on you and the decisions that you make. That’s a many, many people, many leaders running really big, wonderful companies have had. Indiscretions in their personal lives, and many people working in all sorts of companies have made mistakes that they are glad weren’t caught on a Coldplay camera.

People understand that folks make mistakes, but they want leaders to understand that their decisions have impact and have real consequences for other people who may lose [01:10:00] jobs. So there was an opportunity for them to step into that and for them to apologize and to say, gosh, we, I’m, I’m sorry, and I hurt people and I didn’t mean to, but don’t worry.

The company’s fine. This person’s stepping in, they’re ready to go. We have a succession plan, and I think it would’ve all worked out better. Better minimize the damage. Minimize the damage. Yeah. And. Uh, then when the company came out days later with Gwyneth Paltrow, Coldplay’s ex-wife doing this fantastic video, that was brilliant.

Hmm. That was like such a great move. But again, it took days. Yeah. And it was, they would have never had to spend the money work on it, hire Gwyneth, do all the things that they did. Mm-hmm. Had they handled it better at the beginning. So good. Okay. 

American Eagle Jeans Controversy [69:10]

Kristi Piehl: American Eagle jeans, yeah. They got hit pretty hard when the Sydney Sweeney American Eagle Jeans ad came out, what could they have done better if they realized the [01:11:00] ramifications of genes, G-E-N-E-S and Genes, J-E-A-N-S, and that people assumed that they were making a statement about white blonde people and having better G-E-N-E-S.

If they knew that or didn’t know that, they just left it open for people to decide. So they took all sorts of heat When people said, okay, you’re making some kind of racial statement here. And they all, many people think kind of doubled down on that messaging when they didn’t fix it. And then Si, Sydney Sweeney said nothing.

Mm. She’s now come out and said, gosh, that that was her bad. But again, I think brands and humans and agents and PR folks and publicists are, are forget at times that yeah, this is gonna stick around for a while unless you say something. And again, people make mistakes, but if you don’t clean up your mess when you have the opportunity, it’s just gonna sit there and expand.

So that one, it did impact store sales. It impacted [01:12:00] the, the value of that brand. I think Sydney Sweeney’s brand took a, took a big hit and. They both deserved it. Hmm. Because they made some big mistakes. Yeah. They could have handled it better and they could have blamed, you know, everyone loves a scapegoat.

Uh, the American Eagle, CEO didn’t write that script. Uh, someone, whether it was an external firm, someone decided that that was a really good idea and they must have had a reason. I don’t know what it was. And they, they missed an opportunity and they made a, they made mistakes. I wonder if the person writing the script was like, I know what I’m doing.

Did they think it was like just clever enough? I kind of, that would be my guess. Me. I mean, yeah. That’s what it felt like me, because they didn’t say anything about it. Yeah. But then some things just don’t land. But then, yeah, after it like didn’t land, it was like, oh no, pull it down. Pull it down. Uh, oh, we made a mistake.

We didn’t know how the, we’re so sorry. And then you could do an ad apologizing. Yeah. True. That would’ve been a great move. The [01:13:00] CEO could have done something. There are opportunities, but just like, let’s just see how this plays out. Yeah. Like, yeah, no, doesn’t work now. Doesn’t work. Social media’s changed that a hundred percent.

Charles Eide: Yeah. Uh, okay. One, one last one I gotta ask you about, and this is a little bit of a different one ’cause more of a personal brand, but 

Will Smith Oscars Slap [71:40]

Charles Eide: Will Smith punching kick, uh, Chris Rock in the face at the Oscars? Was it a couple years ago? Yeah. Like, how does Will Smith come back from that? Because like, I’m not a, I mean, I guess I’m kind of a judgy person.

Kristi Piehl: I mean, to be honest, but like, even I struggle to be like, I, like Will Smith now. Like that made me not like him. And, and like, I, like Will Smith. So what does he do? But would you have liked him, Charles, if he would’ve come out right at right away and said, I’ve got anger issues. He made a comment about my wife.

We’re going through some things. I was trying to keep it all personal and I just reacted in a way I [01:14:00] shouldn’t have. I’m gonna go check myself in somewhere. I don’t ever wanna show up this way for my kids, my family, my movies. This is not a reflection of who I am. I had a really bad decision and unfortunately the whole world saw it.

Charles Eide: Like you might have liked him better. I probably would’ve erased it in my mind, right? Aside from the memory of it. But that isn’t what he did. No, because all of us, like if someone were to come up to you and start dogging on your wife, you might hit ’em. It’s possible. Possible. It’s possible. I don’t think we should find out.

Kristi Piehl: It was not a challenge, but I think every human is feels like, okay, you someone I love. You publicly shamed them. That’s not cool. Now, I think then what happened? When Will, when Will Smith said nothing, all sorts of stuff came out about their marriage and other relationships. Yeah. People started picking scabs.

Oh. And that was ugly. And these, you know, they’ve got children, they’ve got [01:15:00] family. Like it got ugly fast and people love going down an internet rabbit hole. So it sounds like the, the best advice you have when, uh, when someone’s having a, a PR nightmare is to acknowledge it, apologize, be transparent, and.

Get help. And that applies. A, a similar version of that applies to whether it’s, you know, what happened in Minneapolis, what’s happening in Minneapolis, and how leaders should or shouldn’t step into that. It applied when many of the companies we were dealing with in Minneapolis that in the post George Floyd time pandemic like feel, whatever is going on, there’s an opportunity to speak into it and.

I realize that lawyers listening, you know, you can’t take responsibility. There’s legal implications. There’s a big difference between taking responsibility for something and saying, I’m sorry that hurt you. And a human being as a leader [01:16:00] can say, I’m sorry that hurt you. That was not our intent. Which is different from, I take responsibility.

I caused X, Y, and Z, which a lawyer will not allow you to do, uh, and, and shouldn’t until investigations happen and whatever. And I’m talking, that was a, there’s a lot of different crisis I talked about and a lot of different topics and all sorts of emotions and politics and that sort of thing. But leaders still lead.

At the end of the day, any leader who’s leading people is leading human beings. And human beings have lives where they go home, they have children, they have loved ones, they have pets, and they have these full lives. And when we as leaders don’t acknowledge what’s happening in their lives and how that could impact them, we’re tone deaf and we.

Charles Eide: I would say not being a responsible or effective leader, and that is a shift in the last even five, 10 years. So lawyers won’t let you say, um, I’m sorry I did that to you because you’re admitting guilt or whatever. Mm-hmm. But then you also can’t say, [01:17:00] I’m sorry it made you feel that way without saying I did that.

Kristi Piehl: Right. You have to own it. So like if you’re caught in a legal snafu where the lawyers are like, you can’t say that because you’re admitting it and we’re in a lawsuit here, then the natural inclination would be to shut your mouth. Mm-hmm. Right. Meanwhile, you know, your stock’s falling or your. Even to say That’s a mess.

It’s a mess. And every, every situation is so different. I, I think what I’m advocating for is in any situation, and we haven’t come across one yet, and I imagine at some point in my career that we, we may, we’re really saying nothing is, is the best option. There’s always an opportunity, even if the only thing you can say is there’s a full investigation happening.

We’re, I’m committed to finding out the truth. Even if that, even if that’s all it is, just showing that you actually care about the outcome being good. Yeah. Yeah. And, and you care about the [01:18:00] people involved because any kind of crisis, any kind of situation impacts people. And as a human being, show up like a human being, otherwise.

Charles Eide: A machine can run the business. Right? Yeah. 

Leading Through Crisis: Minneapolis ICE Situation [76:40]

Charles Eide: The, the, all of this stuff in Minneapolis that’s been going on lately with ICE being here and all that, you know, it’s created a lot of civil unrest. It’s created a lot of questions in people’s minds and it’s also created a lot of desire from employees to know where their leader stands on this issue.

Kristi Piehl: And, you know, for, for, I don’t know, two weeks, I didn’t say anything ’cause I didn’t know what to say for, frankly, I was in shock of what, just what’s going on and a little saddened by everything. Mm-hmm. You know, the state of the world. Mm-hmm. And eventually I, my leadership team and I, we sat down and we said we need to say something.

Mm-hmm. You know, we need to acknowledge, I mean, it’s affecting people And so, you know, without taking any [01:19:00] sides, we just acknowledged. This is impacting people. We also feel the impact. You have support from us if you need it, if you need a mental health day, please consider it done. If you need to talk with somebody, we’re here to support.

Charles Eide: So, you know, without choosing a side, because really we don’t really know everything that’s going on. We wanted to make sure people felt supported and cared for because at the end of the day, that’s our job as leaders, is to take care of our people. So it was, it was really hard to do though. I mean writing that email, ’cause I was like, I want to make sure, like you say, you say the wrong thing and half the people hate you.

Kristi Piehl: You know what I mean? It’s hard and I think showing up with humanity is what’s important. You know, we have clients, all different versions of politics and business types and locations and, uh, we dealt with every [01:20:00] single one individually. And we said, you know, as a company, like, what can we do to help people?

’cause we have some clients that really, really impacted. Yeah. And, and, and the business impacted. There’s the humans who are impacted, but the, the business impact. And I would say that those two things, I, I just wanna, you know, separate a bit, but the business impact, we said, okay, what can we as a business do?

Our expertise is in. Messaging and communication. So what can we do? So we sent a message to all of our, our clients and said, we’ll, happily, uh, we will to support you. We will look at any internal message you’re gonna send for free. We’re not gonna bill you, we’re not gonna charging into retainer. We’re not, but we’re, we’re gonna consider this a crisis.

And we wanna make sure that you’re internal teams who may not have, as we were talking about earlier, the perspective, the understanding of what the landscape is, understanding what the ecosystem is, and how their words could trigger some other kind of crisis. Anything that they wanna write internally will, will help you Mm, and will support you that way.

And, and also assume [01:21:00] that any internal memo or any slack or email. Could become external. Yeah. So you have to treat it with that kind of care. Yeah. So that was, that’s right. One screenshot. It’s on everywhere. It’s everywhere. So you have to, you can’t be cavalier about it. So that was sort of how we dealt with it as a business.

Me, me, human, I, within our internal Slack was writing messages to the whole team, you know, every kind of week. And we do a, an all company 30 minute, every Monday morning, a virtual meeting. And I, you know, made some comments about, about it and, uh, and showing up as a human being. Then I, my team said, okay, let’s, you need to put something on social media, which is admittedly, even though I wrote a book about it, scarier.

Yeah. Because again, there’s, there’s a fear, and fear is paralyzing. But again, no comment is a comment. So the way that I showed up was to acknowledge, you know, how difficult it is and to show up as someone running a business in this state. Mm-hmm. And it is the most challenging time I’ve ever had running a business.

Uh, [01:22:00] and. And also dealing with my own feelings and, and heartbreak about what was happening. So I showed up in a, I wanna thank, I wanna thank the journalists who are telling this story. Mm. I wanna thank my leaders who are navigating difficult times with our clients. Mm. I wanna thank people in PR who are struggling to write words Mm.

For companies when they don’t have their own words. So that’s how I showed up, which is completely authentic to me. And it was interesting that post no Picture, which typically that isn’t gonna perform very well, is still performing really well. And, and people showed up and said, uh, you know, people in the industry who I don’t know, I feel really seen.

Thank you. Mm. And the intention of that post was not to get likes or to get comments, it was to send a message that I acknowledge what’s happening in the world and I am a, a human being who lives and works here, and I’m impacted by it. And. If people don’t like the I, I thank these people, so be it. But you know, it’s interesting, I was at, [01:23:00] uh, just to add color around what’s happening in our, in our country and in our state.

I was invited to celebrate some business, some companies that had won some business awards a week ago, and it was the Governor’s Award. So the governor was there and he’s a polarizing figure right now. And I was there to celebrate these businesses and it was a non-political event, however you would say it is political.

’cause the governor’s there fine, but bus, there were seven businesses that are doing incredible things globally based here in Minnesota. None of them were my clients. I knew none of them. I wanted to be there as someone in the room supporting the economy of Minnesota. Yeah, I posted a picture as an Instagram story and I immediately lost five followers.

Which is, is fine. I mean, that’s people’s choice. They, but they, you know, I’m, I’m supporting Minnesota businesses and celebrating their growth and success, which is absolutely what I’m in the business of doing. And people saw a picture of our governor and they’re out. Mm. And, and that is the world we live in.

Charles Eide: And I think that [01:24:00] it’s easy to be afraid of posting anything. But the flip side of that is it was authentic to me. And if those people don’t want me to be celebrating Minnesota business, they don’t want any of my content. Yeah, that’s fine. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it is scary. I, I’ve been like literally paralyzed by what to say.

Mm-hmm. Because I feel like I should say something, but I’m also scared to death that no matter what I say, it’s gonna be flipped and twisted and said, you know, and I’m like, I just, I think I’m going to start with just our team internally and show them that we care about them and their needs. So that was, that was one of the hardest emails I’ve ever written.

Kristi Piehl: There are, I think a lot of folks who I’ve heard anyway, uh, have always said, oh, Minnesota, why do we live here again, uh, in the winter? Right. And, and I’ve overwhelmingly seen people now saying, I’m so glad we live here. Yeah. Yeah. This is an amazing place. Oh, yeah. I mean, our culture and our, our, our restaurant scene and our [01:25:00] music and our, I mean, Minnesota’s amazing.

And our summers, my goodness. I mean, the sun going down at 10 o’clock at night, you know? Nothing like it when I moved to the ranch, those sunsets going down way off in the distance and the, the, the green grass with the orange Glo, you’re just like, what is this? This is amazing. And it’s nine 40 at night or whatever.

Charles Eide: Don’t, don’t tell people, Charles, they’ll all come here. We like our little, we like our little state. Oh man. Well, I, I always like to finish with a question well before, hang on. Before I do that, I want, tell me about your book. ’cause I want people to buy your book. I’ve bought five or six copies of it. It is a fantastic read.

Flip Your Script: The Book [83:27]

Kristi Piehl: What motivated you to write the book and tell us where we can get it? So that we can order it? Yeah, thanks. I, I really appreciate it. I have always wanted to write a book and, you know, it’s been sort of, since I do a lot of keynote speaking and I, I talk a, a train teams and that sort of thing. It would have been [01:26:00] very easy to take sort of that content and turn it into a book.

And I think we all know people who have, who have done that and have, you know, here’s the book. It’s the, but for me, I really wanted a book to be personal. I wanted it to be authentic. I wanted it to, if you know me, you’d think, okay, she wrote this book. So I had a version of the book, kind of written and done.

And we hired a consultant to help because I’ve never written a book before. And we had a, a version written to go, uh, written and we’re gonna launch it early 25. 

Alec’s Cancer Journey and Hope [84:21]

Kristi Piehl: And then in January of 25, uh, my son, Alec, who at the time was a high school senior, was diagnosed with a rare type of cancer at the, about to graduate high school football.

Commit. You know, doing amazing things and the whole world, just like our whole world screeching halt. Mm-hmm. None of this matters. I have one myopic focus and it is to get him healthy and we will do whatever it takes. And that became my, my mantra. Your whole life. My whole life. Yeah. And so the book went on kind of pause, [01:27:00] and as I was sitting in hospital rooms with him and between Mayo and Rochester and here at Children’s Hospital in Minneapolis, I spent a lot of time and I decided to rewrite the entire book and to insert more of myself because yes, I was in there the first version, but I wasn’t really in there.

And I also knew that it’s all about using social media for good. And it’s a playbook on how to use social media for good and how to impact the world and help people with your story. You know, what you’re doing, how you’re showing up. It’s for leaders and. So as I was sitting with him and rewriting the whole book and decided that his story had to be in there as well.

And so the last chapter is his story. And I also used in parts of my grandmother’s diary. So my and my grandmother had written one day every day for her entire life, part of her one page in her diary. So when she was passing a, when [01:28:00] she knew she was dying, she said, you know, what would you like of mine?

And different cousins said, the China or the clock. And I, I said, I really want your diaries. Mm. And so I have bins of her diaries in my basement and I went through them all. I read them and I realized that I’m the keeper of her stories. And she, as she passed away in 2011, and if you Google her or put her in chat gt pre-book, she doesn’t show up anywhere except for my grandfather’s obituary and her own.

Now, none of us. Can live our whole lives, pass away and choose who keeps our story. Mm. You can’t pass it to someone and say, you can do with this what you’d like. The internet and strangers will choose what happens to our story. And if we lead companies or lead initiatives, or lead families or lead Sunday school groups or lead, whatever it is, someone else is probably taking pictures, putting ’em out there, deciding your story.[01:29:00] 

So how do you control the narrative? So the book is this playbook on how to do that. And it bridges the things that my grandmother cared about are some of the same things that we all care about. We wanna be seen and valued and heard, and we care about our card group or our golf group or the little issues in life and, and the big things as well.

But the, the purpose is that. She had a small sphere of influence. We can have a large sphere of influence as we talked about before. So the last chapter of the book is, is Alec’s story, and he is cancer free. He is at college now. He’s doing great. Mm. He’s, um, absolutely my hero and has done incredible things.

And we’re sharing his story with healthcare providers and people who have his cancer. And, uh, we have raised all sorts of money for Children’s. We’ll continue to do that. Have a golf tournament coming up. Mm. Uh, blood donation. If you can give blood, please do so. Chi children with cancer really depend on blood and anyone with cancers, depending upon, upon blood don donations.

I try to give as often as I [01:30:00] can. Please do. It’s an easy thing. Everyone, most everyone can do. Many people can do. Yeah. Uh, so it’s all about how. Taking a story, sharing it publicly and how it has helped other people. And I get really impacted Charles when, and this is, this happens where some, you know, mother or father will reach out to, to me or my husband and say, our kid just got diagnosed.

Mm. Seeing what you put out about Alex’s story gives us hope. Ugh. And, and that’s the one thing that we, we can offer on. It’s gonna be his video of him, his cancer journey is pinned on my Instagram and will be, uh, probably forever. And I will continue to share his story because it provides hope. And, and when we share our stories, we help other people.

Yes. It applies to leaders, it and as leaders, I think we have a responsibility and an opportunity to share stories to help others. Yeah. Sometimes hope’s all you’ve got and, and it can make a huge difference. Yeah. A little encouragement, a little hope. It, it’s a game changer. It is the thing that no one can prescribe it everyone has access to.

Yeah. [01:31:00] 

Legacy and Leaving a Trail [88:51]

Kristi Piehl: Lastly, I want to know from you, what do you want to be remembered for? That’s a big question. You know, I have always, um, I have had a favorite quote for ever, and I have it several places at my house and I have it at, at um, at the office as well. And it’s Aldo Emerson do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.

So I wanna be remembered as someone who has left a trail and because when you leave a trail, it’s easier for the people to come behind you. It’s easier for them to walk. So I wanna be a helper. I wanna be someone who can leave a trail that other people can have an easier path because I walked it. You’re doing that.

Charles Eide: Thank you. You’re, you’re doing a really good job of that. I mean, I’ve been watching you for a long time. There’s no doubt. This has been really awesome. I feel like we, we’ve done so much today, I’ve learned so many cool things and I’m just grateful we got the time together. So thank you. [01:32:00] Thank you for the opportunity.

I appreciate it. If you like this episode of Cleared for Takeoff, make sure you leave a comment, subscribe, turn on notifications. Of course, share it with somebody that you think would love it, and of course, check out my company EideCom. We do events all over the country, and if you’re looking for the best team in event production, check out EideCom.com.