Female Disruptors: Karla Jo Helms of JOTO PR Disruptors On The Three Things You Need To Shake Up Your Industry
An Interview With Candice Georgiadis
Never give up means not compromising on your values. Not settling. Be willing to do whatever it takes to make things go right — and keep getting up when you fall down.
I cannot say I have been able to instantly apply that in all aspects of my life all the time, but I have learned to apply it. It is an applied knowledge. Knowledge, just because you have it, doesn’t mean one will use it. It has to be utilized. Failure sometimes is a necessary step in this universe — we learn by pain. But does pain define me? Certainly not. It is the times I got up and pushed through, despite all odds, which defines me — and how I handled that opposition.
As a part of our series about women who are shaking things up in their industry, I had the pleasure of interviewing Karla Jo Helms.
Karla Jo Helms is the Chief Evangelist and Anti-PR(TM) Strategist for JOTO PR Disruptors(TM).
Karla Jo learned firsthand how unforgiving business can be when millions of dollars are on the line — and how the control of public opinion often determines whether one company is happily chosen, or another is brutally rejected.
Being an alumni of crisis management, Karla Jo has worked with litigation attorneys, private investigators and the media to help restore companies of goodwill back into the good graces of public opinion — she operates on the ethic of getting it right the first time, not relying on second chances and doing what it takes to excel.
Helms speaks globally on public relations, how the PR industry itself has lost its way and how, in the right hands, corporations can harness the power of Anti-PR to drive markets and impact market perception.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit more. Can you tell us a bit about your “backstory”? What led you to this particular career path?
I was a dance major and professional dancer in college — part of a very old and prestigious precision dance team that performed globally for governments, presidents, and national sport events. I was never slated for PR — and had no other vision but dance since I was 5 years old. So, at the age of 20, when I broke my back, my life (seemingly) was shattered.
After six months of struggling to find my way, with a worried father pestering me at every turn to decide on a career path (in which PR was a prominent discussion), I quit school and defiantly decided to “go into the workforce to figure it out.”
Truthfully, I just wanted to get away from the “constant nagging” (it was not!) and was secretly defiant on doing anything anyone (especially my father) said I should do! Alas, I was young and knew everything. 😉
When applying for a receptionist position at a healthcare company, after a series of interviews, the HR department asked me if I had ever considered PR as a career. Ha! Since it was not my father (poor man), I decided this would be an opportunity to see what else I could be good at. It ended up being the best decision I ever made.
I never trained in traditional PR, but rather crisis PR. And after working with some of the top crisis PRs in the world, alongside their legal counsels and private investigators, I learned a very difficult yet vital craft — how to navigate and penetrate the court of public opinion to restore a company’s reputation back into good graces. And I learned something fascinating — the subject of Communications is based on scientific laws on the order of the physical sciences.
Can you tell our readers what it is about the work you’re doing that’s disruptive?
PR is an old technology. Yes, technology — a codified body of knowledge in communications that when applied, and applied correctly, achieves results.
It is not a profession for those that “just love to communicate with others.” That is on the surface what people think — and I see too many college students in PR think this is the reason you go into PR.
PR’s “job” is to change human behavior — via changing others’ minds. It is an old method and has been used scrupulously and unscrupulously throughout the ages to control public opinion.
Many new recruits don’t know this. And, while there is a systematic approach to doing this that has been developed into a fine-tuned, sophisticated communications approach for the past 100+ years, much of the “tech” has been lost.
The interesting thing is that crisis PRs know this “tech” — and use it. But if companies knew the fundamental laws of communications, that are on the order of the physical sciences — such as engineering laws (yes, I am not kidding) ─ then they could be in control of their companies’ destinies.
Sound far-fetched? It’s often perceived as too good to be true. Marketers are so trained in communicating features and benefits they have lost sight (or training) of how to influence emotions to control markets.
Our disruption is codifying the existing communication laws that govern public opinion and using that PROACTIVELY to put unknown companies on the map. It is the corollary to handling a crisis — if certain strategy and tactics apply to crisis PR — couldn’t one on the flip side use that data to take an unknown entity and bring them into stardom?
AND measure it.
In crisis we are able to measure our efforts against INCOME/REVENUES. Does it reverse (go back up)?
So why not proactive PR?
That is why our specialists are called Anti-PRs. We reverse the role of a PR to take out the “bright-idea-itis” and strategize to impact markets based on mathematical equations.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
When I was younger (and cocky), I was in an executive meeting with the CEO and my colleagues. I was “text-book” smart… with little experience. We as a company were in a reputation crisis and legal battle — the CEO was navigating the continuing existence of his business. The company was embroiled in a legal battle with a key competitor who was also slandering the reputation of the business — it was very stressful, and clients were leaving in droves. When the subject of what to do to came up — a general rhetorical question from the CEO to the group — I spoke up and told the CEO exactly what he needed to do… straight from my textbook study!!
I felt the eye rolls from my mentors. I immediately broke into a sweat. My inner voice said, “KJ, what did you just do???”
In my haste, I had not planned ahead to what any reaction would be to my statements. Surprisingly, he exasperatedly told me to take over and run the campaign.
To say I freaked out (silently) would be an understatement. There were so many more people more qualified than me, and I instantly saw the error of my ways. But he believed in me, and I didn’t disappoint.
I think I went months without eating much — I was so nervous. Long nights, lots of study, lots of consulting others, coordination with legal, working with the private investigators, burning the midnight oil — but after one year I got comfortable. After three years, I felt I mastered it. It was so intense. But I realized one can never stop learning. By the by, we won the reputation battle in the third year, and the legal case. It was due in no small part to how we mitigated the reputation damage in the industry, the community, the media and then finally the courts. And I became addicted to the process, as a result.
I often look back at that and roll my eyes in total embarrassment — what they must have thought of me… the impetuousness of youth.
I often, also, think… “What if I wasn’t up for the challenge?” “What if I didn’t perform?” I shudder to think.
I learned a valuable lesson — grit is everything.
We all need a little help along the journey. Who have been some of your mentors? Can you share a story about how they made an impact?
My answer: the PRs that trained me and mentored me — and still do. I aspire to be like them. The ability to handle nasty communications from ill-intentioned entities in battle-royal crises with equanimity and poise. The ability to turn any catastrophe around using standard communication techniques. All while not using their super-powers against one when provoked. And they aren’t the most gregarious people or the most communicative — but rather they get the job done and see it as their duty to help the hero, without themselves having to be in the limelight. I admire them more than I can say.
My staff are my mentors, as well. I learn from them. I don’t know it all. They teach me, daily, lessons of humility and empathy. Plus, they find new ways of applying age-old principles — they are quite skilled, each in their respective roles and skillsets.
And many of my clients — many. They are disruptors, innovators — pioneers with arrows in their backs. I have never seen a more tenacious group of entrepreneurs and leaders that believe in their purposes so much that they will persist through unbelievable odds to bring new technology and services to the millions to make people’s lives better. All people see are the “riches” stories. But we see the “in-between” climb, and struggle, to achieve their goals. Many of my clients over the years have consulted me.
In today’s parlance, being disruptive is usually a positive adjective. But is disrupting always good? When do we say the converse, that a system or structure has ‘withstood the test of time’? Can you articulate to our readers when disrupting an industry is positive, and when disrupting an industry is ‘not so positive’? Can you share some examples of what you mean?
Disruptive innovation is talked about frequently but may not be completely understood idea. Put succinctly, it is the shift of an underrated or little-known product or service into a one that gains enough acceptance to replace, or displace, already recognized or dominant product or service on the market.
But disruption for its own sake can actually do harm — real-world statistics will tell that story.
I can tell you, though, that every innovative disruption, that has been helpful, had earlier been facing declining conditions or issues that their bigger, well-established competitors refused to do anything about.
Disruptive innovation is usually associated with start-ups and small and midsize businesses (SMBs). They’re competing in markets with a small number of well-established companies that are already well-entrenched in their market prominence. These older players utilize sustainable, conservative improvement, refining their current products and services, BUT don’t work on disrupting their markets to win new markets because, frankly, they feel they don’t have to.
But as markets evolve, technology creates new opportunities to overturn the established notions in diversity, equity accessibility and transparency. When that happens, the older, entrenched players have NOT altered their own environment to adjust. Fast growth doesn’t happen without change. The key to that change is out-of-the-box innovation — and that’s what creates disruption.
However, market startups face a daunting task — they have to compete on price and availability, which is not a going to help them win against corporate giants. Where they can find their place and attain distinction in their market is through offering their product or service as the unprecedented solution for their target audiences’ needs, giving consumers more control.
While these innovators may already understand that by overturning their industry’s accepted status quo it will upset or even outright anger those much larger competitors, they neglect to consider the fact that with their disruption come with some major consequences.
It’s common for competitors to feel like they are under threat and respond by employing harsh or even hostile methods to bring down the new innovator. They can include using the courts in legal, yet unethical ways. That includes exorbitant lawsuits called Patent Assertion Entities (PAEs) to take out smaller businesses and then buying that company’s assets for pennies on the dollar. In fact, for some, it is their business model. Their takedown tactics will even go beyond the courts. It’s not uncommon for these threatened parties to resort to negative publicity campaigns, pushing false narratives — even just plain lying. They do so knowing full-well that the object of their slander probably won’t have the financial means or infrastructure to defend the truth.
Unfortunately, innumerable disruptive innovators wither under these attacks, unaware that their most powerful defense against these inevitabilities is a proactive effort to create and maintain their positive image and goodwill in the court of public opinion. Products and services that improve people’s situations, life-saving technology or price-transparency apps that equalize health care for example, are giving consumers control. It’s vital that innovators make public their goodwill through effective messaging. Even so, inexperienced innovators are committing these serious, if not fatal errors:
- Creating a prototype or product before understanding what their then assumed target audience will believe to be barriers to adoption.
- Not contemplating who will be the entities to INFLUENCE the early adopters.
- Miscalculating the adoption rate. Put another way, being naïve to the amount of resistance to change.
- Never thinking they will need legal assistance so early on.
- Wrongly believing that PR and publicity should come AFTER they see success.
Any product or service with the capacity to overturn an industry status quo, even when well-intended, is bound to illicit adverse human reactions. Simply put, people don’t like change. These individuals — target audiences and influencers — need to be shown that the disruption as not just innovation, but as a “goodwill equalizer”. They need to understand that the business is solving their specific problems.
Veteran business leaders have learned the biggest lesson for defending against these inevitable attacks, and it lies with winning over the public:
- Performing market research into the key target audiences (including the competition) to discover their genuine acceptance/resistance to adoption. Having their insight in advance has given many disruptors the means to make well-informed predictions.
- Executing Key Opinion Leader market research that locates the key target audience Influencers. Using the current methods of media approach — communicating through influencers and key opinion leaders — encourages adoption to happen 10 times faster.
- Taking the two above tools to mathematically calculate the target audience’s size and possible impediments to adoption, and arrive at an estimation of the amount of time, money, and marketing that will be necessary to persuade a portion of the population to alter their mindset or to think in another way.
- Planning as soon as possible for legal action from competitors and anyone else that could see loss of market share because of the innovation) — and include crisis communication strategy plans in that preparation.
- Employing the news media as education channels to dispel and preempt any ill-willed cynics’ messaging.
If there’s one, all-important lesson innovators should take from this, it’s that research is essential to success, if not survival. It forms the basis upon which disruptive innovators make the case to their target audiences. When they create goodwill and win the public’s hearts and minds, they will have created allies, and even evangelists who will spread their messages unsolicited. That is how they will dismantle the hostile parties’ direct attacks. Failure to prepare is not an option — and most likely, a fatal one for the business at that.
Can you share 3 of the best words of advice you’ve gotten along your journey? Please give a story or example for each.
“Never give up.”
There is no such thing as failure. Failure is just the lack of courage it takes to be willing to do what one set out to do despite all odds.
I grew up with that mantra. Being from Texas, this is how I was taught — I think it is in our DNA…
Underlying that, is what ‘never give up’ really means — it means believing in yourself, keeping true to your own integrity — what you see is what you see, NOT what someone else says you see or should see. It also means having the courage to say what you see and say and do what is true to you.
That’s damn hard in this world.
It also means not being so intent on winning that you cannot acknowledge “failure.” Failure allows one to learn how to figure out how to come back and conquer — and make your environment adapt to you. It does not mean to adapt to your environment. I know of NO disruptor or innovator that adapts to the status quo. Maybe that is why I like them so much.
Never give up means not compromising on your values. Not settling. Be willing to do whatever it takes to make things go right — and keep getting up when you fall down.
I cannot say I have been able to instantly apply that in all aspects of my life all the time, but I have learned to apply it. It is an applied knowledge. Knowledge, just because you have it, doesn’t mean one will use it. It has to be utilized. Failure sometimes is a necessary step in this universe — we learn by pain. But does pain define me? Certainly not. It is the times I got up and pushed through, despite all odds, which defines me — and how I handled that opposition.
Through self-discipline, I have learned to apply it.
Breaking my back in college was a pivotal point in my life. It was devastating. I wanted to die. Everything changed overnight with, it seemed like, no warning. I felt I had failed. It was a hard pill to swallow. I hated myself. After training for dance all my life, with a planned career ahead of me — to not knowing what I would do, or where I would end up was unimaginably painful. I was scared as nothing was known or certain — what would I do? Would I make it? There were days I just wanted to give up. But I realized that giving up would have been more “un-confrontable.” So, I went through some very painful years learning a craft that would put me in good stead in my future career.
Another painful time was when I started my own PR firm only to realize that people hated the current landscape of my industry. Those “people” were my prospects. Hundreds of prospects, hundreds of hours of market research — and I discovered a horror about my industry that I couldn’t walk away from. CEOs hated PR. They felt my industry was all smoke and mirrors with no results. And they were pissed off about it because they knew it was valuable, but the way it was being sold and delivered was the polar opposite of what they expected, as logical businessmen and women. The horror stories were too numerous to ignore.
But as a crisis specialist, I never had experienced that. When we were hired, we were listened to, we were respected, and we were able to turn things around. Our measurement was entirely upon revenues — turning them around. So why couldn’t my counterparts in pro-active PR do the same?
After doing research on a cross-section majority of 5000 CEOs of fast-growth multi-million-dollar companies, in healthcare, finance and IT, who all used PR — I discovered what they liked about PR, what they hated, what they wanted, what they didn’t want and how they measured PR. I took that research and modeled my entire business model after the findings. And then spent three years in R&D (research and discovery) to test my findings against real-world companies doing PR proactively, using crisis management techniques. The findings became JoTo PR Disruptors as we know it today. And today we help disruptively innovative companies change the status quo of the economy and their industries by getting their message out in volume to millions of people — resulting in better solutions for more people.
We are sure you aren’t done. How are you going to shake things up next?
Disruptive story telling is our nature. Disruption is in our DNA. With the pandemic everything changed, but we were able to pivot overnight. With our crisis background we set up shop 24/7 for the media and held quarantined press conferences online with key industry opinion leaders in healthcare, trucking, shipping & logistics, eCommerce, finance, technology — and more. This started a new breed of storytelling to the media — and the media appreciated it. The press conferences were open to the public and hundreds showed up to ask their questions, in real time, on how to navigate a remote workforce, office closures, shipping issues, eCommerce bottlenecks — and real-time health information from pandemic experts. Those findings and the way we were able to bring so many people and companies together told me one major thing — communication had changed forever. Marketing had changed forever. And we were on the forefront of piloting new methods of reaching new prospects and customers, in a new way, for companies around the world.
I see AI as the next phase of PR (or Anti-PR) and the ability to tell more stories, faster. There is a series of colossal developments going on right now that are already changing the way we consume news media and information in such a way that will never, ever be the same. In fact, it has been going on for years now There is no such thing as the masses anymore. The media is segmented into super-segmented categories of publishers and influencers and content creators today — reaching super targeted audiences in a massive way.
What we have to understand in terms of what’s going on here with the mainstream media (big media) and the rise of smaller outlets is that big news media as a whole is shrinking and imploding in its ratings. This affects marketing because this is being mirrored in marketing. We’re seeing the end to big media because we’re seeing the end of what’s called mass society. Mass society was the kind of industrialized society that developed at the end of the 19th century and flourished in the 20th century. That’s when we first started getting these colossal centralized, bureaucratic institutions and structures, which the world basically revolved around. This is when life began to recalibrate around Washington DC, and we began to recalibrate around Silicon Valley in terms of finance and the coastal cities. Likewise, the world of big media was the Rockefeller center and the big CNN building in Atlanta (before it closed due to the societal changes resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic). That society is being replaced by what scholars call “the network society.”
And the network society is different from mass society. Mass society was always still very location driven. But what academics are noticing is we just don’t have to do that anymore — and that’s because we’re no longer connected by virtue of our regions or of our spatial proximity to one another. We’re now connected by virtue of the internet — or what we call networks. And with that network, you can each even more people than you could’ve ever imagined of reaching through the traditional way of going through big media.
The network society is what we are living in now. I started to see it in 2016… more and more new outlets and influencers were being added to my database. And what’s more — they were growing month to month exponentially. It’s a de-centralized network of content creators who are no longer dependent on big media or increasingly even big tech to communicate.
And so, what this means is that decentralized content creators, even more prolific than what we have here on YouTube or the new social media sites popping up — it’s a whole host of other publications and platforms that are really just beginning the future of news, even the future of political commentary… as the old age of big media gets increasingly replaced with independent content creators.
That is where we thrive — and will continue to disrupt story telling in the 21st century.
In your opinion, what are the biggest challenges faced by ‘women disruptors’ that aren’t typically faced by their male counterparts?
I think there still is a stigma about how women should be in the workplace — not even to mention being disruptive. So, we are constantly misunderstood.
Disruption implies it has never been done before. So how could there be a template for how we should act?
A few things I have learned about women: women need more communication — not less. Likewise, they need to communicate more — not less. Women also learn and understand things differently. They think for longer-term survival. I find they are the “average person” who becomes a hero by chance. I never met a female disruptor, yet that set out to be disruptive — they fell into it — or their path took them in a direction that made it impossible to turn back. Women are disruptors in their own right; they are having to break the mold continually against what the status quo says or thinks they should be.
The biggest issue women have is filling the vacuum, in the court of public opinion, on who they are and what their purpose is. I find that women innovators, who stay true to their purpose, don’t see the world as a woman — but rather as the world could be.
Do you have a book/podcast/talk that’s had a deep impact on your thinking? Can you share a story with us?
I interview disruptors weekly in my podcast Disruption Interruption. Disruption is happening on an unprecedented scale, impacting all manner of industries — MedTech, Finance, IT, eCommerce, shipping and logistics, and more — and COVID has moved their timelines up a full decade or more.
But WHO are these disruptors and when did they say, “THAT’S IT! I’VE HAD IT!”?
I interview bad asses who are disrupting their industries and altering economic networks that have become antiquated with an establishment resistant to progress. I delve into uncovering secrets from industry rebels and quiet revolutionaries that reveal common traits — and not-so-common — that are changing our economic markets… and lives.
In my interviews, I have found one amazing common denominator behind all disruptive innovators — the challenge is ALWAYS communication. Naiveté of the need for it, a lack of it, incorrect communication for a certain audience, ignorance of an audience, neglect of an audience… all to a disruptor’s peril. But there is one thing that endears all disruptors to me — they all have an unswerving relentlessness to a higher purpose for WHY they do what they do.
They have had, and continue to have, a deep impact on my thinking, weekly. They are the world’s key pioneers that persist to success, despite arrows in their backs.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
Putting people in charge of their own public opinion and the ability to better control their destiny.
One can control their business — or their own life — through the correct guidance of improved relations with others.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
“The Gods help those who help themselves,” an ancient Greek proverb. It’s something I learned when I was a little girl. I has always meant to me, that it’s important to exert some effort in any situation and not leave the outcome up to fate. It’s relevant to my daily life of never stop learning, never stop trying to improve — and when life deals you a hand you don’t like, change it. Sais in another way, if you don’t like the pebble in your shoe, remove it.
How can our readers follow you online?
LinkedIn | Karla Jo Helms https://www.linkedin.com/in/karlajohelms/
Website | JOTO PR Disruptors https://jotopr.com/
Podcast | Disruption Interruption https://www.disruptioninterruption.com/
YouTube | Anti-PR in 90 Seconds https://www.youtube.com/c/JoToPR/videos
This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!
Thank you!
Female Disruptors: Karla Jo Helms of JOTO PR Disruptors On The Three Things You Need To Shake Up… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.