In this Speak PR podcast episode, Jim James, a veteran entrepreneur and PR agency owner, shares a personal anecdote about a dispute between a 75‑year‑old farmer and his neighbours over a bonfire. The story illustrates how preconceptions and existing reputations shape perception, especially when no one has actually done anything wrong. Jim then connects this micro‑conflict to a broader societal trend: the Edelman Trust Index shows a sharp decline in public trust toward institutions worldwide. He argues that entrepreneurs must confront this cynicism by demonstrating moral leadership and integrity. The core solution he proposes is the strategic use of video: moving images convey body language, authenticity, and presence more effectively than text alone. Jim details his own low‑cost video production workflow (MacBook Pro, Logitech HD camera, Rode USB mic, Vimeo subscription) and emphasizes that even rudimentary videos can humanise a brand. He also references the Allen Curve, a research finding that communication frequency drops sharply with physical distance, underscoring why video (and other digital tools) are essential for maintaining trust in remote or distributed business relationships. Throughout, Jim offers practical PR advice—leveraging video, being transparent, and positioning oneself as a moral compass—to help entrepreneurs rebuild trust in an era of declining confidence in institutions.
Chapters
Welcome to Speak PR, the podcast for entrepreneurs to give you some thoughts, some tips, and some help on how to get noticed for who you are and the company you're building. My name is Jim James, and I'm an entrepreneur, and I have been running my own companies for over 25 years, largely in the Far East and now back in the UK. Whilst I've been running my own companies, I've also been running a PR firm with offices in, in 3 cities.
So I've had some experience both on the agency side and the client side, and so I'm sharing what I've learned and some insights that I've, I've got on a daily basis with you, lest it helps to give you some ideas for your own PR. Now, uh, today I, um, Got in the middle of a kind of a bit of a fracas between the landlord, who is a farmer, and our neighbors, because the farmer had lit a very large fire and the neighbors were complaining about the rubbish that was on the fire.
And the farmer was kind of struggling a little bit with this because In fact, it wasn't his rubbish.
He'd offered to one of the other neighbours to burn their own rubbish on the fire, and the neighbours that had put the rubbish on the fire had agreed to only put, you know, household, you know, like cardboard and things that might burn.
But actually what they'd brought out was 7 bags of rubbish, which included Tin cans, bottles, and even some cups. The reason I know is because I've, I've had to go over there and try and pick out some of the food that was rotting there because my dog Binky was desperate to get in amongst it. So we had this, this issue where the, the 75-year-old farmer was kind of being attacked for Something he didn't do, and and I had been a witness to the seven trash bags being thrown onto the fire, and I thought, you know, well, perhaps I could just share some some insight. So I said, you know, hey, the farmer offered to burn for the the other neighbors, and they said that they would do this, but actually actually they didn't.
And now you're blaming him. I think that's maybe. Time to get a bit of better understanding. Now, I got a message later from the the neighbor, very polite, saying, "I'm sorry, but you know this farmer is so difficult to deal with. We're always having trouble with him, and he's so hard to deal with, so hard to talk to." And I I replied that you know he's. Livelihood is in our neighborhood, you know. So for the farmer, what we view as walking country and a quiet, peaceful part of Somerset is actually how he makes a living. And his staff are furloughed, and he is having to do a lot of the work on his own. He's 75, driving a tractor, lighting fires, putting up fences, and so on.
Whereas the rest of us are living in varying degrees of comfort. But it turns out, of course, that on the WhatsApp group that we've got, that the farmer is also under fire because he was the one that bought one of the houses in the neighborhood that needs to be renovated, and he's just applied for planning permission, and the local group is up in arms about the the possibility of an extension on an outhouse. And it led me to thinking about how preconceptions and how we are viewed already are so important in how we get perceived in new events and new circumstances. So we have a case where a 75-year-old farmer Uh, is just trying to do his job, but as far as the others are concerned, he is ruining the landscape.
He is ruining how much sunlight they get into their back bedrooms.
And so we, we end up in this situation where actually no one's done anything wrong, but people are fighting with each other. And I suggested to the farmer, maybe an idea would be to, uh, print out the diagrams for the buildings. And he said, you know, I'm just going to build a house that's full of light, and it'll be wonderful for a family to move into. Um, I don't understand what the problem is. So his remit to the architect was that it should be a family house with lots of sunlight and should be able to look over the fields. But the other people looking at this just saw A change to the existing dwelling. They saw an extension. They thought of noise. They thought of chaos.
The farmer said, you know, I can employ people for 6 months on this project. You know, that's good for somebody.
That's, that's getting people back to work.
But the neighbors see that as more traffic, strangers coming in and out of the neighborhood.
Same issue, entirely different viewpoints. And therein lies, you know, one of the biggest problems for PR, which is that entrepreneurs, when they're starting businesses and starting to promote them, they may or may not have a reputation. Their company may or may not have a reputation. Their industry may or may not have a reputation. We've just been posting on our website, and I'll put a link into the podcast, the Edelman Trust Index, which they've just published this year, which they publish every year. Now, this trust index is done all over the world. Thousands of people are surveyed, and what it shows this year is an alarming reduction in the degrees of trust between members of society and the institutions of society— institutions being NGOs, being companies, being the media, being government themselves. Now what we've got then is this reduction in the levels of trust in organizations and parties that in the past were bastions of trust and credibility. And in the same way as our farmer, who in the past would have been considered a landowner, gentry, now the default is to distrust him because his interests are not aligned with those of the people that are living here in leisure.
So we had this situation where Adelman is saying that people of all generations and all societies are now trusting institutions less and less, and yet we are coming into these markets as entrepreneurs now having to overcome this cynicism and During COVID one of the issues that people have been raising is if they're making money currently, is it okay to say that? And should they be making money? Should they be profiting out of the loss of others and the hardship of others? Just in the way that I imagine people had the same angst during great wars or other great outbreaks. There will always be winners, there will always be losers, but to be seen to be profiting is of course in in certainly our society in the West to be considered, you know, poor form. Of course, in China, they have this view that opportunity comes out of crisis. So we're in a position where even in our local neighborhood, the relationships are all on tenterhooks at the moment. And in PR and as entrepreneurs, one of our roles inside the company and amongst our allies and amongst our customers is to give some reassurance that we have integrity, that we have moral direction, and that we can give moral leadership at a time when people don't trust each other.
So how are we going to do that? And one of the things that I've been working on today is video.
There is a natural desire for people to watch other people, and you see this if you ever travel on the plane. Now everyone picks up a screen, and if the— if you're watching, reading the newspaper, and the screen comes down on the plane or the train, everybody stops reading and looks at the screen. So moving images are much more impactful because they have more information. They're actually just a much more efficient way of transferring information from one party to the other. And also, as we've said before, things like body language make a difference well beyond what you say. How you look and how your body is positioned when you're speaking and so on, as we saw with Boris Johnson recently, says as much if not more than the words that you're speaking. So I've been working on creating more and more videos. I signed up for a platform called Vimeo, vimeo.com, for the professional version, and it's about £15 a month. Not a fortune, but it's another subscription.
But I've done that because Vimeo enables me to share my videos without the interruption of the advertising that comes with YouTube.
So It's an investment in my view now that as I'm not going out to visit people and spend £20, £30 on lunch or £4.50 and a cup of coffee and we go Dutch in harder times, I'm, I'm transferring that money into ways that people can still see me. I'm hoping that I can still other people as well through things like Zoom. But there are people that I can't see that I would like to see. There are people that I think would benefit from seeing who I am before entrusting me with what it is they need me to help them with. So in this age of growing cynicism, whether it's you know my next door neighbors and bonfires, or it's the Edelman Global Trust Index where Some leaders have obviously been undermining the, the values, for example, of the free press, and where attacks on media have gone up and around the world. The role that we can play as entrepreneurs, and that you can play as an entrepreneur, is to make sure you're a moral compass for those around you. And the best way of showing that is to use video. Now, what I've done today is I have used my MacBook Pro and my Logitech HD camera and my Rode USB mic to record videos of SpeakPR, the first step, which is called Storify. So I spent quite a lot of hours actually editing this, partly because I made lots of mistakes. But I went online and found a young man in America called Mike who gives these amazing tutorials on how to use a Mac to film both yourself and the screen at the same time, and how to embed one and the other. And I invite you to come to eastwestpr.com/speakpr to see the results. But Sitting here with the smell of bonfire smoke, I was able to learn how to film and edit a video that explains the way that I believe that individuals and companies can structure their messaging using a message home. Now, obviously, it's not the same as if I was able to be in a room with all those people. But at least, at least it's there. At least I'm present. At least if someone does come to my website or finds me on Facebook or LinkedIn or Twitter or YouTube, they will be able to find and see who I am. So I think the thought for the day is that video, with the technology that we've got available and the learning that's been shared online for free by, by people like Mike in America is enabling us as entrepreneurs to sit at home or in our office, home studio, whatever, and create even the most basic, even the most rudimentary of content. I'm never going to be a Coppola or in any way winning awards or anything for the video or the audio that I'm making right now at home. It's sitting in the conservatory while, while the kids are upstairs. But at least I can be out here with you, wherever you are now, in a way that's much closer and more tangible than if I wasn't. I've just written an article which will come out in our newsletter tomorrow about the Allen Curve. And this was after Professor Allen studied MIT and wrote a report about how communication decays due to distance. And he issued an updated book in 2006, which admittedly is still some time ago, but the advent of internet was already with us. And basically what he demonstrated through these tests was that the technology isn't really going to make us communicate any more than not having it. So, but what does, what does work is if we use the technology as a platform, as an enabler. So as I say in my Speak PR Storify first chapter, it's all about you. It's about me. It's about the entrepreneur getting something written down, filmed, or laid down as an audio track and shared Because the Allen curve comes into effect the further away we are from each other and the longer time we are away from each other. And the only way we're going to keep our businesses going is we keep communicating how we can add value and how we can transfer value from other people to our own company. And that's the essence, of course, as Peter Drucker said about business, it only exists to transfer value from one entity to the next. PR can do that because it enables you to communicate the value you can offer. So I leave that with you. I invite you to come to the website, see the videos, leave your comments, and subscribe to our newsletters.
And if you've got any questions, please do email me, write to me.
I'm more than happy to answer them. That's my way of trying to share during these COVID times the skill sets that I've got with entrepreneurs around the world. So they can build a better business. Thank you for listening. Good night and keep communicating.
