In this interview, host Max talks with communication coach Jefferson Fisher about dealing with trolls and negative feedback on social media, the psychological toll of criticism, and strategies to prevent a single bad comment from derailing your day. Jefferson explains his perspective on blocking versus tolerating critics, links the habit of obsessing over negativity to imposter syndrome, and shares his upcoming book that offers a three‑step communication framework (setting, saying with confidence, connecting). He also describes his new membership program that provides private coaching, live classes, and a custom AI trained on all his content to answer users in his voice. Demographic data reveals his audience is roughly 60 % women and 40 % men, primarily nurses, teachers, therapists, and managers worldwide, with strong followings in Australia. The conversation ends with Jefferson reflecting on the impact of his work on everyday professionals and his excitement for future coaching opportunities.
Chapters
What's the best way to handle trolls on social media?
Hmm, well, there's two points of view on that. Nobody's asked me that before. One point is you have to allow them to have the opinion even if you disagree with it, and understand that when they leave a comment, the algorithm doesn't care.
It's—
it could be good or bad. There are videos that go huge viral and they're terrible comments. So what's your, what's your goal? Your goal for the maximum people, maximum amount of people to get it? Fine. Otherwise, my advice is just block those people. I mean, it's, it's your— it's, it's my platform. It's not yours. Go follow somebody else. I mean, that's, it's as simple as that. But what you can't do is say, all right, I have 100 comments, but one person said something negative. You can't allow that one to outweigh the positive of the others, the other 99. And that's, that's what happens is all of a sudden I'm giving that one review, like on my book, for example. My book will be out in, in March and there's already, I think, like one review on Amazon. It's a fake review. They haven't seen my book, but yet it's a negative review. And I was like, I need to, I need to go and report this. They're not— the book's not even out. How can they do that? They're lying. And I was like, what is it? What does it matter? Just let that, let that go. Thankfully, I don't really have trolls on my social media, my daily videos. I just have a wonderful, wonderful community of people. But every once in a while I've had one and it's just a— it could be a bot for all you know. It's really the people who are for you will always support you, but the people who are against you will just be against you.
Yeah. I mean, most of the time it's not an issue, but sometimes your content— I'm sure you've experienced— massive, you know, social media footprints. Like, sometimes your content reaches the audience that you didn't intend for it to reach.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, no doubt. Yeah, there's people that are very outspoken in their different opinions and their disagreement, and that's not a bad thing. It's just if you get to where you're obsessing over the negative comments, that's unhealthy. You have to be able to take a little bit of it, and sometimes there's truth in the criticism. Sometimes it's The other person just wants to feel heard, so they need to say it.
That aspect of human nature though, it's so annoying that we tend to perseverate on the one neg— you could have 100 positive reviews, but it's that one negative review that keeps you up at night.
Yeah, I think it's because it feeds those hidden insecurities. That's what happens. It feeds those hidden insecurities that you think you don't have, but yet when you're not thinking about it, maybe it's just in the back of your mind, that imposter syndrome that I really am— I'm not who I say I am. Maybe I really am an idiot. Maybe I am, you know, making it all up. Maybe I am— maybe I don't know anything. Um, maybe I am an imposter. I mean, that is— that's the voice that you're feeding. So it goes into this, you know, who are you listening to?
Who do you—
who are you listening to? Are you listening to the people that, that want to feed into you? Are you listening to the people who want to just for whatever reason leave some terrible comment just because? Is that who you're going to listen to? Is that who you want to take advice from?
Yeah, well, it hits that, that nerve that's exposed for all of us.
Yeah, you know, am I enough? Am I really who I say and feel that I am? Yeah, I think everybody— that's a hard-hitting question that everybody reflects on.
Hmm. Well, so many people are eagerly anticipating the next conversation. I mean, I'm so excited.
Thanks, man, for it.
Yeah. Who'd you write the book for? Like, who, who out there stands to gain the most from picking it up?
Yeah, I wrote it for the people who asked for it, and that was my followers. I'm on social media when over time people say, you should write a book, you should write a book. And I thought, well, I guess I'll write a book. I mean, I didn't know anything about it, and slowly I thought I was going to self-publish a book and then got into traditional publishing, which you know all about. And that's, I mean, it's just a different world that I've learned. I feel like I just went through a roller coaster, right? And I wrote it for the people that are constantly looking how they're going to have that next conversation with that so-and-so. Like, they've had plenty of conversations with that mother-in-law. They want to know how to handle the next one. And so I offer a framework, a 3-step framework of if they follow this formula, they will have a better conversation. Every time it's setting, saying things with control, saying it with confidence, say to connect. It is a way that I'm trying to impart, here's my communication framework that you want to start making your own little tidbits of videos on how to communicate that work for you. This is how to do it. Like, my hope is that when they read this book, they just don't need me. They don't, they can be able to have it for themselves on how they want to communicate. It's teaching them all the things that they were never taught. In school. Yeah, we were, we were taught how to— I mean, we weren't even taught how to do taxes, or— I mean, you know what I mean? The most important things I feel like in our life— I can tell you everything about Texas history, and I can state some really random physics facts, and I can't remember calculus— but, um, just being able to have a heart-to-heart with somebody, uh, how to handle a conversation with grace and kindness even in the face of absolute, um, I just— oppressiveness is a skill that you have to learn and be developed. Wow.
Do you, uh, very obviously very valuable. Do you see coaching in your future at all, or is this— is, is most of your work, um, you know, via public, uh, communication on platforms like social media, right, books, etc.?
Um, I started a membership for the first time 2 weeks ago. So it's a school of communication and it is a— it's been awesome so far, Max. It really has, because I'm able to apply private coaching and have live classes with them more often. And that— I just get a lot of— I get a lot of fulfillment out of that. So I field questions with people that are able to come on and I answer that specific question. There are other people that have that exact topic. They're able to talk with each other in the community, have an AI that has all of my content. And yeah, people use it. I can see people use it every day to answer their own text messages or emails from people of how I would handle that. Like if you want to say how you would have written that note. Yeah, you know what I mean? So it's been, it's been really fulfilling and a whole lot of fun getting to see that.
Well, how does that work? Does the AI have access to like your— the manuscript of your book, your social media? Like how does it answer as you?
Everything. Yeah. So anything I've ever done, everything I've ever written, everything, every podcast I've been on, every, every one of my videos. And so every time I post a video, it automatically uploads. And so it's, um, and I'm able to give it, you know, parameters of when this is how you want to be able to respond. I want— I, I like it being very short and concise rather than giving these long ones. And then also it's, um, not a large language model like ChatGPT where they— it kind of hallucinates and pulls things from the internet which you want to hear. Mine's small language, meaning it's only going to pull exactly what I know. So if you're asking me the square root of 1,000,005, Jefferson's not going to know, um, you know. And there's ways to— that I have it to respond that if I don't know the question, it pushes to the email and I'll get the question if it's one I want to answer. So it's a, um, It's fun. It's really, really cool. And I've gotten a lot of amazing reviews on it early out the gate, but I've also made mistakes too. So we're just slowly starting to learn and finagle. But the biggest thing about it is I'm able to help people in real time. And that's just cool because social media, I don't have any connection to them. But here in the membership, like, I'm able to meet them. I get to know their background. I get to know Susan from Kansas City. I'm able to know Noel from like Anchorage, Alaska, like all over the world. So it's really, really cool to be able to do that. It's a, it's a blessing.
That's a, that's so dope. Is there a, is there a particular demographic that you find that your work resonates more strongly with? I mean, is it like single guys looking for a date? Is it couples?
It is. I think I'm about 60% women on my platform, and I have 40% men. And it, it carries over really to, I'd say, probably the biggest occupations are nurses, teachers, therapists, management. And if you look at that, it's because they are in the middle in some sense. A teacher has to report to faculty and deal with parents and students. A nurse has to deal with administration, patients, and faculty. Like, there's this blend of having to deal with certain amounts of above you and below you, and that's a lot of communication. Or I get a lot of guys in management that they've just been working at the same company for 20 years, and now they're in their 30s, and now they're not the low man on the totem pole anymore, and now they're in charge of people, and now they have to have people report to them. And God, what am I going to do? And now for the first time, they're thinking, I need to change how I communicate. And now they're wanting to invest in their communication to change, to be a better manager, to to increase in their jobs. So they realize that now communication is an asset that they need that they never had to deal with before. And that's what I see a lot of. What's crazy is just the all over the world, it's just all over the place. Like one of my top demographics is Sydney and Melbourne, like in Australia. Huge. I've never been to— never been— I've never been out of the US. Like, uh, so Seeing that is really cool. And the, the occupations, you can just tell these are people that are talking to a lot of people and have a lot of stress on them. Hmm.
Yeah, I mean, and those are— you've listed off some, listed off some really important professions. I mean, teachers, nurses.
Yeah, they're people that craft our, our communities. I mean, they craft humans. That's what teaches, you know, who we are and who we want to be. Even with therapists, a lot of time they ask if they can help use some of my techniques to teach, you know, their, their patients. And that's a huge honor. Um, every day I'm like, yeah, absolutely. So it's, it's cool to be able to affect real change, and it just, it started in my car with my phone.
I love it, dude.
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