Mother Lois to the rescue. No time for caressing and soft-peddling. My friend Brian needs to grow some “Brass” as Bill Clinton coined it in his recent speech at the Democratic National Convention. He needs to grow them fast, before he sinks into that self-pity hole that could beome his comfort zone.

I quickly reversed his thinking, because I have been down this road before with many clients over the years. Brian was not capable of seeing his great achievement. This lawsuit was filed a while ago, but the agency he worked for didn’t acknowledge it. His lawyer, who he has great faith in, couldn’t get the opposing lawyer to respond.

Within an hour of the story appearing, the ad agency’s counsel called Brian’s lawyer to apologize for the delay. They claim they had a hectic workload. They set up a meeting to discuss the suit. No one knows for sure, but there is a good possibility that the suit will be settled for a big chunk of change.

Brian was ignoring all of that in our midnight conversation. The article humiliated him and he was embarrassed to go to work. Everyone now knows he was dismissed. People will now look at him as a loser.

“No Brian,” I answered. “Just the opposite. Smart and accomplished people will understand that you had the constitution to stand up for what is right. The story just stated the facts. You couldn’t have asked for a better outcome. The agency didn’t offer any quotes that were disparaging to you. They are not going to play a legal matter out in the press. This article brought them to the table. They are probably going to offer you a settlement that is going to make this problem go away for them. They deal with matters like this all the time.”

The truth is that high profile personalities pay people like me, to get stories like this, in the press so their opponents fold quickly. I have done this kind of work for big Hollywood names. My friend Brian was clueless about his big score.

All he was concerned about was his privacy and what others would think. In the age of the Internet (and even before which is another discussion) nothing is private. If you are going to play in the big league, you have to be prepared to be thick-skinned.

Do you think that Mark Zuckerberg or Tim Cook, Google their names several times a day to see what people are saying about them? They both are confident about their work and rest their reputations on that.

Which is exactly what I told my pal Brian to do. “Hold your head high and continue to focus on your work. If anyone says anything negative to you, just say you are not allowed to comment on legal matters. That speaks volumes to the dummies who will start to understand that you are a strong, self-confidant business person, smart enough to make all the right moves.”

Brian was amazed. He never looked at his situation that way. He was influenced earlier by others who probably wanted him to suffer. I made him promise that he would not talk to the press or even to his friends, because one wrong word could hurt his case.

I heard from Brian the next morning. He sounded like a new man. It takes a while to understand the ruboff that you get from Internet.