From NBC Page to Marketing Visionary: The Dynamic Path of Greg Castronuovo

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How does someone rise within the ranks of one of the most competitive and creative industries on the planet?

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What does it look like from the inside of the legendary NBC page program?

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How does someone lead a multi-billion dollar business?

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And is the future of advertising as AI takes hold a good one, and for who?

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We'll explore the answers to those questions and beyond, during this episode of the Career Journey Podcast, no Wrong Choices.

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Thank you so much for tuning in.

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I'm Larry Samuels, soon to be joined by my collaborators Tushar Saxena and Larry Shea, but before we kick off, I have a request.

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Please be sure to follow our show on your favorite podcast platform and to give us a five-star rating.

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This support enables us to keep growing and to keep bringing these great journey stories to life.

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Now let's get started.

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This episode features the advertising and marketing executive, greg Castronovo.

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Greg has worked for powerhouse media properties such as NBC, fox and the WWE and served as president for some of the largest ad agencies in the world before founding his own company, venti Marketing.

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Larry Shea is the creative soul on this program, or at least one of them, and I think marketing advertising creativity.

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You're the right person.

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Take it away, lead us into this one.

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Yeah, when I think marketing and advertising executive, I think Hollywood right, I think movies right.

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Nothing in common with Tom Hanks he's the big ad executive.

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And Mr Mom Terry Garr is the big ad executive.

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And it's all about the pitch.

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Right, you got the client sitting in the room with their arms folded.

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You got to make them appreciate the creativity of what you bring to the table.

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Right, there's guys making mouth noises about trains and stuff and you got to sell it.

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Right, it's about the sell.

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So I'm so curious to see if Greg's life really relates to that Hollywood image that you have of an advertising executive.

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All right.

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So have you guys ever watched the show 30 Rock?

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Very popular show.

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Absolutely.

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Yeah, Okay.

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So in our research I've learned that Greg was actually a former page over at NBC and his rise, I think, a lot mimics the character of Kenneth who was a page on that show, Jack Donaghy, the character that was played by Alec Baldwin, which he said hey, Kenneth, one day you will run this network hey, kenneth, one day you will run this network, and I'm very surprised that after looking at Greg's, you know his rise through that company, through NBC.

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I'm surprised he's not running that network, but he has been so talented and you know some of the things he's worked on.

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We'll get to it in the interview.

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I mean, he has been able to actually, you know, really carve a terrific path for himself within the field of advertising, so much so that he was able to branch out, create his own company and now he works with some of the big movers and shakers in the industry.

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It's really, really inspiring.

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Yeah, and you know, for me, I've known Greg for decades.

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He's a very talented, brilliant guy who knows everything about this business, so I'm sure we're going to get a roadmap to some very interesting stuff.

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He's also a fan of the show right, absolutely, in fact.

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He recently sent me an image of his top four most listened to podcasts in 2024.

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We made it.

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That's big, so I guess this is payback in a way, greg, thank you, thank you.

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Here is Greg Castronovo, greg, thank you, thank you.

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Here is Greg Castronovo, greg.

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Thank you so much for joining us.

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Thank you guys.

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I am quite humbled.

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I know how many wonderful people you've had on this show who I think are 10 times more successful than me, so I just really appreciate you even thinking about me.

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Well, we would all disagree with that statement, and let's move beyond that.

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Yes, I'm sure you're very interesting as well.

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You are very interesting, that's it Interview's over.

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Okay, we're done, we're done, we're out.

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So, greg, you know I gave the broad introduction, but you take the mic.

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You know who is Greg Castronovo.

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What do you do?

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And I guess, give the short elevator pitch about who you are and just set this up for us.

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Well, first and foremost, I'm a dad, right, I'm a family man, I'm a husband, I'm a son, I'm a brother, I'm a friend, and then all the work stuff.

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So a couple of years ago, right after COVID, I started my own consultancy, venti Marketing, and I work with brands, I work with publishers, I work with platforms to figure out new ways to grow, to optimize their marketing and media and to help them in their journey as companies, as brands, as individuals, to be better at what they do.

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So how does that work?

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It's so funny.

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We're getting ready to do this interview and it's like he's an ad executive, he's a strategist, he's a marketing strategist.

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How is this all work together?

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Talk about the job in general.

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I think of an ad guy.

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I think of the old movies, right, pitching some idea to a big company and trying to get that company to sign on board and the whole thing, and you're doing like Foley exercises and stuff.

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You know, is that just silly or is?

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it so much more vast than that.

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Get into that a little bit.

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Yes, when I was on the agency side, I was doing a ton of pitching.

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I mean, I pitched clients across every category.

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We weren't purely a creative agency, we were a media agency.

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But there were times when we brought creative people to the table and we had to pitch more than just a broadcast spot or a printout or a billboard.

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You had to pitch creative ideas and creative campaigns.

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What were you going to do?

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That was going to be innovative, that would break through with the consumers that the brand, the client was trying to reach, right, yeah, so yeah.

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And we would spend months, weekends, you know, hour upon hour brainstorming and coming up with various ideas for clients like Levi's and Clorox and Wells Fargo and CBS television network and the CW and Activision and just you name it all different types of brands of all different shapes and sizes.

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Was that your strength?

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Was that what you were good at, or was it the other stuff?

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your strength?

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Was that what you were good at, or was it the other stuff?

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Not in the beginning.

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In the beginning I absolutely was horrified at pitching and being in the room and commanding a room.

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I had to grow into that.

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But by the time I was a couple of years into my agency life.

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I really started to love that and lean into it and I realized that I had a deep curiosity and passion to understanding how brands worked and how clients worked and how their businesses work, and I loved learning about it.

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I also loved working with the team over those many months or weeks and coming up with those innovative and interesting ideas to win over that client.

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And when you won you were on top of the world, but when you lost you were just.

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You know you had to go find some way an outlet.

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After putting in all that time for no reason, right.

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Yeah, exactly, a lot of time, a lot of money, and you know, losing just was, was terrible, and that's one of the reasons why, you know, I committed myself to having a better success rate than a loss rate.

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It's motivating.

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Loss is more motivating than than winning.

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I mean, it's the truest statement of all.

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So let's take it back to the beginning.

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When you were, when you were young, Were you more of a creative kid, or being around being around?

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Let's say, you know a father who is very much of a scientist, very much of a thinker.

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I want to say is a methodical thinker.

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Did that rub off on you as a kid, or were you more of a creative type?

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no-transcript worked and seeing how this innovation was saving lives.

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And innovation has been a hallmark of my career ever since I've been in this marketing world.

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It's something that clients crave and it's something you always have to bring to the table.

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You always have to reinvent yourself to stay relevant and again to break through with consumers.

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So I think early on, it instilled in me this idea that you always need to know what's new and next, and it was very relevant in medicine and it's very relevant in marketing.

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Stick it on your childhood?

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Did I also read that your great uncle was a notable American advertising photographer?

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Is that true?

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Talk about that you guys are really good.

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You read the website.

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Yeah, my uncle Tony, he was my great uncle, he was my godfather.

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If you're Roman Catholic, you know what that means.

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Forget about the Italian definition Starring music in the background right now.

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He worked with some really big brands, you know, like Columbia Pictures, and he shot, you know, some really big actors and also did work with with cruise lines and with CPG brands as well, and he was a very notable photographer.

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And so, on the one hand, I had my dad taking me into the hospital seeing all this innovation and what's next in computers and imaging and 3d, and on the other hand we're talking the 80s I had my uncle Tony.

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I'd go to his house and he would show me these spreads he would be doing for Food and Wine magazine and really innovative stuff that he was shooting for key art, and I think both I never really realized this until later on in my life, but both probably mashed up in my head at some point and became who I was as a marketing executive later on.

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As a kid or as a young person?

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Marketing is all about storytelling.

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Were you a storyteller as you were growing up?

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No, I was a pretty shy kid for a bit because we moved around a lot.

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We moved from Florida to New York and it took me a little bit to get my footing.

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I got involved in a lot of stuff when I was in high school.

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I was that enigma, kind of that anomaly who worked on the creative side Not worked, but did creative stuff in high school but also played sports.

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So I'd come off the baseball field and I I was actually a good singer, I had a good voice.

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Um, don't ask me to sing.

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So before, before, high school musicals were cool.

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I was actually in some high school musicals, um, you know.

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So I just, I don't know, and I didn't worry about the stigma of it, I just did it and I was nervous as hell.

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I was always shy, I always made mistakes, but I still did it.

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And I got up there and I, you know, I sang some songs in front of the entire auditorium of parents and kids, and I don't know even to this day how I mustered up that courage, because I was not, let's say, a gregarious guy.

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So your time in school, obviously you fed a bit of that creative side to you and you said you went to Washington and Lee actually to, I guess, to uh pursue pre-med.

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Yeah, when you, what was it that turned you off to the medical side of things?

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Organic chemistry.

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Isn't that for everybody, right?

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Yeah, exactly.

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I think I was sitting in the library trying to memorize all these molecules for a test the next day and my brain just kind of exploded, melted and dripped out of one of my ears, you know, and I was just like I, this is not what I want to do.

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I don't know why I'm doing this, and I had had exposure to the journalism side of things and the J school.

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There was an accredited J school.

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They had Pulitzer Prize winning professors.

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It was super interesting to me because I'd never been exposed to anything like that.

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I wasn't on the school newspaper in high school or anything, and so, you know, I just knew that I wanted to go in a different direction.

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That first time, when you, when you first got into broadcasting whether it be, I think it was the college radio station what was that moment for you where it just kind of clicked and said you know what?

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This is a road I want to go down.

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Yeah, you know, there was just a certain fun in it, you know, which I didn't have in any of my pre-med pursuits, right.

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So and camaraderie, and the people were just engaging and everyone had kind of this sense of purpose and they were joyful in kind of what they were doing, and so it just it was contagious for me.

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I don't know, I don't know how else to articulate it, but I was very attracted to it.

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Did you eventually want to go?

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I mean, you kind of mentioned this before, but did you want to go into broadcasting?

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Because you did major in journalism and communications, because I mean I can see that leap from I want to be a broadcaster to I want to go for a newspaper.

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I wanted to be, you know, bob Woodward.

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Um, I studied under Clark Mollenhoff who was um Pulitzer prize winning journalist for the Des Moines register and he was one of the guys who helped, you know, break and investigate Watergate, you know.

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So, yeah, I was pretty motivated to be an investigative journalist, um, and when I I was able to, through one of my J school professors, get the internship at NBC Sports, it really opened my eyes that there were all these other jobs within the broadcast world.

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And then when I became a page which I know we're going to talk a little bit more about it really opened my eyes to understand that there's a whole business behind the business.

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And I became almost as not almost, I became just as curious and passionate about understanding the business from a sales and marketing perspective as I did when I was trying to pursue investigative reporting and journalism, pursue, uh, investigative reporting and journalism, um, and I kind of was seeing where journalism was going and it wasn't really ringing my bell that much.

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You know the punditry, yeah, you know the bs that we see on these cable news channels today.

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It's just I'm so glad I didn't go down that route, because I just don't think news is what it is today it's not as easy as it once was, that's for sure.

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No, for sure, it's all entertainment it's all about the ad dollars infotainment right rating points yeah.

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So why not just do that for a living and forget about trying to worry about the objectionable content?

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so you know, as you're coming out of school, you eventually wind up in the page program.

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Is that the first thing you did coming out of college?

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Yeah, absolutely.

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So I got back from on W&L was on trimesters.

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So I got back from the spring internship at NBC Sports I hope my memory serves me right.

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And you know, back when I, in the 80s, you didn't have the Internet, you didn't have any of this, you know quick way to engage with anybody or send them your resume or post it on LinkedIn.

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So I, um, you know, I, I I had met some pages during that internship and I said, well, how do I apply for that?

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I was sending my resume to newspapers throughout the country, to affiliate networks throughout the country, trying to see if I could just become a desk assistant somewhere affiliate networks throughout the country, trying to see if I could just become a desk assistant somewhere.

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And it just so happened that my father went to medical school with a guy who lived in LA, who was a dear friend of the family, who knew someone who was a producer on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, and he put me on the phone with her.

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We had a lovely chat and she said I would be happy to send your resume over to the head of the page program back then and I got a call.

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So, yes, connections are everything and I owe it to my dad for having that connection and I'll mention his name.

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He's no longer alive.

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But Frank Marshall was like my West Coast dad.

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I lived in New York, but he was on the West Coast, lived in Sherman Oaks, and he took me under his wing and he said yeah, we're gonna, we're gonna find you something.

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And I initially interviewed for the page program in Burbank and they said you know, we're going to send you back to New York because you know you're not going to be able to afford to live here, you're going to have to live with your parents.

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And that that was almost a deal breaker for me.

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I was like what?

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I'm going to have to commute from Long Island to New York.

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You know, I want my independence, I want my freedom, um.

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But I went to New York, I interviewed in New York and I write I think it was literally a week or two before graduation.

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They called me up and they said we'd like you to start, and it was the Monday after graduation.

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I said Is there any way that I could start a few weeks later?

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They said Nope no way man, you got, you got to go.

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So the day after I got back from Virginia and I was in New York on Long Island, I started commuting into the city and I was at 30 Rock.

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Wow.

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So for those people, I mean, I'm very familiar.

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I worked at NBC Sports a long time ago.

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So to me the page program is like this thing that people aspire to and it's a big deal.

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But for those people who aren't familiar with the page program, please just share what that's about, why it's exclusive.

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I know a lot of famous people have been in the program Give us a little bit of background on that.

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Yeah, and it's funny because, you know, coming out of college I didn't know the.

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I didn't.

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I had a respect for it, but I didn't really know about the legacy and the amazing people that had come out of the program, both executives and actors I mean Michael Eisner and Aubrey Plaza was a page, so both sides of the business right.

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Superman right, If I remember correctly.

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Yeah, I mean possibly, I don't know I thought christopher reeve was yeah, was, he was the okay he just regis fieldman, yeah, so, in front of the camera, behind the camera, and that's the whole point of the page program and it it was.

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You know, I couldn't believe that I had the privilege to be able to put on that jacket and to walk the halls of 30 Rock, you know, and for me it was about getting as much exposure to the whole business, not just one piece of the business Like college can teach you only so much.

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So I needed that exposure.

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I needed to understand so much more.

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I needed to understand so much more.

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I went on assignment not only with things like Letterman at the time, but also in sports sales, right, and so I was able to really get this three-dimensional view of the business and it's what I needed and also network with people no pun intended, but meet people who potentially could become my hiring manager in the future, and that's exactly what happened.

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So the page program is a brilliant thing, it's an amazing program, it's it's changed a lot from what I've heard.

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Um, I think it's harder probably to get into than it was back when.

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I think they get thousands of resumes, um, and it's a pretty rigorous process.

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Now you're not just interviewing with one or two resumes and it's a pretty rigorous process.

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Now.

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You're not just interviewing with one or two people, but there's a whole committee of people you have to go through to get in.

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And they've shortened the program a little bit.

00:20:33.488 --> 00:20:40.151
I think when I was going it was like 18 months, so you had about 18 months to land something.

00:20:40.151 --> 00:20:43.288
But the point wasn't necessarily to just get a job at NBC.

00:20:43.288 --> 00:21:02.261
But the point wasn't necessarily to just get a job at NBC.

00:21:02.261 --> 00:21:05.943
The point was to potentially get enough experience that you could leverage that and maybe get a job elsewhere as well.

00:21:05.963 --> 00:21:06.605
I happened to longer there.

00:21:06.605 --> 00:21:09.226
I don't know him now, but we used to sit in the hallway.

00:21:09.226 --> 00:21:12.188
We were poor so we would eat like tuna fish out of a can together.

00:21:12.188 --> 00:21:30.108
And he ended up writing for SNL, writing for Seinfeld and writing some big movies and and and I could tell at the time when I, when I met him and I was a page with him, that he had that singular focus, that he was really focused on what he wanted to do.

00:21:30.108 --> 00:21:31.051
I wasn't.

00:21:31.051 --> 00:21:37.823
I was like Okay, let me look around a little bit, knock on a few doors, talk to a few people and really figure out what I want to do.

00:21:37.823 --> 00:21:46.375
And I went on assignment and sales and I saw what these guys were doing and they were having a hell of a lot of fun and making a lot of money and that was very attractive to me.

00:21:47.760 --> 00:21:58.923
You know it's so funny you telling that story and we do know about the PAGE program from one of our previous guests and it just you could hear the reverence and you understand how prestigious it is.

00:21:58.923 --> 00:22:15.124
But I guess my question is you know, do you ever look back and, you know, see that fork in the road and say, you know I wasn't going to get paid, I had to live back with mom and dad again, like maybe I wouldn't have done that, how things would have turned out differently?

00:22:15.124 --> 00:22:19.673
I mean, I expect it didn't take you long to see how important it was once you were in the door.

00:22:19.673 --> 00:22:25.313
But it sounds like there was a real decision there of do I really want to do this?

00:22:26.080 --> 00:22:27.319
No, it's actually the opposite.

00:22:27.319 --> 00:22:36.974
I look back and I say how lucky was I that I didn't get in my own way and I made the right choice and I did that.

00:22:36.974 --> 00:22:45.194
And then you know, as a kid right out of college I mean back then when you worked, you know you'd do five tours on a Saturday.

00:22:45.194 --> 00:22:54.092
Then you would work audience control for SNL and then you would actually be invited to the SNL cast party.

00:22:54.092 --> 00:23:02.811
You'd party till God only knows when, and luckily they had a page lounge that had a shower and lockers.

00:23:02.811 --> 00:23:07.280
You'd shower up and you'd do another six or seven tours on a sunday.

00:23:07.280 --> 00:23:08.962
Wow, and you know it.

00:23:09.785 --> 00:23:19.967
And even that just gave me the ability to present and speak in front of 17 people inside an elevator at 30 rockefeller plaza.

00:23:19.967 --> 00:23:24.990
You know, and the first few tours I did, I was nervous, attack right, and you're you stick to the script.

00:23:24.990 --> 00:23:25.413
Like few tours I did.

00:23:25.413 --> 00:23:28.766
I was nervous, attack Right, and you're you stick to the script, like to memorize a script.

00:23:28.766 --> 00:23:38.145
It just I was so nervous I would say one thing wrong and there'd be like a plant on the tour that would bust me and say, no, that's not what happened in 1942.

00:23:38.547 --> 00:23:43.821
And I, uh, and, and once I relaxed and I realized there was nobody spying on me.

00:23:43.821 --> 00:23:57.791
Uh, we started to have fun with the audience, you know, and you try to get a reaction out of them and and get them laughing and maybe tell a few fibs or so and just to embellish and make them have a better tour and a better experience.

00:23:57.791 --> 00:24:01.105
But you never forgot that you were the tip of the spear.

00:24:01.105 --> 00:24:15.374
As far as the brand itself, you were always representing nbc and you never would do anything to besmirch the brand or besmirch the company.

00:24:15.374 --> 00:24:33.296
Um, so you, you, you know you, you you would have fun to a point, but you would never go overboard were your years as a page, were when so, you were there probably during the Will Ferrell years, yeah.

00:24:33.635 --> 00:24:36.167
Church Lady, yeah, church Lady, dana Carvey.

00:24:36.167 --> 00:24:38.471
At the end of the day, dana Carvey runs things of that nature.

00:24:39.093 --> 00:24:39.674
Little Eddie Murphy.

00:24:40.144 --> 00:24:41.832
Yeah, what are some of the great stories from that era?

00:24:41.832 --> 00:24:44.272
So many great people in that point.

00:24:45.144 --> 00:24:49.576
You know, look, I was still very respectful and I didn't really mingle with the talent.

00:24:49.576 --> 00:24:52.913
Sometimes at the parties they would rope us off.

00:24:52.913 --> 00:25:00.218
But there were a couple of moments where I, you know, I walked in the studio 8H and there was a rehearsal.

00:25:00.218 --> 00:25:13.951
There was an audience rehearsal about I think it was eight o'clock on Saturday, but there was an even earlier soundcheck rehearsal for the musical host that night and I was a big clapton fan.

00:25:13.951 --> 00:25:20.508
You know my entire life, high school, college, everything and I walk in and there's eric clapton performing no tears in heaven.

00:25:20.508 --> 00:25:27.907
Uh, he just just became, you know, a big hit for him and obviously you know the story behind that song and I'm the.

00:25:28.169 --> 00:25:38.750
I felt like I was the only one standing in Studio 8H and I had that jacket on and that jacket with the NBC logo on it was your all-access pass to the entire building and everyone respected that.

00:25:38.750 --> 00:25:40.290
I could go anywhere I wanted to go.

00:25:40.290 --> 00:25:52.679
I couldn't walk into a control room or an active live show and disrupt it, but if there was a rehearsal going on or anything going on, I really could walk the floors unfettered.

00:25:52.679 --> 00:25:54.107
Can you keep the jacket?

00:25:54.628 --> 00:25:55.371
Do they give you the jacket?

00:25:55.371 --> 00:25:56.795
Is it like the masters?

00:25:56.795 --> 00:25:58.247
You got to keep it at the golf course?

00:25:59.088 --> 00:26:01.773
or like your varsity coat from high school or whatever.

00:26:01.773 --> 00:26:02.997
That's a funny story.

00:26:04.204 --> 00:26:04.727
That's a funny story.

00:26:04.727 --> 00:26:13.238
I kept the jacket for the longest time and then you know I you don't make money as a as a marketing guy, as an advertising guy for a lot of years, right?

00:26:13.238 --> 00:26:15.652
So I needed a blue blazer.

00:26:16.192 --> 00:26:16.915
Oh, that's great.

00:26:17.325 --> 00:26:21.067
And I painstakingly took the NBC logo off the jacket, oh, get out of here.

00:26:21.067 --> 00:26:21.630
Really Wow.

00:26:23.905 --> 00:26:29.336
And I used that as my jacket to go on job interviews and to go to work for a while.

00:26:29.396 --> 00:26:30.558
Oh, that's funny, you still have the patch.

00:26:31.709 --> 00:26:32.214
You know, I probably do.

00:26:32.214 --> 00:26:32.721
You still have the patch?

00:26:32.721 --> 00:26:33.005
I probably do.

00:26:33.005 --> 00:26:35.433
You should have left the patch for job interviews.

00:26:35.433 --> 00:26:41.615
I know, fast forward many years later.

00:26:41.615 --> 00:26:44.486
Cbs was a client of mine for a decade In fact.

00:26:44.486 --> 00:26:48.931
I just had lunch with the former CMO, george Schweitzer.

00:26:48.931 --> 00:26:58.244
He was with CBS for I think like 48 years and he was with CBS for I think like 48 years and, um, he was my client and, uh, I should have walked in with my NBC page jacket.

00:26:58.244 --> 00:27:02.076
He might've fired me, but it would have been hysterical.

00:27:03.046 --> 00:27:04.511
Well, you took the jacket.

00:27:04.511 --> 00:27:05.990
What did you use it for?

00:27:05.990 --> 00:27:10.192
You talked about interviews, Um, you know what did it help you land.

00:27:10.192 --> 00:27:10.875
What was next?

00:27:12.906 --> 00:27:24.888
Yeah, I've been so fortunate that there have been so many wonderful people who saw something in me and gave me a chance and mentored me throughout my career.

00:27:24.888 --> 00:27:43.891
Funny enough, I was in Florida and I ran into the guy who gave me my first job at NBC sales, a gentleman by the name of Mike Mandelker, and I said I went up to Mike's table, I said I can't believe it's you.

00:27:43.891 --> 00:27:44.913
And I said hi to him.

00:27:44.913 --> 00:27:58.008
What made you take a chance on a shy young kid like me?

00:27:58.008 --> 00:27:59.672
To you know, get a job, even though it was like a sales associate job at NBC.

00:27:59.672 --> 00:28:11.327
And he said I was always told that the pages were already vetted and they were the best and brightest and you could never go wrong hiring a page, and you know, that's why I hired you.

00:28:11.327 --> 00:28:12.911
And he said and look, you turned out great.

00:28:12.911 --> 00:28:20.726
So, uh, and I thanked him for giving me my first real job in in uh broadcasting.

00:28:21.587 --> 00:28:22.711
So what's year one like?

00:28:22.711 --> 00:28:29.902
What's your one like for young, for a young advertiser a young person going into advertising, a young person going into advertising.

00:28:29.902 --> 00:28:30.724
What's your one like?

00:28:31.205 --> 00:29:00.296
Well, I was supporting all of these sales account executives who were selling nbc prime time, nbc daytime, um, and you know, at the time that was the gold standard for advertising was that advertising time and I think, as a basis for my career in advertising, understanding the value of what that commercial time was and understanding how it got bought and sold was really important.

00:29:00.296 --> 00:29:01.258
I needed to know that.

00:29:01.258 --> 00:29:05.602
I needed to know that these advertisers were fueling the entire business.

00:29:05.602 --> 00:29:08.292
They were paying for the talent, they were paying for the production.

00:29:08.292 --> 00:29:15.853
They were what was the starting point for anything that came after that, anything that you got to watch at home.

00:29:15.853 --> 00:29:22.011
Without those sponsors, without those advertisers at the time, there would be no program.

00:29:22.011 --> 00:29:30.714
So we took it very seriously and again, I had some really great AEs who taught me everything they knew.

00:29:30.714 --> 00:29:40.778
They were 20, 30 year veterans selling broadcast television and they were very forthcoming with me about how that worked.

00:29:40.778 --> 00:29:46.190
I had one AE in particular who was inspiring to me.

00:29:46.190 --> 00:29:58.231
Her name was Laura Nurse and I made one of the biggest mistakes I've ever made in my career and she, um, she really taught me a lot with the way that she uh treated me.

00:29:58.571 --> 00:30:37.311
After I I came forward and told her about that mistake, um it, it was back in the day you had to fax, uh, the, the plans to ad agencies, for, you know, the, the upfronts that they were purchasing Basically I know this is terminology, I don't want to get too deep into it but the commercial time that they were buying, we're talking millions upon millions of dollars, and there was always a back sheet to the plan that the advertiser would see, that the ad agency would see, um, and that back sheet was kind of the backstop, the lowest price that the network was willing to go.

00:30:37.311 --> 00:30:40.711
And you never shared that back sheet with the, the ad agency.

00:30:40.711 --> 00:30:42.220
So what did I do?

00:30:42.220 --> 00:31:08.174
I faxed the front to j walter thompson and, and the minute I found out, and, and I don't know, uh, you know to this day, and this is just the way I operate, um, and it taught me a valuable lesson that this is all the only way to operate I marched into her office and I said, I know this is probably going to get me fired, but I did the unspeakable I faxed over the wrong sheet.

00:31:09.257 --> 00:31:11.248
You know she, she kind of took a pause.

00:31:11.248 --> 00:31:14.977
She said when did this happen?

00:31:14.977 --> 00:31:16.146
I said three seconds ago.

00:31:16.146 --> 00:31:17.691
I found out, you know.

00:31:17.691 --> 00:31:19.194
I went back to the fax machine.

00:31:19.194 --> 00:31:22.353
I found it and she said hold on one second.

00:31:22.413 --> 00:31:29.369
She got the person on the phone at J Walter that she had a great relationship with and she said I need you to do me a favor.

00:31:29.369 --> 00:31:31.212
I need you to throw that second page out.

00:31:31.212 --> 00:31:33.455
And I'm going to tell you why.

00:31:33.455 --> 00:31:37.500
She told him, why that person said yeah, no problem, I get it.

00:31:37.500 --> 00:31:44.268
It happens she knew that that person could go to their boss and their management and say this is what we're going to get.

00:31:44.268 --> 00:31:45.190
They didn't.

00:31:45.190 --> 00:31:51.174
Because of that, it probably saved my job and my career going forward.

00:31:51.174 --> 00:31:59.711
She she kind of looked at me after she hung up the phone and she said you know, it really tells me a lot about who you are as a person and I trust you implicitly now.

00:31:59.711 --> 00:32:02.196
And she said just don't make the same mistake twice.

00:32:02.196 --> 00:32:05.651
And I said I won't, never will and I never did again.

00:32:05.651 --> 00:32:08.376
So it inspired me.

00:32:08.376 --> 00:32:16.679
You know, like there was someone who could be that empathetic in business and wasn't going to throw me out the window for making a stupid mistake.

00:32:17.066 --> 00:32:23.719
On the other side as well, meaning at the ad agency, that they did not take advantage of that?

00:32:23.719 --> 00:32:27.055
That just shows the strength of the relationship between them as well.

00:32:27.424 --> 00:32:29.390
Yeah, that was a testament to Laura, right?

00:32:29.390 --> 00:32:36.496
She knew that the most important thing in sales and in business as a whole is relationships, and she had great relationships.

00:32:36.496 --> 00:32:50.189
So I really, by mentioning her name, I don't know who she, where she is and what she's doing and or anything like that I haven't stayed in touch with her, but you know, I honor her with that because it was, it was a defining moment in my life.

00:32:50.189 --> 00:32:51.451
Sure, that's a great story.

00:32:51.590 --> 00:32:57.539
And it's a good story that she didn't fly off the handle and said you know it tells me something about you.

00:32:57.539 --> 00:33:02.134
You keep using the word selling sales.

00:33:02.134 --> 00:33:07.755
How much of this is sales, and early on in your career, I guess, did that come easy to you.

00:33:07.755 --> 00:33:09.771
Is that something you had to work on?

00:33:09.771 --> 00:33:15.527
No, talk a lot about that, because sales is a very particular thing.

00:33:15.527 --> 00:33:16.528
Sell me this pen.

00:33:16.829 --> 00:33:25.108
Yeah, and so much so that I realized that it wasn't what I really wanted to do, because it wasn't who I was at the time.

00:33:25.108 --> 00:33:34.979
I didn't have the courage to stand in a room and do that.

00:33:34.979 --> 00:33:56.594
I wasn't a natural born salesperson and so as a sales associate you work behind the scenes mostly, but every once in a while I get to meet clients and I did see that I had a strength in making connections and creating friendships with people on the agency side and the clients, which is the first step in sales, right.

00:33:56.594 --> 00:33:58.421
But it kind of drove me to.

00:33:58.421 --> 00:34:16.173
There was a spiral staircase from the 47th floor to the 48th floor at 30 Rock and I was on the 47th floor in sales and there was this team upstairs called the marketing department and there are a couple of guys running the marketing department and I said, you know, let me go up there and peek around.

00:34:16.173 --> 00:34:27.291
My old page kind of mentality was with me to say, you know, I still there's a lot I still have to learn and I have to understand about this business.

00:34:27.291 --> 00:34:36.144
And I went up there and I met, you know, two gentlemen, barry Goodman and Alan Cohen, and they were running NBC marketing on the East Coast at the time.

00:34:36.144 --> 00:34:41.177
There's a whole West Coast promotional team that we can get to later.

00:34:41.177 --> 00:34:48.438
But the those two guys were were doing some really interesting things.

00:34:48.438 --> 00:34:56.347
I mean promotional, big promotional things, helping to promote shows like Friends and Seinfeld.

00:34:56.347 --> 00:34:58.391
They were putting together comedy tours.

00:34:58.391 --> 00:35:20.849
They were working with big clients like Kellogg's to help promote some of the shows, some of the biggest must-see TV shows at the time, and there was a creative energy that just was really attractive to me and I said I got to get to know these guys and I really want to work in this department and be a part of some of that.

00:35:21.670 --> 00:35:31.710
And at the time the company had just been sold to GE and there was a big hiring freeze and these guys were trying to hire a manager of sports marketing hiring freeze.

00:35:31.710 --> 00:35:38.097
And these guys were trying to hire a manager of sports marketing and I said, well, I worked at NBC Sports as an intern, I was a page, maybe they'll consider me.

00:35:38.097 --> 00:35:47.606
And they looked at me and they said, look, you're just a sales assistant, we're not going to make you a manager.

00:35:47.606 --> 00:35:52.657
But a few weeks went by and they realized they couldn't hire outside the company and they came down the spiral stairs and they said, hey, we'll give you a shot.

00:35:52.657 --> 00:36:00.130
We're going to kind of lower the level to like an administrator or something like that, but why don't you come and work with us?

00:36:00.130 --> 00:36:04.083
And I was just like, wow, um, unbelievable.

00:36:04.083 --> 00:36:06.907
I can't believe that worked.

00:36:07.068 --> 00:36:08.710
I fooled them into hiring me.

00:36:09.351 --> 00:36:15.400
And um, and then, you know, then they became two of the biggest mentors I had in my career.

00:36:15.400 --> 00:36:21.836
Fast forward, I was promoted to manager finally, and they put news marketing under me.

00:36:21.836 --> 00:36:23.027
So it was news and sports.

00:36:23.027 --> 00:36:26.934
And then this little thing called the internet started to happen.

00:36:26.934 --> 00:36:55.228
And again, going back to that original kind of innovation exposure, I had a fascination with what was going on with all the online services, with the web and the internet, and Barry and Alan knew that I was, you know, kind of dabbling in that stuff and Alan really saw the future in it and we started to do a ton of work and because I was doing sports marketing, uh, we brought Notre Dame.

00:36:55.248 --> 00:37:02.054
We had the Notre Dame deal at the time, Um, I worked very closely with the sports information director at Notre Dame and we brought Notre Dame online.

00:37:02.054 --> 00:37:07.436
I think it was with AOL at first and then it, then it moved, gravitated over to the internet.

00:37:07.436 --> 00:37:15.548
Um, but, you know, started doing that and really started to get recognized as some guy who knew what the hell was going on.

00:37:15.548 --> 00:37:23.695
Like I knew what, uh, uh, I had a plugin, a 9,600 baud modem, and so they said, well, why don't you become our director of interactive marketing?

00:37:23.695 --> 00:37:26.717
And, uh, you know I it was crazy.

00:37:26.717 --> 00:37:28.438
Um, I still can't believe.

00:37:28.438 --> 00:37:32.742
You know, they promoted me into that role and so I started doing all of this stuff.

00:37:32.742 --> 00:37:34.210
We started working closely with AOL.

00:37:34.210 --> 00:37:37.755
Then we migrated over to MSN and Microsoft.

00:37:37.755 --> 00:37:43.684
I found myself on the Microsoft campus with all of our affiliates, porting all of our affiliates online.

00:37:43.684 --> 00:37:53.085
It was a really active, crazy time in the business and transformative time, and I had a front row seat to it and it was just unbelievable.

00:37:53.527 --> 00:38:06.931
When you're a person who is essentially the first to be at the vanguard of the internet in terms of advertising and in terms of marketing, you obviously had a wide berth, or the ability to make mistakes, yeah.

00:38:07.264 --> 00:38:14.952
To make mistakes more than anyone else, especially in such a frontier at that point, mistakes more than anyone else, especially in such a, in such a frontier at that point.

00:38:14.952 --> 00:38:15.795
Um, that's obviously changed now over time.

00:38:15.795 --> 00:38:38.570
But when you're, when you're the first person in and you get to see that kind of a landscape, um, what is that like in terms of okay, I in terms of I guess you're kind of explaining it to everyone, what is going on here and how it's going to eventually, you know, filter out, but that, that notion of not everything has to be perfect straight away because you're the first one there, you're, you're allowed to make mistakes.

00:38:38.570 --> 00:38:40.215
I mean, what kind of freedom does that give you?

00:38:41.445 --> 00:38:43.869
You are, but you have a lot of naysayers, right.

00:38:43.869 --> 00:38:50.309
So the biggest obstacle was getting people to understand what the hell it was Right, right.

00:38:50.309 --> 00:38:55.277
And we were so enthusiastic and I think because we were in marketing and we were always thinking about what was new.

00:38:55.277 --> 00:39:07.358
And next, we just had this intuitive understanding that this was going to be big and this is where our consumers were going to be, and this was another platform for us to market our shows and to get the word out.

00:39:07.358 --> 00:39:15.960
That was much more robust than than a 32nd commercial or a-second commercial or a billboard on the highway or even a magazine spread.

00:39:15.960 --> 00:39:24.396
We just knew this was going to be big and our enthusiasm carried the day to some degree.

00:39:24.396 --> 00:39:31.331
But you would run into these brick walls, sometimes in different departments, where they would look at you and say this is ham radio, it's going to go away tomorrow.

00:39:32.206 --> 00:39:49.494
It's just a hobby, the flash in the pan type of stuff, yeah, yeah, and I talked to some pretty big execs who will remain nameless, um, who, and you know it took them a little bit longer to understand it and in the first few months, maybe even year, you know you just got.

00:39:49.494 --> 00:39:50.277
You just got.

00:39:50.277 --> 00:39:55.719
No, we're not going to waste our time, we're not going to spend our time doing this, and it was just persistence.

00:39:55.719 --> 00:40:01.586
And then the market catching up a little bit, where the phone would ring and it's like hey, can you teach me how to hook up my modem in my office.

00:40:01.586 --> 00:40:07.014
This is the same person who would tell you there's no way we're going to spend time on this, don't bring it up in a meeting again.

00:40:07.014 --> 00:40:10.219
You know blah, blah, blah and you know.

00:40:10.219 --> 00:40:17.684
So we would just move down other pathways and avenues and where people were more receptive and they understood and they let us take those chances.

00:40:17.945 --> 00:40:20.271
So we did make some, some mistakes.

00:40:20.271 --> 00:40:22.896
You know we we did a lot of chats with AOL.

00:40:22.896 --> 00:40:25.708
I'm not sure how many people actually showed up to those things I mean we had.

00:40:25.708 --> 00:40:31.554
We had Olympic athletes like Jackie Joyner-Kersee doing chats on AOL.

00:40:31.554 --> 00:40:36.201
We did all sorts of stuff Quincy Jones and LL Cool J.

00:40:36.201 --> 00:40:38.490
At the time we experimented.

00:40:38.490 --> 00:40:50.592
We weren't necessarily looking at the numbers per se, but we were saying what's going to work, what's going to break through, because we knew in six months to a year that would become the big thing and we would already have the knowledge of how to do it.

00:40:51.625 --> 00:40:53.211
So what was the next chapter then, after that?

00:40:54.405 --> 00:41:17.211
Well, alan and Barry left to go to ABC and I had a new boss all of a sudden and we're in a meeting one day and he said I'm looking for somebody to become our East Coast ambassador on the West Coast and work with the West coast promotions folks and um, and be our director of entertainment marketing.

00:41:17.211 --> 00:41:34.614
And uh, my wife is born and raised in California and, um, we were living in Manhattan at the time, which we both love, and I couldn't raise my hand high enough.

00:41:34.634 --> 00:41:38.239
Uh, putting on the old paycheck, I was like there's still more I need to learn.

00:41:38.239 --> 00:41:39.340
I was a sponge.

00:41:39.340 --> 00:41:42.094
I was like more adventure, more thrill ride.

00:41:42.094 --> 00:41:43.811
Put me on the roller coaster, let's go.

00:41:43.811 --> 00:41:45.389
And I wanted to live in LA.

00:41:45.389 --> 00:41:48.621
It was the original intent of why I interviewed in.

00:41:48.641 --> 00:41:51.012
Burbank as a parent, and now you no longer have to live with your parents.

00:41:51.605 --> 00:41:53.148
Well, at that point point I had moved on.

00:41:53.168 --> 00:42:05.512
You were out already, yeah, but you know, there was this allure and I knew, look, if you wanted to really understand the show, show business and entertainment, you had to be in LA.

00:42:05.512 --> 00:42:07.791
Right, it was the center of the universe at the time.

00:42:07.791 --> 00:42:36.617
So, um time, so, um, and my wife was just thrilled to be able to get back to, you know, closer to her family, um and uh, you know, we made that move and I became the director of entertainment marketing and then, even more amazing, not more, but just, yeah, more people that were amazing, uh, came into my life, who took me under their wing and taught me other aspects of the business that I didn't even have any inkling of an idea existed.

00:42:37.139 --> 00:42:41.291
I love how you just said you were a sponge and you're soaking it up and we can hear you talking about.

00:42:41.291 --> 00:42:42.496
You're learning from everybody.

00:42:42.496 --> 00:42:45.210
You're gathering information and growing.

00:42:45.210 --> 00:42:52.150
When you moved to the West Coast, how long did you stay in that position and what was next for you?

00:42:52.150 --> 00:42:55.016
Did you have your sights on something else at that point?

00:42:55.016 --> 00:42:55.717
What was that?

00:42:55.717 --> 00:42:57.693
Or did it just come about naturally?

00:42:58.184 --> 00:42:58.646
It came about.

00:42:58.646 --> 00:42:59.047
Naturally.

00:42:59.047 --> 00:43:12.369
You know, the first, uh, more than half of my career, I, you know, I, I, I was ambitious and there were times when I had offers and I almost left to leave because we were getting noticed with all this, all this sort of stuff we were doing.

00:43:12.369 --> 00:43:15.693
But, um, but what?

00:43:15.693 --> 00:43:17.476
I got a phone call from Fox.

00:43:17.476 --> 00:43:42.175
Um, I think they saw some of the promotions we were doing and it had been 10 years plus at NBC, um, and when you work for a company and you grow up at a company like that, especially in entertainment, I saw people coming in from the outside who were being valued more than me, right, especially from a salary perspective, and I knew I was underpaid but I was a sponge and I was there to learn.

00:43:42.175 --> 00:43:42.565
I wasn't.

00:43:42.565 --> 00:43:44.594
I was ambitious in a different way.

00:43:44.594 --> 00:43:45.851
I knew the money would come.

00:43:45.851 --> 00:43:54.483
It wasn't necessarily at the front of my brain, although it was definitely at the back of my brain, front of my brain, although it was definitely at the back of my brain.

00:43:54.483 --> 00:44:00.797
And Fox came calling and they, on the eve of the series finale of Seinfeld I remember that vividly because I wanted to go home and watch the show.

00:44:02.045 --> 00:44:12.931
I went and interviewed over at Fox and they literally called me the next day and hired me and you know it was tough.

00:44:12.931 --> 00:44:22.835
It was a tough transition because I went from a place where, everywhere I went, I had a mentor, I had someone who was looking after me.

00:44:22.835 --> 00:44:27.327
And you know, while we did a lot of great things at Fox, I would say what?

00:44:27.327 --> 00:44:32.217
Just wasn't the same, je ne sais quoi.

00:44:32.217 --> 00:44:34.079
It was just a little bit different.

00:44:34.079 --> 00:44:36.873
It was more of a startup network at the time.

00:44:36.873 --> 00:44:44.983
I mean, obviously they didn't have NFL at the time, I believe we're talking about 1997.

00:44:44.983 --> 00:44:46.349
99 or 2000.

00:44:46.349 --> 00:44:46.972
98.

00:44:46.972 --> 00:44:49.483
But the Simpsons was a big hit.

00:44:50.346 --> 00:44:54.608
I did a lot of work with Party of Five and 90210.

00:44:54.608 --> 00:45:17.072
Again, going back into a promotions role where I was bringing network clients like Dr Pepper to the table and meeting with producers of those shows and saying, you know, you've got a show that's seven years old, but Dr Pepper's willing to invest $7 million if we co-promote the show together.

00:45:17.072 --> 00:45:21.329
And most of those producers would be like, hey, greg, let's do that.

00:45:21.329 --> 00:45:28.034
That's great, because a show that's seven, eight years old at a network is not necessarily getting much investment from the network anymore.

00:45:28.034 --> 00:45:28.496
Right?

00:45:28.496 --> 00:45:32.673
So that's the sort of thing I was doing.

00:45:32.673 --> 00:45:45.414
You know we we did some big promotions with the billboard music awards, um with Sprite and um, you know, had a lot of fun in Vegas um for that, um, so a lot of stuff.

00:45:45.436 --> 00:45:55.431
But I didn't stay that long, you know, about a year into my gig at Fox, where I would say I was getting a little bit like, okay, I've been 11 years in broadcast, there's all this other stuff going on.

00:45:55.431 --> 00:45:56.695
Mobile was emerging.

00:45:56.695 --> 00:45:57.257
All this stuff.

00:45:57.257 --> 00:46:37.552
I was dealing with managers and lawyers and publicists and talent relation managers and some of them were just not nice people and it was very difficult because you're at a network, a lot of the shows you're renting, right, you're, you're basically buying the rights to put it on your air, but you don't have, as a marketer, really control over a lot of the parts of the show, like the talent, and it's very difficult to to navigate that unless you have people who are really you know to navigate that, unless you have people who are really, you know, team players.

00:46:37.552 --> 00:46:38.376
Um, and so I get this call from jim burn.

00:46:38.376 --> 00:46:39.280
He's like, hey, when are you in new york next?

00:46:39.280 --> 00:46:44.436
I was traveling an awful lot back to new york for a lot of reasons and I, um, I said, oh, I'll be in new york next week.

00:46:44.436 --> 00:46:45.286
He goes, let's have lunch.

00:46:45.286 --> 00:46:47.268
I said, sure, sit down with him.

00:46:47.349 --> 00:46:50.956
And he describes this this vp of marketing role at the WWF.

00:46:50.956 --> 00:46:52.958
And this is before they'd gone public.

00:46:52.958 --> 00:46:57.793
And, you know, the attitude era was just kind of starting.

00:46:57.793 --> 00:47:04.838
Stone Cold was big, but the Rock was just getting started and I said that sounds like a really great job, jim.

00:47:04.838 --> 00:47:12.771
I'll think about anyone I might know in New York or on the East Coast that would be willing to take on that role.

00:47:12.771 --> 00:47:13.686
It just sounds terrific.

00:47:13.686 --> 00:47:15.411
I'm I'm not a big wrestling fan, so it's.

00:47:15.411 --> 00:47:24.371
You know, I and I'm happy on the West coast and things are just getting started with Fox, you know, and he's like, oh, that's too bad, because that's who I had in mind.

00:47:24.932 --> 00:47:25.996
I've never been a bigger wrestler.

00:47:32.605 --> 00:47:33.146
So I'm not a fan, right?

00:47:33.146 --> 00:47:38.795
So wife is from California and I'm like I'm not going to move you back Four years later I think it was back to New York for wrestling.

00:47:38.795 --> 00:47:39.717
I'm just not going to do it.

00:47:39.717 --> 00:47:46.601
My marriage is more important to me.

00:47:46.601 --> 00:47:49.364
So Jim said look, we've got a show, we've got the Royal Rumble at the Anaheim Pond.

00:47:49.364 --> 00:47:50.791
Why don't you and Kerry come?

00:47:50.791 --> 00:47:56.498
We'll get you some good seats and um, and then I'll introduce you to some of the people backstage.

00:47:57.119 --> 00:48:00.612
I had no idea he was going to introduce me to linda and vince mcmahon.

00:48:00.612 --> 00:48:25.914
I also had no idea how historic in the wrestling world that night was, because it was the first time vince, I think, fought in the ring and I'm standing in his dressing room backstage and he walks in and he'd just taken a chair shot and he's got blood all down his face and I'm like I'm looking at Jim, like you, really, you want me to come work for this company, you know.

00:48:25.914 --> 00:48:34.233
And Linda's there, linda's looking at Vance and she's like, if I've told you once, I've told you a million times, you know, don't get hit in the back of the head or the.

00:48:34.233 --> 00:48:35.215
I can't remember.

00:48:35.215 --> 00:48:36.576
You know one of them.

00:48:36.576 --> 00:48:37.217
You can't.

00:48:37.217 --> 00:48:39.559
You've got a harder spot in the front of the head, I think.

00:48:40.141 --> 00:48:42.704
She's telling him the best place to get hit in the head.

00:48:44.266 --> 00:48:57.349
Yeah, so I was up until that point I was talking to Linda and then they they very politely said you guys probably should leave until Vince gets cleaned up and Vince comes out and he interviews me.

00:48:57.349 --> 00:49:07.835
Basically, we stood for a half hour in the bowels of the Anaheim Pond and he looked straight into my eyes and he asked me lots of really smart questions.

00:49:07.835 --> 00:49:29.253
And I didn't know it at the time, but the entire time I was talking to Vince, carrie, my wife, was talking to Linda, and so I'm done with Vince, I say goodnight to Jim, we get in the car, we're sitting in the car at the Anaheim pond, all the cars are gone because the show's been over for a while and I'm just, you know, we haven't even started the car yet.

00:49:29.253 --> 00:49:32.699
And Carrie looks at me and she goes.

00:49:32.699 --> 00:49:33.806
So what did you think?

00:49:33.806 --> 00:49:39.338
I said this is crazy, like I, I, this is, this is like joining the circus.

00:49:39.338 --> 00:49:42.192
I said I don't, I don't know, I really don't know.

00:49:42.371 --> 00:49:43.394
And I looked at her.

00:49:43.394 --> 00:49:44.304
I said what do you think?

00:49:44.304 --> 00:49:46.509
And she goes I think you should do it.

00:49:46.509 --> 00:49:49.753
And she and she, and she, she told me why.

00:49:49.753 --> 00:50:07.550
She said as a marketer, they are an independent studio, they own the brand and the marks and the IP end to end and you'll be a kid in a candy store with the work that you do and the promotions and the ideas that you come up with.

00:50:07.550 --> 00:50:14.190
And I started thinking about that and that just clinched it for me and I left.

00:50:14.612 --> 00:50:27.355
I left Fox, I broke my contract and left Fox and you know they let me out of I should say they let me out of my contract and I and we moved to Connecticut.

00:50:27.355 --> 00:50:44.960
What I didn't know at the time, when we were sitting in that car, was that my wife was pregnant with our first child and we had no idea and I was the heel, to use WWF parlance that was going to be taking her away from her family, 3,000 miles away, oh man.

00:50:44.960 --> 00:50:54.007
But she was very invested in the decision and she knew that it would be the best thing for my career which, by the way, she had her own career.

00:50:54.007 --> 00:51:04.753
She's a very successful financial advisor and so there was a lot to consider and she couldn't have been more supportive, and she's.

00:51:04.753 --> 00:51:06.878
That's why she's the best.

00:51:08.045 --> 00:51:11.679
So was making that move a great thing for your career.

00:51:11.679 --> 00:51:12.963
So was making that move a great thing for your career?

00:51:12.983 --> 00:51:13.945
Absolutely, absolutely.

00:51:13.945 --> 00:51:23.755
It was a roller coaster ride and there were some really crazy moments, things that just you know, I just can't even comprehend looking back at them.

00:51:23.755 --> 00:51:35.557
Two weeks into the role it was about two weeks, maybe three I'm in Kansas City when Owen Hart, at 34 years of age, falls to his death.

00:51:35.557 --> 00:51:57.670
And yeah, and I'm the VP of marketing and my boss is in Europe and the guy who was our manager of PR was best friends with Owen and he was completely, as he should have been, torn apart and really couldn't function.

00:51:57.670 --> 00:52:06.193
And I find myself backstage with Vince and Shane McMahon and they look at me and they say what do we say?

00:52:06.193 --> 00:52:08.820
And I'm not a PR guy.

00:52:08.820 --> 00:52:13.168
I haven't been, and I'll still say to this day, as much PR as I did for that company.

00:52:13.168 --> 00:52:14.309
I'm still not a PR guy.

00:52:14.309 --> 00:52:16.231
I haven't been, and I'll still say to this day, as much PR as I did for that company.

00:52:16.231 --> 00:52:16.751
I'm still not a PR guy.

00:52:16.771 --> 00:52:33.807
And so I had to counsel them I'm not going to get into exactly what I said on the spot with them and then we had to set up a press conference in St Louis the next day because the show went on and we all held hands on stage and memorialized Owen.

00:52:34.027 --> 00:52:52.672
It was how I got to meet most of the superstars and the talent and the production crew at the WWF at the time and it was a jarring and very difficult way to be introduced into the company and everything after that seemed easier.

00:52:52.672 --> 00:52:57.389
Everything, there's nothing as there's nothing as hard of that, as hard as that.

00:52:57.389 --> 00:53:21.146
That has happened in my life and my career or my career, I should say um as that that night and being put on the spot and having to um provide counsel to people who you know were incredible, uh, marketers themselves and intuitively knew you know how they should manage that situation.

00:53:21.146 --> 00:53:33.583
But you know, as the vp of marketing, I was the, I was the guy responsible for, you know, putting together at least that, that um, that press response, and that was a big challenge.

00:53:35.706 --> 00:53:38.172
Moving away from the obviously that very tragic moment.

00:53:38.913 --> 00:53:45.202
Um you were there you were there essentially for the birth of the attitude era.

00:53:45.202 --> 00:53:54.530
You were right there in the middle of it, um, and, as you said, your wife said you should take this gig because, well it's, it's, the handcuffs are off, right there you can do whatever you kind of do, do whatever you want.

00:53:54.530 --> 00:53:55.534
So what was that like?

00:53:55.534 --> 00:53:59.427
Because I mean, obviously, I my time in wrestling, although my father was a huge wrestling fan.

00:53:59.427 --> 00:54:06.708
I remember watching bob backlin, bruno san martino, hulk hogan, the attitude era of stone cold, steve austin the rock, etc.

00:54:06.708 --> 00:54:12.706
Those guys that was most memorable for me, so I can tell you how enjoyable it was to watch on television.

00:54:12.706 --> 00:54:17.994
What was it like for you behind the scenes when you had no real guardrails in some sense?

00:54:18.422 --> 00:54:19.206
Yeah, it was wonderful.

00:54:19.206 --> 00:54:24.329
I mean, the first couple of years were terrific and we knew we had a purpose, we had a goal.

00:54:24.329 --> 00:54:29.552
The marketing department was responsible for the pay-per-view P&L right.

00:54:29.552 --> 00:54:36.291
So it was the first time I really ever had P&L responsibility and we were really looking at the metrics and the business from the ground up.

00:54:36.291 --> 00:54:45.875
We knew pay-per-view was a rough business and the percentages weren't great and so you had to hit certain numbers with the pay-per-views.

00:54:45.934 --> 00:54:57.478
At the time we were doing one a month, um was really starting to pick up in the ratings and we had to work very closely.

00:54:57.478 --> 00:55:27.336
A lot of people don't know this but uh, the at the time the wwf was selling most of its commercial time um, and so you know we were really more like a network uh who owned the property um, and so we worked very closely with the networks UPN at one point for SmackDown, usa Network for Raw and making sure that they were a great partner and putting together just as much energy and effort and time and money into the franchise as we were.

00:55:27.336 --> 00:55:30.668
We had to support live events.

00:55:30.668 --> 00:55:32.206
We had to support licensing.

00:55:32.206 --> 00:55:41.170
Shane was running the digital, the up-and-coming digital marketing department at the time and then about a year into working there, we actually went public.

00:55:41.360 --> 00:55:48.172
And we went public on the NASDAQ first, and then the next year we switched over to the NYSE.

00:55:48.172 --> 00:56:02.414
And when we went public on the NASDAQ we went public the same day as Martha Stewart and she had put out this huge buffet outside of Wall Street for all the brokers to eat and feed.

00:56:02.414 --> 00:56:06.672
And I think Vince saw that and he said when we go over to the NYSE, I want to do the same thing.

00:56:06.672 --> 00:56:19.126
And we put a ring in the middle of Wall Street, middle of wall street, wow, and we had brokers sitting out their their windows.

00:56:19.126 --> 00:56:20.893
As you know, the big show and rock, you know, fought in the middle of the ring.

00:56:20.914 --> 00:56:29.498
I can't remember exactly in the middle of wall street in the middle of wall street with pyro and music and everything pre-9-11.

00:56:29.498 --> 00:56:31.442
It never happened again, I don't think.

00:56:31.442 --> 00:56:38.954
But uh, it was a and to be a part of that was just an amazing, amazing moment in my life and career.

00:56:39.619 --> 00:56:41.485
So you were with the WWE.

00:56:41.485 --> 00:56:42.849
I think it was about four years.

00:56:43.670 --> 00:56:43.931
Yes.

00:56:44.059 --> 00:56:44.581
Right.

00:56:44.581 --> 00:56:47.184
First of all, what's the decision?

00:56:47.184 --> 00:56:50.829
Like to leave there Vince and his cast of characters.

00:56:50.829 --> 00:56:55.775
I mean that had to be a tough decision for you, but how are you making that decision and what comes next?

00:56:56.681 --> 00:56:59.648
It wasn't a tough decision because it wasn't my decision.

00:56:59.648 --> 00:57:09.623
Yeah, first time in my career I think I was 16, 17 years into my career and you know we launched the XFL without an XFL dedicated marketing department.

00:57:09.623 --> 00:57:14.235
So our day job we used to joke our day job we used to joke our day job was the wwe.

00:57:14.235 --> 00:57:20.373
After we rebranded the company with the campaign get the f out that's a great.

00:57:20.713 --> 00:57:27.972
But what happened was, you know, at night we would put on our xfl hat, literally, and we would start doing the marketing for xfl.

00:57:27.972 --> 00:57:33.585
It wasn't until the, the actual league, launched, until they actually hired a head of marketing for the XFL.

00:57:33.585 --> 00:57:38.309
And man, so many stories to tell about that too.

00:57:38.309 --> 00:57:45.235
But suffice it to say it didn't work out, which you learn a lot more from your failures than from your successes.

00:57:45.235 --> 00:57:57.969
And so there was a pretty big culling, a pretty big layoff after that, and, uh, I had, it was.

00:57:57.969 --> 00:57:59.775
It was hard, it was the first time in my life I had to let people go.

00:57:59.775 --> 00:58:03.344
And then, after I did that, it was my turn, um, and for the first time in my life, I was.

00:58:03.344 --> 00:58:10.842
I was unemployed, but you know, they were good to me, and I, you know, had some time to look around.

00:58:10.842 --> 00:58:14.230
Um had many options.

00:58:15.010 --> 00:58:33.072
Within about three months, I was looking at going back to one of the broadcast networks that I had never worked for before, or to go work for a mobile company called Virgin Mobile, and you know, being the thrill seeker that I am, I decided I've been there, done, done that with the networks.

00:58:33.072 --> 00:58:41.342
Let me go into mobile and learn as much as I can about mobile, because that's going to be really big and I'm going to need to know about that.

00:58:41.342 --> 00:58:51.286
It was before the iPhone, and so I went and I worked for Virgin Mobile for a little bit, even though I only stayed there very briefly.

00:58:51.286 --> 00:59:15.847
There was a lot that we did that I think uh were first evers and it was a feather in my cap and I have no regrets it was, it was fun, it was a little far from home and, um, you know, at the end of the day, I don't know if I'm the guy to work for a phone company, uh, but if you're ever going to go work for the phone company work for Richard Branson's phone company.

00:59:15.867 --> 00:59:17.054
The perks must be great.

00:59:17.054 --> 00:59:21.675
You know I want to go back to something.

00:59:21.675 --> 00:59:29.340
When you were let go from the WWE or WWF at that time, you know, I remember in my career the first time that I was fired I was angry.

00:59:29.340 --> 00:59:31.286
It took me some time to get through it.

00:59:31.286 --> 00:59:37.706
And you know, I think you have to grow up quite a bit to get through something like that.

00:59:37.846 --> 01:00:00.474
And I'm just curious what your experience was, how you reacted to it and how long it took you to get through it, if at all shitless and you know, and I was a little bit angry to some degree because we had done some amazing things, but I was really, if I look back, I really was ready to move on.

01:00:00.474 --> 01:00:02.882
I don't look back a lot, I just look forward.

01:00:02.882 --> 01:00:15.920
But I but you know, you're forcing me to do that, so but you know, and there was so much more for me to do and to learn and I've just never been someone who thought that I would spend, you know, 30, 40 years.

01:00:15.920 --> 01:00:23.362
I have the utmost respect for people who stay at one company or stay in one job for decades.

01:00:23.362 --> 01:00:24.686
I think it's amazing.

01:00:24.686 --> 01:00:41.186
I don't know how they do it, I'm in awe of it, but I think I have too much ADD in my brain to do something like that and I really have to love the product and see the vision of it and understand it to be a good marketer for it.

01:00:42.240 --> 01:00:44.849
How have you been able to recognize trends?

01:00:44.849 --> 01:00:58.722
It seems to me that a lot of what your career has been has been not simply taking advantage of the opportunities given to you, but also having the ability to have a wider view of the horizon, whether it was.

01:00:58.722 --> 01:00:59.987
The Internet is here.

01:00:59.987 --> 01:01:01.170
This is the future.

01:01:01.170 --> 01:01:05.802
Granted, many of the people around me don't see it, but this is it Virgin Mobile.

01:01:05.802 --> 01:01:08.871
I want to take advantage of this new landscape.

01:01:08.871 --> 01:01:17.871
How have you always been able to trust your gut in that sense, and what has it been that's kind of motivated you to say, okay, this is the right path forward?

01:01:18.472 --> 01:01:19.213
It's a great question.

01:01:19.213 --> 01:01:21.588
I mean, look, you don't trust your gut all the time.

01:01:21.588 --> 01:01:25.106
You're taking a leap of faith right, and you know that it might not work out.

01:01:25.106 --> 01:01:31.052
And as much as I learned working for Virgin Mobile, it wasn't the right place for me.

01:01:31.052 --> 01:01:37.313
It's just, you know, for a lot of different reasons and I left pretty quickly and you know.

01:01:37.313 --> 01:01:41.583
But but I learned about something that was going to become very important in the future.

01:01:41.583 --> 01:01:43.427
How I knew that, I don't know.

01:01:43.548 --> 01:01:49.945
You know it's it's being in an agency environment or being in a corporate environment.

01:01:49.945 --> 01:01:54.597
A lot of it is, first of all, you have to read a ton.

01:01:54.597 --> 01:02:01.632
You're just always keeping up on everything and you have to be passionate and curious about everything in culture.

01:02:01.632 --> 01:02:09.606
But the other part is you have to surround yourself with a team of people and be a part of a team where you're listening all the time.

01:02:09.606 --> 01:02:10.067
You're seeing.

01:02:10.106 --> 01:02:15.503
You know, now I'm a lot older, but back then I was in my 20s and and early 30s.

01:02:15.503 --> 01:02:25.268
But you know, now it's about seeing what this new generation, next culture is really focused on, what they're doing and respecting that.

01:02:25.268 --> 01:02:25.768
Like when?

01:02:25.768 --> 01:02:34.271
I'll tell you, when I was on the ad agency side and twitter first launched, I was like who the hell is going to use this thing?

01:02:34.271 --> 01:02:46.766
I was the naysayer and I caught myself, probably a little bit late on that one, but I realized I don't want to be that guy that I ran into at NBC who said no.

01:02:46.766 --> 01:03:00.630
And so you start to say, okay, well, you don't have to bet the farm, but you need to always test and learn and be respectful of what's new and next, until you know it's either going to be successful or it's not.

01:03:00.630 --> 01:03:01.760
But you can't ignore it.

01:03:01.760 --> 01:03:03.264
You just can't ignore it.

01:03:03.985 --> 01:03:05.730
Yeah, you have to lean in, no doubt.

01:03:05.730 --> 01:03:07.519
Yeah, so you leave Virgin.

01:03:07.519 --> 01:03:08.961
And what was the next step?

01:03:10.103 --> 01:03:10.963
What's the next step?

01:03:10.963 --> 01:03:22.032
That's when my old mentor and friend and former boss, alan Cohen, called me up and said I'm going to go over to this sleepy old.

01:03:22.032 --> 01:03:26.356
They're going to be really pissed that I'm characterizing, but this is the truth.

01:03:26.536 --> 01:03:48.101
This is the phone call media agency, this sleepy old media agency, and I'd love for you to come and help me, you know, turn it into something more dynamic, because I really believe media paid media and media agencies are going to go from being kind of the last thought in the meeting to the first thought in the meeting.

01:03:48.101 --> 01:03:58.619
And again, he just had this understanding and he knew better than I did just had this understanding and he knew better than I did what the future was going to be.

01:03:58.619 --> 01:04:02.784
And I said why would I want to go to a sleepy old media agency?

01:04:02.784 --> 01:04:05.769
And he said because we're going to reinvent it and that's what we're good at.

01:04:05.769 --> 01:04:18.393
And I said, okay, I was kind of working with a couple of former colleagues at the WWF doing some consulting and I was like I really did need a full-time gig because my kids were so young and I needed to pay for their future college education.

01:04:18.393 --> 01:04:24.170
So I agreed and I went to work for Initiative and I started working.

01:04:24.210 --> 01:04:35.835
We won the CBS business and Fuse and some other entertainment business, but also started working with brands across other categories and was working both.

01:04:35.835 --> 01:04:40.309
I think the title was VP of Entertainment and Innovation.

01:04:40.309 --> 01:04:41.632
It was the best title I've ever had.

01:04:41.632 --> 01:04:44.164
It combined the two things I love the most.

01:04:44.164 --> 01:04:53.630
And so that's when we started working with CBS Television Network and my relationship with George Schweitzer at CBS began.

01:04:53.630 --> 01:05:05.525
I became George's guy and his account guy and really was exposed to the world of paid media and media agencies.

01:05:05.525 --> 01:05:06.407
I just didn't know what.

01:05:06.407 --> 01:05:08.793
I didn't know because I was an interloper.

01:05:08.793 --> 01:05:12.891
Most media agencies really hire from within and promote people from within.

01:05:12.891 --> 01:05:16.865
So here's this guy who came from the broadcast side, who came from the WWF.

01:05:16.865 --> 01:05:23.251
I was an anomaly at the time at a media agency and so you know I didn't know any better.

01:05:23.311 --> 01:05:33.447
I think it's what's called the new mind approach, but I was stumbling into it and I was sitting in meetings with Showtime, was a client and I thought I was working for a creative agency.

01:05:33.447 --> 01:05:53.347
I mean, I knew I wasn't, but I would just sit there all day long pitching ideas of how to launch the show, what we could do with the key art, and one day I had this thought with the launch of weeds, season two I don't know if you guys remember the show, great show on Showtime, mary Louise Parker that we should take.

01:05:53.347 --> 01:05:55.260
And this is before social media.

01:05:55.260 --> 01:06:12.246
The internet was still kind of like, you know, percolating, um, but you know, facebook, I don't think even existed, um, youtube was just becoming something, um, so we were still looking at print as a pretty viable media platform.

01:06:12.788 --> 01:06:49.590
And I looked at the key art, uh, cmo by the name of len fogey, who also was great, is a great friend and mentor of mine, um was our client and I said what if you, what if you created a print ad in rolling stone with this beautiful key art that you have for the, for the show, and you turned it into one of those perfume ads where you just peel back the side and you can smell the beautiful scent of your favorite and I see where we're going, len, you know.

01:06:49.590 --> 01:06:57.572
So I think I had the foresight to say, okay, let me mock this up for him, you know, because I don't think, just me saying it would get.

01:06:57.572 --> 01:07:00.224
And, by the way, marijuana was not legal anywhere.

01:07:00.224 --> 01:07:05.353
And he was like that's awesome, let's, you know.

01:07:05.353 --> 01:07:11.550
In fact, fast forward, he became one of my clients with Fenty Marketing and I think I brought him a copy of it.

01:07:11.949 --> 01:07:31.438
Um, you know, 15 plus years later, um, uh, but, but yeah, so we created the first ever marijuana, marijuana scented print ad, which almost never happened, because because, believe it or not, rolling stone got cold feet and I'm not surprised.

01:07:31.438 --> 01:07:37.532
Yeah, yawn called up and said I don't think we can do this.

01:07:37.532 --> 01:07:39.083
Our lawyers are telling us we can't do this.

01:07:39.083 --> 01:07:50.858
And I and I was just like, hey, the clients already bought into it, it's already been created, we can't go back now like we have to do it.

01:07:50.858 --> 01:07:53.103
And and we did it.

01:07:53.103 --> 01:08:00.246
And man, it was a sensation, it was a press sensation, it just it was awesome and it helped launch the show.

01:08:00.246 --> 01:08:04.963
There was a lot of other great work and marketing that went into into the show.

01:08:05.684 --> 01:08:18.970
um, but that was just kind of my first foray into working at an ad agency and so and I remember you know you won awards for that I think you and I actually worked together on that a little bit way back when.

01:08:19.310 --> 01:08:21.283
Yeah, I think that's around when we started.

01:08:21.283 --> 01:08:22.146
That's exactly right.

01:08:22.146 --> 01:08:25.368
That's exactly right, so you know going forward from there.

01:08:25.649 --> 01:08:28.060
you're now building out these creative campaigns.

01:08:28.060 --> 01:08:30.448
You're tapping into all different types of media.

01:08:30.448 --> 01:08:33.721
You already have the skillset, you already have the chops.

01:08:33.721 --> 01:08:35.244
Now you're just taking it to another level.

01:08:35.244 --> 01:08:37.689
Take us to LA.

01:08:37.689 --> 01:08:54.992
You go out West and tell us how the opportunity to go lead one of the largest ad agencies on earth presented itself, and talk to us about that role and what that meant to your career and your journey.

01:08:55.500 --> 01:08:58.550
Well, I don't want to go back, but the marijuana sending thing.

01:08:58.550 --> 01:09:08.114
It turns out that the agency was the AOR for the drug council and the president of the agency, so I didn't know.

01:09:09.340 --> 01:09:11.027
AOR, meaning agency of record.

01:09:12.520 --> 01:09:17.051
I'm so new at the agency that I have no clue who these clients are.

01:09:17.051 --> 01:09:23.259
Right, One of the presidents of the agency comes to my desk and starts yelling at me and I'm like I'm going to get fired.

01:09:23.259 --> 01:09:29.091
My client thinks I'm brilliant, but my company is going to fire me for doing this.

01:09:29.091 --> 01:09:35.828
Ultimately, we also got a letter from the White House sanctioning us and I think I brought that to Showtime.

01:09:36.199 --> 01:09:39.890
You absolutely know you did a good thing, then that's the response.

01:09:40.360 --> 01:09:43.479
I brought the letter to Showtime and I said this is what success looks like.

01:09:43.479 --> 01:09:44.140
You're right.

01:09:44.279 --> 01:09:46.601
You're right, we caught everybody's attention.

01:09:49.564 --> 01:09:50.984
Um, so fast forward.

01:09:50.984 --> 01:09:59.871
We're about two, two and a half years into the IPG gig and Alan gets recruited to become the CEO of OMD.

01:09:59.871 --> 01:10:11.037
Ironically, alan was out on the West coast with IPG, with initiative, and I was on the East coast in New York because of my WWE days and, um, I hadn't relocated back to the West coast.

01:10:11.037 --> 01:10:15.460
I hadn't relocated back to the West Coast.

01:10:15.460 --> 01:10:22.432
Alan calls me up and he's like I can't talk to you about this job, but you're going to get a phone call from um, from Paige Thompson, who was the head of the agency at the time.

01:10:22.432 --> 01:10:31.332
And so I go and have a drink up uptown in New York with Paige and, um, he tells me that they need someone to run the West Coast office.

01:10:31.332 --> 01:10:34.328
And I'm only two years into an agency gig.

01:10:34.328 --> 01:10:42.033
I don't know what, I don't know, you know, but it's hard for me to say no because I've got um, my wife, who's from california.

01:10:42.881 --> 01:11:00.730
I'm uh, you know, alan was a mentor of mine, he's someone I admired greatly and to work with him now in a ceo capacity at the agency, and apple was a big client of theirs out on the West Coast, so the client roster was already enviable and I was just like, how do I say no to this?

01:11:00.730 --> 01:11:02.033
And so that's?

01:11:02.033 --> 01:11:03.180
I didn't.

01:11:03.180 --> 01:11:20.069
I went and I jumped off the cliff again and relocated the entire family back to the West Coast, and that was right, as the market was collapsing and everyone on wall street was losing their jobs in 2008.

01:11:20.069 --> 01:11:25.583
And, uh, the advertising marketplace also did fall off a cliff to some degree.

01:11:25.583 --> 01:11:51.425
Um, so it was a big gulp moment when I got there and all of a sudden, we were stuck with the house back in Connecticut and you know, we're renting a place in California, in Los Angeles, which is not cheap and every single day, and I had about 150 people at the time, all of a sudden under my purview, and I think you know again, it gets back to just you know, knowing what's right.

01:11:52.407 --> 01:11:58.845
And I think there was a defining meeting in the heart of the recession where clients were leaving.

01:11:58.845 --> 01:12:04.726
You know, I called it the leaky bucket of the client would leave and then maybe we would fill it with something else.

01:12:04.726 --> 01:12:06.271
But it was very difficult.

01:12:06.271 --> 01:12:10.175
It was, you know, and and the goal was to you weren't?

01:12:10.175 --> 01:12:12.784
The goal wasn't to, like, all of a sudden, crush your numbers that year.

01:12:12.784 --> 01:12:14.409
The goal was to stop the leaking.

01:12:14.409 --> 01:12:24.667
And we walked into a meeting one day and I just said to everyone guys, we're no longer in the ad business, we're in the saving jobs business.

01:12:24.667 --> 01:12:26.667
I said look at the person next to you.

01:12:26.667 --> 01:12:31.355
Do you want to see that person out on the street tomorrow into this abyss?

01:12:31.355 --> 01:12:32.363
Because no one knew.

01:12:32.363 --> 01:12:37.645
If you remember, in 2008, no one knew what, how long it was going to take.

01:12:38.466 --> 01:13:01.511
Uh, if you lost your job, and I said, we're all here to support each other, we're all here to save each other's jobs and if anybody knows any piece of business, any way we can grow, any way we can save money, we're all in this together and we pitched pretty much everything that moved and that's when I went from not really being a salesman to becoming a salesman.

01:13:01.511 --> 01:13:17.961
I still think I have a lot of room to improve, but we pitched just about everything and we did better than pretty much on any other agency and, I would say, any other region of OMD or Omnicom through that time.

01:13:17.961 --> 01:13:33.854
And I, what I didn't know at the time was that I was creating this loyal team of senior media people who stayed with me for a decade at that agency, which is almost unheard of right.

01:13:33.854 --> 01:13:35.060
There was this loyalty.

01:13:35.060 --> 01:13:36.304
We lost a lot of good people, which is almost unheard of right.

01:13:36.304 --> 01:13:36.805
There was this loyalty.

01:13:36.805 --> 01:13:37.567
We lost a lot of good people.

01:13:37.567 --> 01:13:39.051
People left and you know for good reason.

01:13:39.051 --> 01:13:40.715
You leave for more money, you leave for whatever.

01:13:40.715 --> 01:13:51.885
But to have that continuity helped us keep stickiness with our clients and to help you know, help every part of the business Right and I needed those people because I didn't know what I didn't know.

01:13:52.345 --> 01:13:53.688
I was very honest with everyone.

01:13:53.688 --> 01:13:57.654
I didn't grow up in the media agency world.

01:13:57.654 --> 01:14:13.555
I grew up in this crazy world and so they needed to show me the nuts and bolts of what an assistant planner and a planner and a buyer and every single role in the agency did.

01:14:13.555 --> 01:14:19.809
But I did have something I had an open mind and I had a healthy respect for every single person in the agency.

01:14:19.809 --> 01:14:21.541
It didn't matter who you were.

01:14:21.541 --> 01:14:25.789
You could be the security guard, you could be the person in the cafeteria.

01:14:25.789 --> 01:14:32.653
You played an instrumental role in helping this agency succeed and that was my mentality all the time.

01:14:32.653 --> 01:14:36.523
Everyone deserved the mutual respect of everyone.

01:14:36.523 --> 01:14:43.301
Just because I hated the title right, and it's like people feared me because of my title.

01:14:43.301 --> 01:14:44.101
I hated that.

01:14:44.101 --> 01:14:50.914
I wanted everyone to know that everyone was equal in the agency.

01:14:50.914 --> 01:14:54.270
Now, obviously you have levels and you have hierarchies and everything else.

01:14:55.020 --> 01:15:05.146
But it all started with that kind of mutual respect because I needed to, you know, trust people to to bring me along and mentor me.

01:15:05.146 --> 01:15:24.923
Who were junior to me, people who were 20, 30 years in the ad game, and I was two years in the ad game and I needed them to respect me and um, and follow me in some regard as as a leader, um, and so that was in my mind, that was the best way to build mutual respect.

01:15:25.204 --> 01:15:26.288
You had a lot of pressure on you.

01:15:26.288 --> 01:15:36.985
Obviously, uh, being a CEO, um, obviously, having you know, so many people underneath you and, as you said, during the financial crisis, Obviously having so many people underneath you and, as you said, during the financial crisis, the pressure upped itself, being that you.

01:15:36.985 --> 01:15:40.427
Once again, you said you were not about building portfolios.

01:15:40.427 --> 01:15:45.931
You were about saving people's jobs, Keeping everybody saving lives in some senses.

01:15:45.931 --> 01:15:51.036
Did the pressure ever get to the point where you said I need to step away from something like this?

01:15:51.697 --> 01:15:52.497
Yeah, tremendously.

01:15:52.497 --> 01:15:56.328
Yeah, I used to have a full head of hair.

01:16:00.579 --> 01:16:18.402
For those people not seeing the Zoom, greg has a very shiny head, like I do you know, over the course of 10 years I spent 10 years at OMD and, by the way, I wasn't the CEO, I was the president of the West Coast region, which, by the way, was still somewhere in the ballpark of $3 billion under management.

01:16:18.402 --> 01:16:23.632
So it was a huge, pretty vast, and we took it there.

01:16:23.632 --> 01:16:48.761
I think, you know, in the time that I was there, I think we added about a billion dollars to that and we doubled the size or tripled the size of the agency in people and in billings and in clients, and it just it was a really successful time for everyone there and it was because of the team, because of just some really smart people, and throughout the agency, not just on the West Coast.

01:16:48.761 --> 01:17:00.292
We leaned heavily on people in Chicago and New York, the best people we possibly could bring to the table when we were trying to win new business or or expand organically our business.

01:17:00.292 --> 01:17:04.726
Um, you know, we just, we just kept pushing forward, but it was.

01:17:05.047 --> 01:17:06.369
It was very difficult.

01:17:06.369 --> 01:17:21.101
Um, you know you're, you're wearing so many hats and I was pulled away from the creativity that I came from and I was much more leaning into operations, working with finance, working with HR, and they were great people, and we did.

01:17:21.101 --> 01:17:25.693
You know it was fascinating, interesting work, but it just wasn't my passion.

01:17:25.693 --> 01:17:33.344
So you're pulled into this management role and you're troubleshooting, you're a fireman, you're putting out fires all the time, right?

01:17:33.344 --> 01:17:39.197
You barely have time to think about something creative for a client.

01:17:39.717 --> 01:17:43.626
The time when you could do that was in new business right.

01:17:43.626 --> 01:17:54.087
So anytime you had a new business pitch, that's where you could kind of clear the decks and say nothing's more important than us coming up with brilliant ideas for this pitch so we can win the business.

01:17:54.087 --> 01:18:01.447
And so I started to really enjoy that, right, because that was my creative outlet to some degree.

01:18:01.447 --> 01:18:02.909
But even that was very difficult.

01:18:02.909 --> 01:18:03.530
The hours were brutal.

01:18:03.530 --> 01:18:04.774
I mean seven days a week.

01:18:04.774 --> 01:18:10.820
I'm a 2 million miler on American and I've flown many other airlines, you know.

01:18:10.820 --> 01:18:12.864
So you just got that.

01:18:12.864 --> 01:18:21.131
That goes back to my WWE days lots of travel, um, and, you know, pulling me away from my family, and that was very difficult.

01:18:21.560 --> 01:18:23.184
And I'm sure you know a lot of.

01:18:23.184 --> 01:18:37.922
That is why you eventually pivoted away from, uh, the big agency life and and decided to take greater control, I would think of of, of your life, of your lifestyle, by setting up your own practice, so to speak.

01:18:39.166 --> 01:18:45.827
Yeah, again, it was like the second time in my career where I wasn't making the choice for myself, the company.

01:18:45.827 --> 01:18:56.631
When you think about what's happening with analytics and digital and AI and technology, the innovation begs for centralization, right?

01:18:56.631 --> 01:19:04.461
The marketplace is so fragmented and these technologies are allowing some of these companies to take back control at the center.

01:19:04.461 --> 01:19:09.541
And so they started looking at this regional structure and they said, why do we need that?

01:19:09.541 --> 01:19:15.783
Right, we can just control everything from New York and just have people on the ground to manage clients.

01:19:15.783 --> 01:19:21.604
You know that needed some handholding, but it's all going to be part of this kind of platform in the future.

01:19:22.305 --> 01:19:33.087
Um so the the um so technology really, I think was was part of the restructuring, and I got restructured out.

01:19:33.167 --> 01:20:12.067
All of the presidents of all of the regions got restructured, and there I was again, you know, and within about a week, google assist came calling and I you know I made the mistake to jump back into running the West coast for another big holding company, and and then, and then, covid hit, you know, and that's when I that's when I really started taking stock and decided this isn't really what I want to do anymore and I need to take back control of my life and unfortunately during that time Carrie and I went through some personal tragedy in our families and stuff like that.

01:20:12.108 --> 01:20:23.564
So we really decided to change kind of our latitude a bit and say we want to focus on the things that are truly important in this world, which are our families and our friends.

01:20:23.564 --> 01:20:25.949
But we still need to make a living.

01:20:25.949 --> 01:20:31.229
But we're just not going to do it at the behest of some corporate behemoth anymore.

01:20:31.229 --> 01:20:39.546
And I I started my own, my first consultancy, which I had the great fortune of that being bought by a small independent agency.

01:20:39.546 --> 01:20:56.587
They made me ceo for a bit and then, uh, covet ended and I was free from my shackles of my house and office and I decided to take some time off and then, um, start my own consultancy again and that's Venti Marketing for the last two years.

01:20:58.581 --> 01:21:02.372
So you have obviously been a person who's kind of seen the future.

01:21:02.372 --> 01:21:07.152
I mean, if anything, you're kind of a futurist in that sense, whether it be the internet, whether it be mobile.

01:21:07.152 --> 01:21:09.067
You mentioned AI a moment ago.

01:21:09.067 --> 01:21:10.747
What is the future that we see right now?

01:21:10.747 --> 01:21:12.079
What is the next big tech future?

01:21:12.622 --> 01:21:13.445
I actually wrote it.

01:21:13.445 --> 01:21:21.127
I wrote an article, I wrote several articles called the Futurist, for a marketing magazine when I was at IPG.

01:21:21.127 --> 01:21:23.952
So yeah, it was a lot of fun.

01:21:23.952 --> 01:21:25.721
I don't know if I can see the future.

01:21:25.721 --> 01:21:29.551
I really don't, and it's overused and you're going to hear it from everybody.

01:21:29.551 --> 01:21:35.895
But AI is going to be and it has already been been that prolific.

01:21:35.895 --> 01:21:37.880
It it's mind-boggling.

01:21:37.880 --> 01:21:42.869
You can't wrap your head around the immense change that is coming.

01:21:42.869 --> 01:21:45.863
And I've had these conversations with my daughters.

01:21:45.863 --> 01:22:04.029
Um, you know, as they start to make career choices and things like that, um, you can just try to stay ahead of it and try to use the tools that are emerging so rapidly and integrate them into what you do and how you use them in whatever you do in your career or life.

01:22:04.029 --> 01:22:09.529
But you can't ignore it and you can't be that person that says you know, oh, it's ham radio.

01:22:09.548 --> 01:22:09.989
Not anymore.

01:22:09.989 --> 01:22:12.337
You sure can't, no way you have to.

01:22:28.472 --> 01:22:29.313
Yeah, you can't, no way.

01:22:29.313 --> 01:22:36.779
Just reported decent revenue and we're still looking for some better margin.

01:22:36.779 --> 01:22:46.784
But it's coming because they're just not going to need all those people anymore and it's a cold hard fact and they're not willing to say it.

01:22:46.784 --> 01:22:51.563
A lot of the agencies aren't willing to say it, but it's true, it's coming.

01:22:51.563 --> 01:23:07.654
You can use one or two people where there used to be 10 to do competitive analysis, to do planning, and I'm all for humans, I love humans, I want humans to have all the jobs, but it's just not the reality anymore.

01:23:07.654 --> 01:23:15.073
There's a reason why Horizon just did a big deal and partnered with an AI company because they see those margin dreams.

01:23:15.073 --> 01:23:21.512
They understand that all of those FTEs full-time employees and it's not driving them.

01:23:21.560 --> 01:23:29.809
They know they need the technology and they need the information and they need the insights that it's going to give them to be better for their clients.

01:23:29.809 --> 01:23:39.109
All of that is true, but it's also going to create efficiencies, and, if you're in business, efficiency is just as important as growth, right?

01:23:39.109 --> 01:23:41.252
So there you have it.

01:23:41.252 --> 01:23:42.360
I said it out loud.

01:23:42.702 --> 01:23:50.722
So if you're a young person trying to break into this business now, is it a good business to go into?

01:23:50.722 --> 01:23:56.725
Like, what advice would you tell somebody who's 22 years old who says I want to get into advertising?

01:23:56.725 --> 01:23:58.952
Would you encourage them to look further?

01:23:58.952 --> 01:24:01.726
I guess that's my first question.

01:24:01.908 --> 01:24:05.081
Yes, absolutely, because I can't predict what the future is going to hold.

01:24:05.081 --> 01:24:15.251
Right, it may be more like, instead of having a team of 10 people, it's you, one other person and AI, right, that you're interfacing with.

01:24:15.251 --> 01:24:19.469
So you've got to understand how to work with AI in the.

01:24:19.469 --> 01:24:31.029
There will be this interim period where prompting will be a thing, but that's even going to go away as AI becomes natural in its language and and in its interface and in the way it just talks back at you, right?

01:24:31.029 --> 01:24:35.309
Um, I mean, you think about the early days of chatbots, right?

01:24:35.309 --> 01:24:45.368
It's literally going to be like another human being on your team, or 20 human beings on your team, so there are still going to be humans somewhere in the mix.

01:24:45.368 --> 01:24:49.243
Where they're going to be is hard to decipher.

01:24:49.243 --> 01:24:58.576
I think account management is going to be one of those places where clients are still going to want to interface with a real person, right?

01:24:58.576 --> 01:25:07.654
So, yes, I think you're still going to need to know everything about the business, but there just could be fewer opportunities.

01:25:08.439 --> 01:25:13.488
And in terms of differentiating yourself to break into this business, what should a person do?

01:25:14.029 --> 01:25:41.391
Well, there's a lot of certifications you can get, whether it's with social media, whether it's with AI, whether it's with programmatic, whether it's trade desk but being showing that you have intent and showing that you're learning all the time and that you're taking courses and you're doing internships, and it's that intention that's so important, right, and you're a learner, you're curious, you're passionate.

01:25:41.391 --> 01:25:48.373
I know it's all platitudes, but you have to show that intent, that you want to be in this business.

01:25:48.373 --> 01:25:58.051
And there are going to be people who are then going to pick you up from the lapel and say, okay, we're going to let you be in this business and we're going to give you a shot and a chance.

01:25:58.051 --> 01:26:04.484
But if you're just kind of meandering around and saying, I don't really know what I want to do, I'll give this a shot, that's not going to work for you.

01:26:04.484 --> 01:26:14.587
You've got to take intentional action forward, whether it's learning, courses, certificates, internships, whatever it may be.

01:26:14.587 --> 01:26:18.229
And you know, just pour yourself into it.

01:26:18.822 --> 01:26:37.730
And then the final question you know, as somebody who's been in this business for 35 years, who's been up down, you've seen all kinds of incredible things, like if you had words of wisdom to share from the journey that you've taken to anybody from any industry.

01:26:37.730 --> 01:26:41.216
Like what should people know and take away from your journey?

01:26:41.820 --> 01:26:42.944
I appreciate that question.

01:26:42.944 --> 01:26:43.528
I really do.

01:26:43.528 --> 01:26:46.667
You know, for me, it took me a while to have fun.

01:26:46.667 --> 01:26:50.347
I was nervous, I was a stress ball.

01:26:50.347 --> 01:26:57.631
I was working in a fun business, but I was stressed out all the time.

01:26:57.631 --> 01:27:17.064
I would say be confident, have fun, find the joy in what you're doing, even if you're over your skis and jumping off a cliff into the unknown, and focus on the things that matter the most the unknown, um, and focus on the things that matter the most.

01:27:17.085 --> 01:27:26.729
You know, for me, the reason I worked that hard and I and I dedicated so much time was for a higher purpose I wanted my family and my kids to have a good life.

01:27:26.729 --> 01:27:32.225
You know, um, that's what I was doing before, um, and I wanted to have some fun along the way.

01:27:32.225 --> 01:27:35.773
I learned how to have fun along the way and work for good people.

01:27:35.773 --> 01:27:39.587
Don't tolerate bad people, don't tolerate toxic people.

01:27:39.587 --> 01:27:47.190
Edit them out of your life and move on, and you're going to run into those people wherever you go in life, in jobs.

01:27:47.190 --> 01:27:58.307
But you've got to kind of ignore that and just look forward and get past it really fast, because you're going to find really great people along the way, more great people than bad people.

01:27:58.729 --> 01:28:02.327
And, as I've learned in my career, that's all that matters are the people.

01:28:02.448 --> 01:28:03.250
It's all that matters.

01:28:03.250 --> 01:28:04.480
Relationships there you go.

01:28:04.480 --> 01:28:08.431
And relationships with some AI bot in the future.

01:28:09.523 --> 01:28:11.899
Right you have to keep evolving and keep learning Right.

01:28:11.899 --> 01:28:13.965
You have to keep evolving and keep learning.

01:28:14.185 --> 01:28:17.932
Well, greg, you know this has been such a great conversation.

01:28:23.619 --> 01:28:25.693
A wonderful walk through the history of advertising, which I think says something about our age.

01:28:25.693 --> 01:28:26.819
At this point, you are the history of advertising.

01:28:28.162 --> 01:28:28.845
No, not at all.

01:28:28.845 --> 01:28:38.293
I feel like I came in in the midpoint, I got airdropped in, but yeah, I mean it's.

01:28:38.293 --> 01:28:47.046
Look, that's what happens when you're 35 years into a career.

01:28:47.046 --> 01:28:50.020
But yeah, I, I get bored of listening to my own voice, so I hope this isn't too boring for your viewers and listeners?

01:28:50.560 --> 01:28:53.024
Absolutely, absolutely not.

01:28:53.024 --> 01:28:55.369
Greg, thank you so much for joining us.

01:28:55.369 --> 01:29:08.011
Thank you, so that was the marketing executive, greg Castronovo, as I mentioned off the top, a good friend of mine and, fortunately, supporter and advocate of the show.

01:29:08.011 --> 01:29:09.563
So, greg, thank you for all of that.

01:29:11.828 --> 01:29:12.470
Larry Shea.

01:29:12.470 --> 01:29:13.212
What are your thoughts?

01:29:13.212 --> 01:29:14.645
I have so many thoughts.

01:29:14.645 --> 01:29:19.686
I took so many valuable, important lessons and I hope all of our listeners did as well.

01:29:19.686 --> 01:29:25.085
The idea that you should never make the same mistake twice, I think is incredible.

01:29:25.085 --> 01:29:31.846
You know the story about faxing the numbers to the woman and it was a mistake and he fessed up to it right away.

01:29:31.846 --> 01:29:35.774
What a great story about just owning up to your mistakes.

01:29:36.461 --> 01:29:42.514
There seems to be like an overarching theme with Greg that loss is more motivating than a win.

01:29:42.514 --> 01:29:46.768
It took him a while to have fun.

01:29:46.768 --> 01:29:54.489
Right, that you should be confident, you should have fun and find the joy in what you're doing, I think is a really, really valuable lesson.

01:29:54.489 --> 01:30:00.404
And he also talks about something that we don't talk enough about on this show and that's called that's getting fired Right.

01:30:00.404 --> 01:30:04.804
Literally, when you're climbing that mountain to success, you're going to have some failures.

01:30:04.804 --> 01:30:07.311
It's a greased bowl, it's a greased world.

01:30:07.311 --> 01:30:10.287
You're going to fall down, and so how do you fall down?

01:30:10.287 --> 01:30:12.072
How do you pick yourself back up?

01:30:12.072 --> 01:30:23.045
So many valuable lessons I took from Greg here, and my favorite story, of course, was the page jacket that he would wear to interviews, and he should have kept that patch on.

01:30:23.185 --> 01:30:24.689
I feel like I've done something like that.

01:30:24.689 --> 01:30:26.262
I feel like I've done something like that.

01:30:26.684 --> 01:30:29.631
Love it so great, great stories and a lot of valuable lessons.

01:30:29.739 --> 01:30:33.527
You know, the one thing I took from Greg's story was the notion of accountability.

01:30:33.527 --> 01:30:36.532
As you said before, like he, he, he copped to making a mistake.

01:30:36.532 --> 01:30:37.953
We all make mistakes, right?

01:30:37.953 --> 01:30:39.382
That I think we're.

01:30:39.382 --> 01:30:41.708
They all say we're all human and we all make mistakes.

01:30:41.729 --> 01:30:48.201
So if you're able to at least cop to the mistakes that you make, people will see that as like a real character building kind of trait.

01:30:48.201 --> 01:30:49.402
It's a good thing to do.

01:30:49.402 --> 01:30:55.532
I mean, obviously you don't want to make mistakes all the time, but when you do and you do at least come forward and say look, that's on me.

01:30:55.532 --> 01:31:01.408
For the most part people are going to be like okay, we're, we'll give you a pass and we know you won't do it again.

01:31:01.408 --> 01:31:03.121
I think that's a very, very good trait to have.

01:31:03.140 --> 01:31:07.867
The other one which I thought was you know the the notion of not surrounding yourself with toxic people.

01:31:07.867 --> 01:31:10.090
And you should also not be a toxic person, right?

01:31:10.090 --> 01:31:17.344
I say it all the time More than half of your ability to get that next job is just not being a jerk, right?

01:31:17.344 --> 01:31:23.564
If you're a likable person, people will want to work with you and will want to help you down the line.

01:31:23.564 --> 01:31:25.068
That's always how it is.

01:31:25.068 --> 01:31:26.699
It's a contact sport right.

01:31:26.699 --> 01:31:28.685
The more people you know, the further you'll go.

01:31:28.685 --> 01:31:30.661
That's a really really smart piece of advice.

01:31:30.961 --> 01:31:34.568
And then I guess, finally, the one thing is, you know, finding joy in what you do, right?

01:31:34.568 --> 01:31:37.051
I mean, if you don't like what you do, why do it?

01:31:37.051 --> 01:31:40.849
I mean, that is so, so important, so key in any job you have.

01:31:40.849 --> 01:31:44.159
And you're 100% right, shay, we never talk enough about being fired.

01:31:44.159 --> 01:31:50.347
Like in my own career path, I have been fired and I got to tell you it devastated me for a while.

01:31:50.347 --> 01:31:56.274
But the one thing I always knew is that if I continue on the path that I'm moving forward on, everything will be all right in the end.

01:31:56.274 --> 01:31:57.475
And I'm doing all right.

01:31:57.475 --> 01:32:00.188
Yes, I was fired.

01:32:00.188 --> 01:32:08.832
It really is a shock to the system the first time that happens, and then afterwards you understand there is a light at the end of the tunnel and you can succeed from failure.

01:32:09.079 --> 01:32:11.145
And that's really what our show is all about.

01:32:11.145 --> 01:32:22.894
If you think about the title of no Wrong Choices, it's all about learning from every single experience along the way and pulling something from it that can help you in the next phase of your journey.

01:32:22.894 --> 01:32:27.591
And being fired can absolutely make you stronger and more aware, et cetera, et cetera.

01:32:27.591 --> 01:32:30.307
So it certainly stuck with our theme.

01:32:30.307 --> 01:32:35.442
Without a doubt, One of the things that I took away from this conversation was leadership.

01:32:35.922 --> 01:32:50.305
You know we've talked about this before with some others, but Greg reinforced it lead through compassion, lead through empathy, and he walked into a big change and a big project when he went out to California to run OMD out there.

01:32:50.305 --> 01:32:57.546
And you know he needed to be humble and say, hey, you know I have not done this before, this is new to me, I need your help.

01:32:57.546 --> 01:33:06.792
And he checked his ego at the door and he surrounded himself by the right people, he led with compassion and they were unbelievably successful.

01:33:06.792 --> 01:33:08.221
So to me, that was a very big takeaway.

01:33:08.221 --> 01:33:11.470
And then, moving beyond that, just in terms of where the industry is going, this in many ways, really was a walk through the history of takeaway.

01:33:11.470 --> 01:33:14.637
And then moving beyond that just in terms of where the industry is going.

01:33:14.637 --> 01:33:26.947
This in many ways really was a walk through the history of advertising and, Greg you know, came in at a great time and it's now entered a time of I don't want to call it turmoil, but there's a lot of change going on.

01:33:26.966 --> 01:33:28.212
Flux is probably a flux.

01:33:28.313 --> 01:33:35.291
Yeah, there's a lot of scary change going on right now, and AI is undoubtedly pushing a lot of that.

01:33:35.291 --> 01:33:47.292
And you know, I think Greg gave us a really helpful and meaningful perspective on, you know, where this industry may go and how people need to prepare themselves for what may be in front of them.

01:33:47.292 --> 01:33:49.985
So just so many valuable lessons here.

01:33:49.985 --> 01:33:52.131
Greg is a talented, smart guy.

01:33:52.131 --> 01:33:52.811
Has been around.

01:33:52.811 --> 01:33:54.984
That was incredibly helpful to me.

01:33:54.984 --> 01:34:02.484
For anybody out there who would like to get to know Greg better, make sure you check out his website, ventimarketingcom.

01:34:02.484 --> 01:34:06.752
That is the site for his business, ventimarketingcom.

01:34:06.752 --> 01:34:10.184
I'm sure he can be of great service to you.

01:34:10.184 --> 01:34:14.792
So with that, greg Castronovo, thank you so much for joining us.

01:34:15.372 --> 01:34:22.721
On behalf of Tushar Saxena, larry Shea and me, larry Samuels, thank you again for joining this episode of no Wrong Choices.

01:34:22.721 --> 01:34:32.752
If, after listening, you've thought of someone who could be a great guest, please let us know by sending us a note via the contact page of our website at norongchoicescom.

01:34:32.752 --> 01:34:39.911
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01:34:39.911 --> 01:34:45.168
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01:34:45.168 --> 01:34:49.081
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01:34:51.484 --> 01:35:00.515
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