Entertainment Industry Marketing: Never forget the independence of your imagination (podcast episode #121)

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Come with me if you will, for just a moment, to the small shtetl of Anatevka, in Tsarist Russia, the year is 1905, and we are in the barn of Tevye, a dairyman.

In his reality, he is poor. But in his imagination, ah in his imagination, he is a rich man.

I thought of that famous musical number when I read this lesson in a recent podcast guest application – “Never forget the independence of your imagination.”

A perfect explanation of Tevye. And hopefully, of you and I as well, after we listen to my latest guest…Jeffery Keilholtz, SVP of Marketing, Broadway Licensing Global.

Tune in to the full episode using this embedded player or by clicking through to your preferred audio streaming service using the links below it.

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Stories (with lessons) about what he made in marketing

Win the day – how daily focus leads to campaign success

One of the most crucial lessons Keilholtz learned was during his time in political campaign management. In the chaotic environment of a major political campaign, especially in markets like New York City, he realized the importance of treating each day as if it were your final deadline. There’s no room for excuses – Election Day is fixed, and you must accomplish everything by then.

This mindset of ‘winning the day’ is something he carries into every aspect of his work now, ensuring that every decision and action is geared toward success.

Stay nimble

During a major go-to-market campaign for a global title, Keilholtz’s team was faced with an underperforming PR firm. The stakes were high, and they had to decide whether to stay the course or make a swift change. They chose to pivot and work on overdrive with a new partner. It was a tough decision with many unknowns, but it ultimately led to a successful outcome. This experience taught him the importance of being adaptable and decisive when circumstances demand it.

Stay cool under pressure

Keilholtz has led Election Day campaigns, and global go-to-market campaigns. All of the work, stress, labor, and consequences requires the development and execution of a clutch mentality, to remain level-headed when everyone else is freaking out.

Drawing parallels from tennis greats like Andre Agassi and Rafael Nadal, who exemplify clutch mentality and composure under pressure, Keilholtz emphasizes the need for marketing leaders to stay cool amid chaos. Much like Agassi's decisive moves on the court, Keilholtz has learned to “lean into the fire” in the marketing world, maintaining composure to achieve successful outcomes.

Lessons (with stories) from people he collaborated with

“Never forget the independence of your imagination"

via Sergey (Sirgay) Dreiden

Keilholtz had a mentor from the Moscow Art Theatre named Sergey Dreiden. They communicated through a Russian/English translator. Keilholtz sought him out after a three-day search, following the time when Keilholtz saw him star in the film, “Russian Ark.”

Execution sets people apart

via Chris Owens

The political strategist taught Keilholtz that no one cares where you went to school if you can execute. Also, in high-stakes campaign management, if you can take charge of large projects and organize people and resources, you have a talent that few others have.

Reflecting on how political strategist Chris Owens once shared experiences from working with Jesse Jackson's campaigns, Keilholtz understood that execution, rather than educational pedigree, was the differentiator in high-stakes environments.

Endurance is essential

via Andy Goldsworthy

Keilholtz was an apprentice to environmental artist, Andy Goldsworthy (who is the subject of the documentary 'Rivers and Tides'), and worked side by side with him. His work uses only natural elements and requires an acceptance of circumstances and a capacity to keep going even when someone else can't “see it.”

Discussed in this episode

Enterprise Solutions Marketing: You can make a big career, and still stay human (podcast episode #99)

Product Management & Marketing: Surround yourself with the right people (podcast episode #38)

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Transcript

Not ready for a listen yet? Interested in searching the conversation? No problem. Below is a rough transcript of our discussion.

Jeffery Keilholtz: I'm not going to get fired. I'm going to get promoted. And she said, what do you mean? And I said, I don't know how, but I'm going to step in. Right. I'm going to lean into the fire. I'm going to fire. Fight instead of, you know, retreat. Right. And so I went into our CEO and our, our corporate affairs officer legal team.

I said, look, you know, I actually used to run a nonprofit. I know about grants. I work at campaigns for politics. I know about, you know, the the government. I think maybe I and I work in comms. Hello. Like, I think I could be of some help here as we all find our way through the very time sensitive matter of applying for this grant or apply for these loan, getting to the front of that line and getting as much money as we can.

Right. For the companies they live in.

Intro: Welcome to how I made it in marketing from marketing Sherpa, we scour pitches from hundreds of creative leaders and uncover specific examples, not just trending ideas or buzzword laden schmaltz real world examples to help you transform yourself as a marketer. Now here's your host, the senior director of Content and Marketing at Marketing Sherpa, Daniel Bernstein, to tell you about today's guest speakers and.

Daniel Burstein: Come with me, if you will, for just a moment. To the small shtetl of Anatevka in Tsarist Russia. The year is 1905 and we are in the barn of TVA, a dairyman. In his reality he is poor, but in his imagination and his imagination he is a rich man. And I'm not going to start singing or util diddling or idling because I don't have the rich baritone of a top L or, Zero Mostel.

I'm sure you've heard the song, but I thought of that song when I read this lesson in a recent podcast guest application. I'll never forget the independence of your imagination. A perfect explanation of Tevye. Yes. And hopefully of you and I as well. After we listen to my next guest, I'd like to welcome Jeff Jeffery Keilholtz, the SVP of Marketing at Broadway Licensing Global.

Thanks for joining me, Jeff.

Jeffery Keilholtz: Daniel, thanks so much for having me, ma'am.

Daniel Burstein: All right. Let's take a quick look at your background. I want to get into a lot of value, but I want people to know who I'm talking to first. You were a political campaign manager in Maryland, in New York before moving into more into the marketing space where you were director of communications at Carey International. For the past three years, Jeff has been at Broadway Licensing Global.

Broadway licensing global represents 8000 titles, making it the second largest catalog for live stage plays and musicals worldwide. And Kyle Holts managed 4.81 billion media impressions for just one campaign alone this year. Four of those titles, a Harry Potter title. So, Jeff, give us a sense. What is your day like as SVP of marketing?

Jeffery Keilholtz: What is my day like? Great question. I like to get up in and hit the ground running. Daniel. And actually, I like to start my day the night before. And what I mean by that is before I leave my office, I'm a huge fan of sticky notes, and I have actionable to do's for me to accomplish the morning of before I open up the albatross of Microsoft Outlook email right, and go into that vortex because it helps set my mind up for, all right, we're going to get something done.

And we start off on on in that kind of, that kind of space, that kind of momentum. So I'll get up. I'll take the train in, the express train into Manhattan. Our office is on Park Avenue. I'm usually one of the first, folks in, like, to start the day early. I get in, I start my action items list feeling pretty good.

Got a little coffee, you know, then I start, to look at what is going on with my team that day. And as an executive of the company, Daniel, to be honest with you, what I look at, I tend to look at quarterly and annual things that are happening. Right. So major campaigns, major projects, major deals.

I'm looking at PNL, I'm looking at corporate strategy with our executive team, then my direct report directors, etc. senior level folks. They are looking at sort of, month to quarter and then their team is looking at sort of week to month, and that's how we set it up. And so as my team comes in, you know, everyone you know is is flowing really well.

And we just, operate in those and those lanes. And. Yeah, and that's, that's typically how, how the day, how the day goes.

Daniel Burstein: Well, I got to ask you two before you get to the office, because I bet a lot of people right now are on the train listening to us. I mean, that's what I've heard people listen to how I made it. Marketing. It's more of their downtime. It's not when they're actively at work, like our case study. So anything on the train that you're doing to prepare yourself for is that like, no, that's me time.

I'm away from everyone. I'm just going to do my own thing.

Jeffery Keilholtz: Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, I look the work will be the work. If I'm working on something, then it follows me on the train and that's that's what happens, right? In the morning, I tend to like to get into a head space on my own terms. So I will go read a little bit. I will, hit podcasts, things that help me just help my mind.

Wake up, help my, you know, my senses wake up. And and that usually helps give me a boost in the morning.

Daniel Burstein: Get the ball rolling. All right, well, let's take a look at some of the lessons from some of the things you've made in your career. As I've said before, it's a great thing about being a marketer. We get to make things. I've never really had any other career. I've never been a podiatrist or an actuary or whatever, but I don't feel like they get to make things and we do.

So your first lesson is win the day. How did you learn this lesson?

Jeffery Keilholtz: So how I won this learned rather how I learned this lesson. It's funny you said you've never done anything other than marketing in. My background's a bit different. Daniel, I, I have a, sort of an eclectic background, so at a high level, I'll take you through that and then get to how I learned that lesson.

Right. I started out, I went to I, I left college and I went to New York to be an actor and study at a conservatory. I was in my early 20s, and I was working in the theater, working in film and TV a bit. But as a working actor, it's very hard to support yourself. Quite frankly, the arts aren't subsidized in in the States, and you have to find a way to pay the bills, right?

And put food on the table. So I put my social consciousness to use, if you will. And that led me into community organizing and then quickly into political campaign management. And I learned on the streets really quickly in high stakes campaigns in Brooklyn, in New York, and then over a decade, you know, in Maryland as well, how to operate right in, in this level of, of, of winning the day.

And what do I mean by that? I mean Election Day can't be moved. Okay. You can't get together with a group of stakeholders, a line to punt, a, you know, a go to market date, if you will. Election day is there's a flag in the ground and it's up to you to reach that day on your terms to the best of your ability.

And so you have to work backwards from that day. And in campaign management, you are dealing with myriad stakeholders and different roles. So you're building alliances, you're forging partnerships, you're writing policy, you're negotiating deals. You are working on ops comms, and you are finding folks to execute in those roles. So as a campaign manager, your job isn't necessarily to do any of those roles.

Your job is to find the talent to put into those roles and to get those things done. And so winning the day is about pulling everything back to the immediate moment. What you have control over. You don't have control over tomorrow. You don't have control over a week from now. What you have control over is today. What am I going to do today to win this day?

And then I do that tomorrow. And if I put enough wins daily wins back to back. In my experience, Daniel, that is the best possible way, man, to make it probable that me and my team are going to succeed. And that's the best way I can. I can explain it.

Daniel Burstein: Yeah. Can you give us a specific example, maybe of a recent campaign you worked on and on how that affects to you as a manager, as a leader, what that win the day philosophy does actually on a day to day basis. Because obviously when I hear it, you know, I heard the analogy to what we do. We do campaigns, we have lunch days.

I also do want to mention that who's ever listening right now, whatever side of the aisle you're on politically, that was a side that Jeff was the campaign manager for. I know it's another hit. People here in politics, they kind of seize up a little. But that was Jeff's side. He was on your side.

Jeffery Keilholtz: Absolutely.

Daniel Burstein: But yeah, I mean, so what does that mean? So. So I get the entire philosophy, like how did that affect the decision you had recently in a specific day for a campaign that you were running? How did you do practical to use that?

Jeffery Keilholtz: Great. Let's pull it to present day, darn it. Let's pull it to marketing. Okay. So right now ad probably licensing global. So fast forward I come through my campaign management. I leaned into comms. I worked is, in communications for Kerry International, as you said. And from my artistic days. The previous CEO of Probably Licensing Global called me up during the beginning of the pandemic because I had theater, but I had film and TV background, and everything in the theater industry had shut down right.

And in order to keep the company alive, they wanted to pivot to streaming, but they had no idea what they were doing. So the CEO called me up and said, hey, man, do you want to help stand this up with me? It's an imprint we're going to call Broadway on Demand. And I said, let's go. Of course, I didn't know anything like I didn't know what I was doing either.

I did have limited experience in my background that said, we forged ahead. It became a seven day a week slog, and I oversaw original programing, the creation of it. We created 40 different series for Broadway on demand, over a very short period of time. Most of it was not great. Right? One of the series got nominated for an Emmy.

That nomination gave our financiers our board, you know, a lot of encouragement, right, to continue to, support what it was we're doing. And then drama display service, the biggest legacy play licensing company in the world, was going under. And that put us in a position to acquire DPS and set us up on an M&A role up model.

Right. That fast tracked our growth from 800 titles that we managed and represented to 8000 titles today. One of those titles was it was like the Mouth of the elephant. We acquired Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. This was the largest acquisition of a Broadway play in the history of the industry. Right? It put us on the map at a quantum leap forward.

So here we are. This niche firm that is scaling rapidly, still has limited resources, and we're about to go to market with Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. My team was 10th. They were panicked. We aligned with, the Cursed Child team on our quote unquote, Election Day, right. The day that we were going to announce. Now, could that date be moved?

It could, but we were dealing with numerous global partners to make this go to market announcement happen. As you can imagine, this is one of the largest, most prestigious brands right in the world. And we had one shot to do this, right. So we planted a flag and said, okay, you know, September 5th, I think it was 20, 23 was the day we were going to announce to the world that we had acquired this, the shelf.

So we moved backwards, right as I did in my campaign management. And we we, of course, set milestones, but I was encouraging my team every day to win the day. So, for example, because we had limited financial resources, we said, okay, how do we make a big splash? You know, there's an earned media piece of this that is, you know, digital campaign piece of this.

But one of the things we did was we leaned into stunt marketing. So we created a marketing catalog that was going to drop the day that we announced Harry Potter. And on the cover we were going to create. I don't know if you know Harry Potter, but it's called a time turner. And it, you know, let them go back and forth in time.

We were going to create an augmented reality cover where when you scan that cover, the time Turner comes off the cover, 3D spins around and announces that Vogue had acquired Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. This took a ton of work. We had three different teams. We had a team in New York. We had a team in L.A., we had a team in China.

And so we were constantly working on the iterations of this technology. We had never used this technology before. This was a huge financial investment for us, and it seemed impossible to execute. But when we dialed it back to day to day, incremental momentum, it felt easier to wrap your arms around. And that's what we did. The team would get frazzled.

The team would get tense and anxious and feel like, we weren't going to make it by the deadline, that if we did, the technology was not going to be, on par with the curse child brand. But that's when I kept encouraging our team. Okay, take a breath, regroup, see the future, come back to the present and just win each day.

And that really helped psychologically. Daniel, the marketing team, not only internally on Park Avenue, but the teams we had globally to all just take a breath and and stay focused. I hope I hope that that that helps.

Daniel Burstein: Absolutely. Yeah. One enticing to the next lesson you're talking about two which is stay nimble, right. So obviously I think you've just given some great examples of that. But when you use that word, my team. Right. So I know you're working with an external team right at whatever the play, you've got your team actually in the company, but you also have vendors.

And I think in this example of nimbleness, it was an issue actually with one of the vendors. So can you talk us through how that stadium or philosophy helped you make this decision with a vendor?

Jeffery Keilholtz: Yeah. So stay nimble. You know, I it's, I, I practice martial arts for a long time, and one of the things you learn from, you know, I learned from from my time in that that practice is it comes from Asian culture, this idea of, you know, if you are too rigid, like, a tree branch in the winter, you're gonna snap easily what you want to try and do is stay nimble and light and malleable.

Sort of like a sprout in the spring. Right? So that way you can roll with the elements, okay? You can withstand the pressure. So staying nimble. We'll stay on the curse child example here for a minute. We had a PR firm. Good people, nice people. But the bottom line was the firm was not delivering the ROI that we needed for us to execute on that September 5th launch date.

Right. That Election Day, quote unquote, that we had, planted in the ground. So rewind. We're back. You know, April, May of 2023. We're working with this firm. It's, you know, they're telling us what's going on or what's possible. And this and that. And trust me, I've been in this game long enough. I know that relationships take time to forge.

Trust takes time, to build with different outlets, editors, journalists, etc.. That said, we still had a date and we had to have a marquee outlet help us make this announcement. Right. That was on brand with the Curse Child. Title. And we're getting into late, late spring, man. And I just felt like we were spinning our wheels, and we were honestly, we were getting spun by the firm, and I had to have a conversation with my internal team.

And I said, listen, guys, we have to make a call here. Either we stay the course with this current firm that we've worked with before and hope for the best, or we have to make a hard pivot and do it right now to another firm that we haven't worked with before, but may better our odds for success.

So I heard my team's input and there were various opinions, as you can imagine. And then I went to my CEO and I said, hey, listen, know I distill this information, this is where we are, and this is what I recommend. And what I recommended was we cut bait and we do it right now.

And to his credit, he said, go for it. So I knew we had one shot Daniel. So we had done our due diligence. We had vetted a few other firms. We found one that we thought was very, impressive. We liked their model with how they, approached, different media outlets, different relationships. They had. But it was a gamble, man.

Like, you don't know, right? You don't know? But I knew the path we were on. It's like touching a hot stove continuously. I couldn't look my team in the eye to get to September 5th and feel like we blew it, frankly. But we had an opportunity to do something different, right? So on that day, we decided to make a change.

We decided to win the day right and take control of what we could control. We signed up with this new firm. This firm was phenomenal. They jumped in. It was late in the game. We're here in the summer. This is where we are. And they helped us put together and an announcement, an exclusive, feature with The Hollywood Reporter that helped us, break the news, which was perfectly on par with what we needed anyway.

Man, about the staying nimble piece, right? It's just it's being able to sort of roll with challenges, know things are coming and not being too rigid. In in your decision making, right. Removing your ego and being able to have that fluidity and that in that case, it worked out for us.

Daniel Burstein: Well, give us a sense of what we should look for when we are being pitched by PR agencies, because you've been kind of in that experience with literally this is probably a lot of people haven't been in this experience. It was the same campaign in one, worked in one didn't. So wonder what should we look for in some of those pitches?

Because I've been. So first of all, I will say I'm a fan of privacy as a reporter. Yeah, and as a host of this, I work with PR agencies every day. I would not be able to do my job with PR agencies. Right. You know, Jeff came to me from a PR agency, so I'm a fan of care agencies.

On the flip side, as a brand owner, I've also been pitched by PR agencies as a client, like we've had PR agencies, we have events, we have our own publication, we have, you know, Michelob Ads or rosacea, a product. So I've been on the pitching and PR agencies, and I think the challenge and seeing a lot of those pitches is there is a general sameness to them.

Like, I could almost predict what is going to happen in the pitch in the RFP, it's, you know, oh, you show previous things that you've gotten press for. Obviously, you don't show the things you don't. You show some numbers which are tended to be like these. I don't even know where a lot of these numbers come from, because it's just like the like I mean, I've seen before, I forget the exact numbers, but like getting on Yahoo and then that's like a billion or something like that, when obviously it's a press release buried somewhere in Yahoo.

There's no way there's a billion eyeballs on that, you know? And so again, there's a certain pattern you see in some of these and, you know, you have pictures of the people that are working, they're going to be dedicated to you and these relationships we have. And then what we're going to do, which is generally the same thing, is going to be putting out press releases or coming up with a study or whatever.

So that's a challenge I definitely always have is kind of parsing like, okay, well this is, you know, and this is what we all need to do as well as vendors. All do they they set their pitch. But what can we actually look for in those presentations that might signify success or not? Because a lot of times this is what I say in life.

You know, we we teach a lot of ab testing here, and there's a lot of I love ab testing because you can put, let's say, one headline and other headline. You can know, you can know. This headline works better than that. Mostly when we make a decision to choose a vendor, we don't have that AB test. We don't say like, well, because we didn't like maybe this one didn't work out, that one have worked out, or maybe this one did work out.

But with that one, it worked out better. We don't know. We had the three or the five we picked the one. We know what happened. We don't know. It didn't happen. But you, my friend, you were in that unique climate. You had two PR agencies for the same campaign and two different outcomes. So give us a sense. What should we look for in some of those those pitches when we're getting pitched by the different vendors, RFP, whatever you want to call them, that might signify a work or it won't.

Jeffery Keilholtz: It's a fabulous question. It's an important question, especially in marketing leadership. I want to say as well, I'm a huge fan of PR firms. I'm a major believer in earned media and the value of earned media. That is a huge part of our, larger strategy at BLG. And frankly, that's what's helped us dominate in share of voice over the last couple of years against our major competitors with much, you know, more robust resources.

All that said. From the chair I'm sitting in, Daniel, I would take every pitch deck with with a grain of salt. Like you said, a lot of them are predictable. You know, that they're going to have, flashy headlines. They'll have, you know, some infographics for you. A lot of it's going to be you know, vague.

We can do everything for everyone in any way you want, etc.. Practicality. I'm a practical guy, I like pragmatism, I like coming back to. Okay, all right. Just take away the spin, take away the hype, take away the, you know, the glitz. Have anyone that I know that I respect worked with this firm before, right. Referrals are a huge thing for me right?

I would like to hear someone tell me this firm did this for me in this way and helped us solve this challenge, right? That helps give me a lot more confidence than a blind pitch. So I would always say, if you can, find a sort of first person referral, that's the best thing. If not, ask for references and follow up on those references.

It's a telltale sign to me, in my experience, when I've asked for references before from PR firms or other vendors. Right. And they'll say, well, look at our website. Well, I did, and I'd like to talk to them. And then there is, you know, a bunch of, of, of hemming and hawing and you're like, okay, okay, this is a big red flag for me.

So the first person referrals absolutely start there. If not, ask for those references and follow up with those references. And you know, the pitch deck is going to be the pitch deck. The other thing is what I liked about the firm that yeah, we're using now. And frankly, I'll call them out because they're you know, they're they're fantastic at some, interdependence, PR, I like their model.

And their model was different than the other models I've seen in PR. You know, part of their, their secret sauce is that they use, you know, and, AI powered sort of model that helps identify outlets and reporters and editors and journalists. Right, who may want to write about this story we're trying to pitch and who has it yet and then can also see, oh, if this outlet with this writer wrote about this story, it is likely to generate this amount of impressions or views or clicks, right?

So you're helping that outlet do its homework and say, listen, if you write about this story with this team, you know, in this way is a huge probability. Something, something good is going to happen. And I can tell you, from our experience, it works. Right. And so I like their model. Their model's a little bit different.

The other is they have a real team. Listen, man, every every company is different. You know, you have startups, you have mid-market, you have large corporations. Not there isn't a one size fits all package. Some, you know, firms don't need, you know, huge team. Some have to have a huge PR team. The team that we had, which is perfect for us.

We had four different, reps. Right. Which was a team for us in each one of them was in the continental United States and in a different time zone. So we had essentially a team working in real time every working day. And it really helped with the efficiency, especially bro, because we were so time limited with what we had to accomplish.

So those were some things that, really stuck out to us. And listen. Then there's also the democratization of of of PR and there are other firms out there that can, really help companies leverage, you know, PR without, too many middlemen, if you will. So those are some things that I like about PR and that have just worked for, for me and my team, especially big Guy.

Daniel Burstein: I think that's helpful when we're all looking at vendors. I think one thing I like you said about is, talking to that specific individual reference of someone who work with them because the thing that like one thing PR do, I mean, we're marketers and advertisers do it to write all the good news and all the good news.

And we know just from listening to this very conversation with you, I. And if you've ever heard how I made it marketing before, like a campaign never unravels that way. There's going to be good and bad. And so when you're talking to someone I would advise to is not did everything go flawlessly? Because that's probably 1 in 1,000,000.

But like, okay, when something went wrong because they were wrong, how did they handle it. Right. And that's at the end of the day, what you want to know because you're you're going into the battle under fire with them, which ties into your next lesson very nicely. So you talked about a lot of the kind of machinations of what goes on behind the campaign, but also you individually, as the marketing leader, all eyes on you, man.

And you said, stay cool under pressure. So how do you learn this lesson? How did you learn to do this?

Jeffery Keilholtz: I hate to, you know, repeat myself, but I'll be honest. It it a lot of it goes back to my, my campaign management days. You know, when you were raising money, when you were, you know, forging alliances, you are, with disparate, groups and personalities and points of view. Everyone has an opinion, right?

And everyone is always Monday morning quarterbacking you, especially when you're in the hot seat. Right. If you're managing a, political campaign, if you are running marketing for, for a firm, if you are in executive position, if you're any sort of leadership position, you never know what someone else is thinking. But, you know, a lot of times, a lot of folks are probably second guessing what it is you're doing or thinking, you know, I could do it better or this or that.

The other thing, and you have to be able one to tolerate that and think well under pressure. All eyes are on you at the end of the day, like you said, right? In leadership, especially in marketing, leadership. You have.

Numerous different team members executing countless different tactics or after, you know, a singular goal, right? So whether it's, it's the a go to market campaign or what have you, but being able to stay cool under pressure, like you said, because things are going to fall apart, something is going to happen that you didn't anticipate, that you wish didn't happen, that maybe you didn't prepare for as best as you could have, and you have to figure out a way to exercise that clutch mentality and say, okay, when the pressure's on, how do I slow my heart rate down?

How do I remember to breathe? Right? Because your energy is contagious in leadership, okay. If your panic, your team's going to be panicked and what you want to do, in my opinion, is instill as much confidence as you can at all times. And your team members to execute at their very best. Now, does that mean lying to them?

No. Right. Of course not. Does that mean, spinning them right, like everything's fine when it's not. No, I actually it's, it's, it's the opposite. I like to acknowledge again pragmatic ism. I like to acknowledge if we're in a ditch. Okay. All right. Team, here we are in a ditch. Elephant in the room. This is where we are.

Okay, now, accepting that what can we do incrementally to win each day, to drive us out of this ditch as quickly and as efficiently as possible, you know, so that goes back to my like I said, my, political days. Clearly now as an executive at that blog, with, with the rate we're growing, we have a lot of eyes on us, you know?

And so, the last thing I'll say is, I love the sport of tennis, and I love it because to me, it's it's chess on your feet at 120 miles an hour. And typically what you're seeing in a tennis match is you're seeing two existential crises in real time, like one person on the side of the net, person the other, and in most cases, like, you know, first of all, they can't talk to each other.

They can't touch each other. They're not going up and sitting with their team. They don't have a, you know, or their coach. It's it's them problem solving in real time. And that never gets old to me. And I love, seeing the likes of, of, you know, Andre Agassi or Rafael Nadal and the way that they can, they've been able to exercise that muscle.

And then unleash it. The idea of clutch mentality, when, when the pressure is on.

Daniel Burstein: Yeah. Let me ask you about that. So can you think of maybe any specific examples where you had to make a snap judgment and stay cool under pressure? Right. Because, for example, I interviewed Marco Mueller, the CMO of a Vrbo, and how I made it marketing. One of his lessons was you can make a big career and still stay human.

And he told the story of when he led Russia and the six countries for SAP. When the CMO of all of that SAP came in just happened to be a day, you know, they had all these appointments all over Moscow. There some big public event going on, horrible traffic. It couldn't get a helicopter. So I guess at that time it was very reserved for the Russian elite.

And the CMO put him on the spot and said, Marco, what are we going to do? He said, well, we can go in the subways, which he said was not a great day and, you know, air conditioning, security issues. But the guy, you know, went around with them all day in the subway. And when he was, what Marco was thinking is like, man, I'm done after this, I'm fired.

And the CMO, you know, praised him for being cool under pressure, thinking on his feet and and finding a solution. So when you talk about harness, you got me thinking and staying cool under pressure. Like Morgan is a very deadline driven environment. I think we've all had those leaders too, who would just freak out, do it right. It's always you're always under fire, freak out like, oh, we got to get this thing done.

And I need to, like, always hate that mentality. And when you mentioned tennis, it got me thinking of I am not as big of a tennis fan. I remember I think it was Pat McEnroe. Was that the guy they always do like like your temper tantrums or stuff like that. Remember? Like an 80 hour John McEnroe. John McEnroe.

Yeah. So that's what I was thinking to my head is like, we've all had the marketing like John McEnroe. He's getting like throwing things around. I mean, I worked in agencies. There's been holes in walls. There's been temper tantrums. There's been all sorts of things. Right. We've all been there. So I like this philosophy. But you mentioned before that PR agency change, big change.

But again still, that's more of a slow moving crisis. Sometimes it is that snap judgment. It is in the moment it is. There's a tennis ball heading in your head at 120 miles an hour. So can you take us into one of those decisions where you had to make a snap, snap judgment?

Jeffery Keilholtz: Yeah. So staying with the, the tennis metaphor for a second, Andre Agassi, I think it was 2005 US open quarterfinal. Was it going to be his last year? I'm sure all this is going through his head in the moment as he is in his fifth set. Yeah. Had this I think to set come back. He's against James Blake and he's I think 1540 down in the tiebreak.

And essentially he's he's three points from his entire career being over. And he gets a second. He gets a look at a second serve. And instead of just like punting it back right. What does he do. He steps into the court and smashes cross cross-court forehand for a winner. And I'm like, God damn like that. That is living to the fullest, you know, to be like, he took control of the moment and said, I'm just going to whip this forehand cross court.

I'm going to step into the court when the pressure's on. So as you were talking, Daniel, the example that comes to mind, we have plenty of those at Vogue and Politics, but I'm going to pivot to when I was at Kerry International during Covid. Okay. I was running comms and marketing partnerships for the company. I was not in a senior leadership position.

I was sort of in a middle management, position. But Kerry International is the oldest and most prestigious executive transportation firm, around the world. Right. And you're talking about executive transportation and Covid hit right business just stopped and I mean stopped. And everyone was freaking out like every other, you know, person and company around the globe. And one of the things we had to do and figure out immediately, even just to stay alive, was the small, the, small business, office and the federal government, the CEO, they were giving out these, Paycheck Protection, loans, the PPE loans for businesses in order to cover payroll, operational expenses to stay afloat.

And it was imperative that Kerry got one of these loans, in order for us to stay alive. And, of course, I'm thinking about the business, but I'm thinking about my own, my wife, my daughter, and I said to my wife, like, when this happened, I said, I'm not going to get fired. I'm going to get promoted. And she said, what do you mean?

And I said, I don't know how, but I'm going to step in, right? I'm going to lean into the fire. I'm going to fire fight instead of, you know, retreat. Right. And so I went into our CEO, in our, our corporate affairs office, our legal team. I said, look, you know, I actually used to run a nonprofit.

I know about grants. I worked in campaigns and politics. I know a lot about, you know, the the government. I think maybe I and I work in comms. Hello. Like, I think I could be of some help here as we all find our way through the very time sensitive matter of applying for this grant or applying for these loans, getting to the front of that line and getting as much money as we can.

Right. For the company to they live. So I ended up working. It was day in, day out with our legal team and me working with the federal government to make this happen, and we ended up through our work achieving in a in obtaining one of the largest loans of its kind in the global transportation industry. And it kept the company afloat and like it, kept it alive.

This 100 year company kept alive. And frankly, to their credit, I think that's the reason they kept me on board, because unfortunately, they had a layoff. A lot of other folks during that time. Now they've come back. But, you know, I was running marketing of comms and their RFP process, and they kept me on board, of course, to help manage this.

But, and I essentially was, was, becoming part of that leadership circle at the same time. That's when Broadway Licensing Global called me to help stand up body. And I was kind of doing these things simultaneously because I didn't know which one was going to work, if either of them were going to work. But I was thinking about my wife and my daughter, right.

And I was just leaning into the fire. So, yeah, that that that experience during Covid, talk about staying cool under pressure. Man. That was, that was a big one.

Daniel Burstein: Well, it's such a nice reminder for everyone. I mean, I know we've all heard that saying that the Chinese character for Crisis and Opportunity the same. I actually think that's not true. I'm not sure, but but it is a great lesson, right, for for what people are going through. Right now, a lot of people listening on this call, what are your writers, marketers, whatever it is, is that rise of AI right.

And so Jeff was thinking, hey, is is Covid going to take my job and say, I can take my job? Or is that an opportunity to use everything you've learned in your career and turn it into a tool or something like that? So in just a moment, we are going to talk about we talked about some of the lessons we learned from some of the things Jeff, has made.

In just a moment, we're going to talk about some of the lessons we learned from some of the people he made them with. That's a great thing we get to do as marketers. We get to build things. We get to build them with people. But first, I should mention tying into that I lesson that that how I made it a marketing podcast is, in fact underwritten by Mac Labs.

I the parent organization of marketing. Sure. But and you can get a three month free scholarship to the AI Guild and get conversion focused training from the lab that helped pioneer the conversion industry. Get your scholarship at. Join that Mac Labs ai.com that's joining Mech Labs ai.com courtesy of Mac Labs and maybe get some ideas on how to make the most of this, opportunity and not have it be a crisis.

So let's talk about some of the lessons you learn from some of the people. You made a lot of things with other first person you mentioned was Sergei Dryden. And the lesson you said you learned was never forget the independence of your imagination. That sounds I mean, that's where like, you're acting and play back and comes from. I guess that's when he said, this is beautiful, like how it's worded.

Can you take us into that story?

Jeffery Keilholtz: Yeah, man, it is beautiful. Right? I'm happy to. So when I was, in my early 20s, I was in New York, I was acting, I just left, the actor's Conservatory, where I was, I was studying, and I. I always wanted that Mr. Miyagi. Right? I always wanted that that that that that teacher that that sensei to, you know, really help, you know, guide me in a very, personalized way.

And I was I was needing that, and it's 2003. There's a blizzard in New York. I end up going to Lincoln Center Theater, and seeing, a movie that this, this movie theater happened to be open during the snowstorm. And it was this film called Russian Ark. It was in Russian, English subtitles.

And the thing about Russian Ark is, it's. I can't remember the running time, I think escapes me. I think it's like 98 minutes, but it's one shot, one take. Daniel. Right. And the actor in this film, his name was Sergei, Dryden, as you mentioned. And he was. It was one of the most astonishing performances I'd ever seen.

Had I learned about this film. Well, as a struggling actor, I was working at a hotel serving breakfast right, to international business clients, and I would read the New York Times every day and see the ads. And there was this great ad for Russian art, and let me go see this in a blew my brain apart. I was like, oh my God, this this actor was so real, so sensitive and so impactful.

And, and I didn't understand a word he was saying, right. You know, so subtitled. And so I spent the next three days trying to track down Sergei in Russia. I don't speak Russian and he doesn't speak English, I come to find out. But I got in touch with him. I ended up fast forward, forging a a mentorship with, a mentor mentee relationship with him.

He's with the Moscow Art theater. I'm in New York. He had a friend who spoke Russian and English and lived in new Jersey. She and I would meet. I started to learn Russian from her at that one point, but we were corresponding with letters like I would write him in English and she would translate it into Russian and vice versa.

And one of the the correspondences that that he sent to me during that time, Daniel was, as, as an actor about never forgetting the independence of your imagination. And I the thing that that how that that came about was I was putting a lot of pressure on myself. And love is a very, self-critical to self-critical. It's important to be self-critical.

Right. But you don't let the pendulum swing to too hard to one side, and the too much self-criticism was was locking me up. I was getting into my head as an actor and he was trying to, I think, awaken or reawaken in me, the notion that, there's only one of me and my sensitivities are unique to me, and my expression is unique to me, and my experiences are also unique to me.

And if I can put all that together, and allow that to come out, naturally, it can make for, some, some beautiful art. And that really that lesson is always stuck with me to remind myself when I get into my head and start into overly self-critical, like, not to not to beat myself up so hard.

Right? That there's always a way that you have value, that you have a perspective, that is important. And so those things have, have helped me a lot, you know, personally and professionally.

Daniel Burstein: I want to can that word independence to this. So we as marketers tend to travel in packs or one of those packs, everything's digital. Or as I mentioned, I, you mentioned you first discovered this by seeing a print out in The New York Times. I know this is a while ago, but what role does print New York Times, whatever traditional marketing play and what you're doing right now.

Because, for example, when we've done research and we asked a representative sample of Americans, you know, what media they trust most when they're when they're going to make a purchase decision, right? So this isn't just like where do they find things, whatever. But when you're going to make a purchase decision, what do you trust most? And the crazy thing is, I mean, we thought we were going to show things are moving more in the digital direction.

Now. This was a few years ago, was like 2017, 2018, but the top six media were all traditional, the bottom six were all digital, and the number one media, 82% said print ads and then newspaper or magazine, and it would make sense. So I know their print has these challenges, right. We can't track and all of these things that we'd like to do, we can't attribute as much as things sometimes why we don't use it, because we want to attribute and say it came from there, but there's that trust factor that, you know, digital has a challenge with.

Also, when I think about your industry, it's funny because when you said that I just a light bulb went off for me when you said you discovered that film looking at it ad in New York Times, when I think of every play, or maybe the more artsy films that I have discovered, it has been offered to print out a New York Times or another newspaper.

So for your industry to it seems like I know that's not what you're selling itself the play to get a ticket on Broadway. It does seem that is an industry that leads into, you know, that that medium. So I just wonder for you, or you could tell me I'm totally wrong. This didn't work. Like, have you that independence of your thought?

Have you gone along with what other marketers are doing for other brands because they're going to digital or mobile, whatever? Or has there been some independence there where you said, hey, for our brand, some of these more traditional tactics might make more sense for our ideal customer.

Jeffery Keilholtz: It's a fabulous question. Yeah. I will say we do not, spend a lot of our budget in, in print. It's it's a it's very minimal. Part of that reason is, like you said, our job at BLG is not to sell a Broadway ticket, per se. Our job is to what we do is acquire the Broadway play or musical and represent that asset.

And what other theaters around the globe to produce it on their stages. Right. So we are maximizing the value of that IP outside of Broadway or outside of the West End. Right now. Sometimes we will work with producers, on a revival of things, etc., but primarily that that's the business we are in is the licensing of those, those assets.

So yes, there's a lot of, you know, in digital etc. and of course we use those tactics. I will say in in terms of independent, we lean heavy into our media eeling heavier into PR and earned media than any of our major competitors. Why do we do that? Well, what we found, is that when used cleverly and correctly, the for every dollar used in PR and or in the media, the long tail value of that far outweighs, just sort of classic digital media.

If you, if you will, evergreen features. We want to not only we're in a position where we've had to build the visibility of our fast growing brand, right to earn trust. In the, the theater ecosystem outside of New York. Right. But we also have thousands of titles that we have to represent.

Not all of those titles are Harry Potter, right? A lot of them need a lot of TLC, right. To, so you're educating, the the theater going public, you're educating artistic directors, you're educating, the underwriters of theaters to to help them understand the value of these plays and musicals and why they would they should produce these shows on their stage and not others.

So we are promoting these playwrights. We're promoting certain titles. And with we really believe one of our big KPIs is, is as of Share a voice. Right. So we're we're constantly looking at, you know, how are we dominating the media. You know, published media, you know, articles and that, that, that space, because we feel like it gives us like I said, it's a it's a longer tail value for us.

And we have seen, strong correlation of as we've hit the gas on pushing forward aggressively with PR and earned media traffic to our site have has increased conversions, have increased interest, active interest from different producers and artistic directors is increasing. So, yeah. So in terms of independents, right. That's one way I, we work independently.

In a way that that, some of our competitors don't, don't tend to.

Daniel Burstein: Yeah, I remember so some event and, someone out, you know, the asked me, hey, you know, should I have a B on Facebook? Should be doing a Facebook promotion. I was like, well, what do you do? Or. Right or. And he was like a middleman. It's like, well, I buy from that guy and sell to that guy.

I'm like, well, that guy's over there and that guy's over there. So maybe just cause everyone else was on Facebook, maybe you don't shouldn't invest in Facebook, right. But. So all these ideas, they're great theory. Nothing matters unless they get done. You've talked about some of the difficulty of getting things done, and I appreciate that. I think everyone listening will appreciate that, because I know these ideas sound great in theory, but, you know, unless they happen.

And that's one of the things I really try to get out there with how I mean it marketing, not just buzzwords. Yeah, it sounds good. How do you do it? And you learned that lesson back, you know, back to your career from Chris Owens. And he said execution sets people apart. So how do you learn this from Chris?

Jeffery Keilholtz: Yeah. So Chris was the son of Major Owens, who was, a congressional icon. And, Chris is a political expert. Right. And when I started to work on my first congressional race, I was the community outreach manager. So I did a lot of that partnership building comms, etc. but then quickly I became the deputy campaign manager, and then ultimately the campaign manager of this, this congressional race and this race was so big at the time.

I'm giving you a little context here because this was, I think this is important to to set the scene, you know, we were going to hire, the Election Day operator or the architect of that Election day plan who, worked on Jesse Jackson's presidential campaign back in, back in the 80s. And of course, then we didn't have the money and he bailed.

And so, you know, you know, little old Jeff is here having to figure out how to put together an Election Day operation for this huge congressional race. And I had no business whatsoever being in charge of something like that. And it was Chris who was at that time, I guess he was my my Miyagi, my Mr.. I keep right.

You know, he was our chief adviser, and I remember he sat me down and unfolded when we first unfolded this huge map of the congressional district. And it looked the you saw block by block, zip code by zip code, you know, the entire geography of of the, the, the district. And let me tell you, the this one congressional district was so large, it had more people that resided in it than the entire state of Wyoming.

Okay. So this was a huge deal, early on in my political life. And Chris said, he said, you know, Jeff, because I was getting into my head, right? I was I was too rigid. I was, I was at branch in the winter. I was I was starting to snap. And I was like, you know what? You know, I didn't go to, I didn't go to Yale and and study, you know, poly sci.

I didn't do this. And he said, don't give a shit that you are now in this position. All these other people fallen off and you've leaned into the fire. You're here because there's something in you that can operate. There's something in you that can develop a campaign that can drive forward, right, that can forge alliances, he said. No one cares where you went to school once you are in the driver's seat, right?

If you're there and executing, that's all people care about. And frankly, Daniel, fast forward to now, going from the streets in, in in political campaign management in New York to now, you know, being an executive on Park Avenue. I tell you, man, a lot of the lessons are the same. You know, if you can deliver and you're not an asshole, like, that's a good recipe.

You know, if you can execute and keep your head and have a smile on your face and stay nimble and win the day and empower those around you and remove your ego. You're going to put yourself in the best position possible for success.

Daniel Burstein: Well, and part of that being someone people like to work with, let's call it, let's say it that way, is the ability to form partnership. So you talked a lot about, you know, you managing your team or work with vendors. Right. But do you have any examples of forming a partnership in an organization? Because that's what often is what it takes to execute.

So for example, when I interviewed Michelle Hoff, the chief marketing officer of user testing, one of her lessons was become a true partner with your sales counterpart. And she told the story of how they look at it as a sales plus marketing budget. And, you know, they go to market together. And that's how she's able to execute with that true partnership.

So you talk about coming to the organization, just managing your team, doing these other things. If you really want to get it done, a lot of times there's a peer or or even someone senior to you that you have to partner with. Have you ever been able to do that, within an organization, have any examples of that that could help us?

Jeffery Keilholtz: Yeah, as a matter of fact, staying on that, track, in our business at BLG, the vast majority of the revenue that we drive is what we call non-touch. And what that means. Well, we have three different customer demos that we go after. We go after professional theaters, we go after professional theaters, and we go after schools.

Those three demos, have much they have very diverse personas and but we all want them to license our shows. We want them to license and produce our shows versus other shows. Right. And the non-touch piece is two out of three of those lanes. The schools and the nonprofessional are non-touch. They usually are alerted to our shows, educated about our shows, excited about our shows through marketing tactics to market and campaigns which bring them into the site.

They'll apply. And it's like retail, right? It's not touch. They'll be able to get their application through an approved and, and we collect, the revenue, we, you know, we pass it through to the because we represent the, the creatives. And that's how it works. On the other hand, there's the professional theaters, but there are far fewer professional theaters out there.

But as you can imagine, even though there are far fewer theaters, which means far fewer productions, each of those productions tends to generate a lot more money than a nonprofessional or school theater. Okay, that's much more the professional, much more white glove, high touch, right? In our licensing sales team, is responsible for forging those relationships directly and converting those theaters to license our shows.

The one thing about me at BG is I've sort of been the triage surgeon in the executive team, whereas we've hired people to just run licensing or run acquisitions or run this or that. I've been that executive leader who has, over the course of my tenure, as we scaled rapidly, paratroop into different divisions in the company and helped to stabilize that.

So I started a board. Then I joined the executive team, we bought DPS, we bought stage rights, we started a roll up these other companies. I went into the licensing, sales and business development. Division and stabilized. That helped grow that by 59% during Covid. I went back to, but then I told our CEO, you know, where our big gap is right now, it's in marketing and comms and in PR let me run that.

And and that's what I'm doing now. But all that I learned from my time in politics of being able to sort of have touch every other, every piece right, of, of an organization. So fast forward here, we're at BG, I'm in charge, quote unquote, of marketing and comms and PR right now. But our licensing and sales team, there is a ton of overlap, man.

And if we do not work together, it is not going to go well. And one of the things that we've learned actually, this year is that we weren't partnering together enough. We started to silo off a bit. Marketing was we were starting to because it was a about driving revenue. And a lot of most of our revenue was coming from nonprofits.

We said, all right, we're going to focus in on these on what we're doing. And licensee was going to do what it was doing. But then we realized, you know, that's that's not a winning strategy here. We have to take more time to work. Cross-Departmental work more collaboratively on campaigns, work further out on different, go to market strategies collaboratively.

Right. And so we started to put dedicated time on the books between our teams. And a cadence. And that really started to help us forge ahead more efficiently and effectively. And we're building trust. Now, that sounds easy, right? It sounds obvious, like, oh yeah, you should work together. But you know, man, when you're when you're in it, sometimes everyone's human.

You you can't see the forest for the trees. You're focused on the end result and you the horse blinders are on. Right. They're on a little too little, too tight. So we said, okay, we got to take this off in and collaborate and a little bit more. And frankly, a lot of our most creative ideas have come out of that.

Hey, I'm a big believer in that. There is no bad idea. Brainstorm and no one has a monopoly on good ideas. And these, you know, good ideas. The best idea can come from anywhere, right? And and yeah, there's a balance between having too many cooks in the kitchen, and having collaboration. But at the end of the day, it's essential for our team and our company where it is now to continue to be collaborative between marketing and licensing for us to drive forward, and, and grow at the rate we want to grow.

Daniel Burstein: And so this next lesson, we're going to have it earlier in the program. But I moved to the end because I realize this is probably pretty much the core lessons. I heard you talk so many times about how maybe I wasn't about guy. I just leaned in there. There was this tough situation. I just leaned in. I just went for it, you know?

And the lesson is endurance is essential. And it seems like that is kind of the capstone of your career so far, is just sticking to it. Even if you felt like maybe, you know, you didn't have the exact training for it or whatever it was, you said that you learned this from Andy Goldsworthy. So give us a tell us first to Andy is for people who don't know.

And then, you know, tell us how you learned this lesson.

Jeffery Keilholtz: Yeah. So Andy is, well, he's the subject of, documentary film about his life and work called Rivers and Tides. Andy is a Scottish environmental artist. He works only with natural elements. Okay. So he's sort of a sculptor with, with the likes of ice and twigs and and dirt and mud and bark, you know, and that's his, his medium.

His medium is the earth. And I was like, this is the Sergei situation. Searching for, Miyagi. I saw rivers and tides in, downtown theater in New York. And it just blew my mind. And a lot of the things he was doing as a visual artist is an environmental artist. I felt like, paralleled with what I was trying to learn and accomplish as a dramatic artist, as an actor.

And I do believe that, acting is is an endurance art. But we can talk more about that later. That said, I reached out to one of the, galleries that represents Andy in New York. I said, I would love to come and just shadow him. I would love to carry a pail for him. I would love to, volunteer.

I just want to help. I would like to be in that space. In this space with a master like that. To see what I could glean. And they bit. They said, sure. And I worked with Andy twice. The one I'll talk about here. He was at Gallery Long down in, Tribeca, I think in in New York.

He was doing an exhibition called White Walls. And he came in, I met him, he had a very small team. I was, you know, I was, you know, intimidated. But he was a very sweet guy. And and, you know, put me at ease right away. And I ended up, man, working with Andy day and day out, side by side, like we were covered in, in, in, in clay and natural elements and up in these lifts.

And he's putting the stuff up on these walls and, and, and so what would happen is he put, these walls at a, it is like a natural clay. And you would see over the course of the exhibition every day, he would come in and would change. Right? It would because it would fracture here, it would dry here, and etc., etc..

Anyway. When you're working with natural elements, things never go as planned. You are focused, you have an idea of what it is you're trying to accomplish. You are working your fingers to the bone, and maybe the sun comes up earlier than you thought and the ice is melting. Or maybe the wind blows and it blows. Part of a sculpture, apart or with white walls.

He didn't use natural hair in the clay to help it sort of, coalesce and bind together. And it, the, the white walls actually started to come apart quicker in the exhibition than, than, any of us had anticipated. And I started to freak out when the gallery, open the exhibition, and so did some of his team, but and he was like, no, this is great.

And like, what? It was like, what do you mean it's great? And he's like, no, this is this is part of the experience of just putting yourself out there and you keep going. And sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. And but life is a journey, man. And the only thing I know for sure, Daniel, is to hang in there and to keep going.

Right. And we have to think of life, in my opinion, as an endurance art, right? We are constantly trying to win the day for ourselves, in our job, personally, for our families. We're using the natural elements we have. You know, our brains, our talent, physical strength, our sensitivities, our relationships. Sometimes those things work out right. You're able to pivot from a program to another program, and it works.

Sometimes a relationship. It burns apart and it scars you.

But on the side of momentum. On the side of leaning forward. Whether you're going through something personal, professional, especially in marketing. Man, you know, yeah, we have KPIs that we use to measure our success, if you will.

We have campaign ideas. We have tactics we're employing. We have this, that. The other thing. Nothing's ever going to go perfectly. I think the idea to surround yourself with good people, people don't be afraid to surround yourself with people who are smarter than you, or maybe more talented than you. Again, think of it as a campaign manager especially is is is a senior leader in marketing.

You don't have to be an expert in every element of marketing, but you have to be an expert in is surrounding yourself in pulling together a team who can execute expertly in all those domains and put them in the best position possible to execute at the highest level and be the best versions of themselves. They can be. And that takes endurance because people work again.

Your team is always going to be looking at you. Daniel, for how they should be feeling, what they should be thinking, and what to do next. So just dial it back to winning the day and you just keep moving forward. And I'm I think winning the day, man is one of the best exercises we can take on for ourselves to build that muscle of endurance.

Daniel Burstein: We talked about winning the day, I love that. What if we want to win our career too, right? So big picture, what are the key qualities of an effective marketer? We talked about a lot of different things. I like the endurance part. We talked about a lot of different things from all your stories, but you just had to break it down.

You're talking directly to our listeners right now. What would you say? What are the key qualities of an effective marketer?

Jeffery Keilholtz: Broad perspective. I'm not necessarily looking for a degree in marketing. I want people who can think broadly. Broadly. Right. And what what do I mean by that? To put themselves in the shoes of the people we're trying to reach. Right. So that that that takes a psychological, sociological or even an effort, logical sort of approach. It takes a sensitivity.

Right. What pain points are we trying to solve for these people in real ways, and then dial it back to how do we communicate that? So that sort of broad perspective, that sort of sensitivity I definitely want I'm looking for people who are autonomous, self-motivated. I'm not a micromanager. I don't believe in micromanagement. I don't work well when I'm micromanaging.

I wouldn't say I'm a hands off leader, but I like to hire the best and put them in a position to drive. But just don't take advantage of that, right? So I'm looking for those types of qualities, in, in folks. I'm looking for people who are collaborative and not precious about their ideas and their point of view, because that type of mentality, those types of attitudes, in my experience, only put sand into the gears and it actually helps.

I think, drive a negative culture. So I'm looking for people who are collaborative, not precious, have a broad perspective, have sensitivities, who are proactive, right, who are willing to pick up a ball and drive forward. And at the end of the day, man, life's too short to work with just negative people, right? I like to work with good people.

I like to just work good energy people. Right. That to me, I feel like, is a recipe for for success with a team.

Daniel Burstein: Well, thanks for letting us dive through your entire career. Pick your brain and hear all your lessons. It was it was really enjoyable. Thanks. Thanks for this, Jeff.

Jeffery Keilholtz: Daniel. Man, thank you so much. I really appreciate it. And, your podcast is is really, really inspiring. And you do a lot of good for a lot of people. So I really appreciate it. And I hope you keep on.

Daniel Burstein: Well, that's kind of be. Thank you very much. And thanks to you all for listening. Hopefully we are helping you out. Thank you very much.

Outro: Thank you for joining us for how I made it and marketing with Daniel Burstein. Now that you've got an inspiration for transforming yourself as a marketer, get some ideas for your next marketing campaign. From Marketing Sherpas extensive library of free case studies at Marketing sherpa.com. That's marketing rpa.com and.