June 12, 2018 • 18 mins
There’s a new wave in consultants, coaches and innovation gurus working with C-level leadership to hone their knowledge and skills around emerging topics and trends. And while we can learn the Mary Meeker - like insights - doesn’t it all come down to where curiosity meets action? Brad Grossman, founder of Zeitguide, sits down with Alexa and Laura this week to talk about focusing all of the data we’re digesting, and gives us some insight on how to become consciously curious by engaging new resources, thinking like movie producers and pushing beyond our ad industry confines. This episode is meant to provoke the question "Why?" and if we’re asking that question enough...at all levels of the game. And don’t miss Brad’s yogi #KILLBUYDIY
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
I'm off my game today. People are going to have
to start making better content. I think we're gonna be
talking about this for a long time. When you program
for everyone, you program for no one. I think it's
that we're purpose driven platform, Like we're trying to get
to substance. How was that? Are you happy with that?
This is marketing therapy right now? It really is? What's up?
(00:28):
I'm Laura Currency and I'm Alexa Kristen. Welcome back to
at Landia. So one of the things Laura and I
have always talked about is why don't people just ask
more questions? Right? We are super obsessed with the why.
And I think a lot of the work that we
have focused on over the course of our time working
together and UM, the things that we always point to
(00:49):
and say, yes, that's the thing, has been what I
think bleeds into culture. And you can tell when people
really take their time with wrapping content next um and
putting work into the market that integrates seamlessly versus lives
adjacent to And I think as marketers we forget to
like kind of ask ourselves that question of like why
(01:12):
what motivates me? What right? What excites me? And putting
that into your work and actually asking questions about the work.
It's funny. I sit with a lot of people now
who are writing a lot of like marketing copy, and
I always ask, would you read this? Would you actually
read this? Great simple questions, simple question? And you want
(01:33):
the answer is how many times? No? They're like yeah, no,
I'm like, well, then we gotta go rewrite it. I mean,
two of the key things that I think we've heard
over the last few episodes, I think stemming back to
Josh Sternberg being on the show, Um, you know somebody
who's watching the market as as a reporter over ad week,
to you know, Cody and Mike Tongue, to young guys
(01:53):
who left the agency world to build their own thing. There,
there's these piecemeal signals right into the the biggest trends
that I think we're seeing our the idea of like
being able to bring your whole self to the table,
allowing all of the inputs and influences in your life
to affect your creativity and call that data by the way, right,
and then the other the other is really about asking
(02:15):
the simple questions, like questioning it, and I think what
we're going to hear from our next guest is allowing
yourself to imagine and allowing yourself to kind of like
go down the road where you start with a simple
question actually can lead to bigger and cooler and smarter
and more impactful work than it is. When we have
(02:40):
something in a nice little clean box that we've put together,
either whether it's a brief for a media plan or something,
ask what isn't there? Yeah, the blue sky thinking. We
can all talk about thinking this way, but it's really
about behavior. It's how we start training our brains. I
think our next guest, Brad Grossman, who is the founder
of zeit Guide, really has been training sea level executives
(03:04):
to think like a Hollywood producer, to dream, to let
their minds kind of go down and pull in a
ton of data, but use their gut and their heart
to lead them to what really makes sense. And my
hope is that that then trickles down through organizations because
I think some of these young people making these decisions
(03:25):
in the weeds are in search of those sorts of
inputs that go far beyond an index or a data
point or something. As Beth comp Stock has always said,
they feel like permissions granted. On that note, we'll be
right back and we're back in the studio with Brad Grossman,
(03:54):
the founder and CEO of Zeitguide, the oracle to the industry. Welcome. Wow, God,
I don't know who is the oracle to you? So where?
What is the zeit Guide and how did you become
(04:15):
the zeck Guide to the Zeitgeist? Okay? Zeke Guide means
guide to the Zeitgeist. Okay, Zeitgeist which many people don't know,
um what the real meaning is of it. But Zeitgeist
means spirit of the times in German. What the Zieguide
is is basically, we guide super busy executives on what
they need to know so that they can lead themselves
(04:38):
towards what's next. So you're the coach, the Zeitgeist coach. Yes, yes,
we guide them through our constantly changing culture so they're
best prepared for the future. Yeah. My brother is a
business guy, so he makes me kind of say that stuff.
He's one of my partners. Tell us because it's it's
an unlikely story about how Zeitguide and how you became
(04:59):
the zeit Guide coach for the Zeitgeist, and it has
to do with Hollywood. You were in Hollywood? Yes, Well,
to tell you the truth. UM. I started this company
after doing what I do now for other leaders and
helping them understand what's outside their company walls. I did
(05:19):
it for the Oscar Award winning and Emmy Award winning
producer Brian Grazer, who's a really good friend of yours.
That's a very good friend of mine. Yes, he produces
some stuff. And did you grow up together? How do
you know? Brian? Oh god, you're you're even going further back.
I actually was now that I'm like a tutor to
C suites, UM, C suite executives. UM. I was a
(05:40):
chemistry tutor to high school kids in Los Angeles and
it started this little tutoring company called Institutor. And then
one day I get a call from I feel like
there was like some logo on like a geo tracker.
It's like you're jamming through l A like it's the tutor.
It's so funny my logo that Yeah, well, I I
(06:01):
modeled after Charles and Charles meets the Nanny, right. So,
And I was a delight to you know, all the
parents of my clients, UM, who were students UM, who
happened to be from the Hollywood establishment. And yes, I
had this little Volkswagen convertible and my logo had me
and the convertible with sunglasses on with the horn honking
(06:25):
and said too too seriously, Oh how about that? The
great marketing was it? Totally was? Oh my god, I
so wanted that car in high school. But anyway, they
don't make it. They called it a cabrio then, yeah, cabrio. Yeah.
In what year was this? Two thousand two? I was
tutoring some of the sons and daughters of Brian Grazer's
(06:48):
friends and he heard about me. And after three years
of building this company, I get this phone call from
Brian Grazer's office and they're like, Hi, this is uh.
I think his assistant at that point was mc l Hi,
this is Miguel from Brian Grazer's office, and uh, I'd
love to set up a meeting between you and Brian Grazer.
And I'm like really, and you know, does he want
(07:09):
me to tutor his kid? And I said and and
they said no, he just wants to meet you. He
loves doing this thing, he loves meeting with interesting people
who are outside his UM industry, and he heard that
you're a great tutor and I'm like, wow, okay, well
I'll come in and see him. And so I walked
into his office and he's like, there's Brad Grossman, the
(07:31):
tutor to the stars. And I'm like, wow, that's that's
that's generous. And he's like, I don't want you to
tutor my daughter. I want you to tutor me. And
I'm like, in what you know? He's like, whoa, what
do you tutor? I'm like, I do calculus. I do chemistry.
He's like chemistry really, and he takes out this periodic
table from behind his sofa and that Oliver Sacks gave
(07:55):
him and I basically taught him with the oodic table.
Was you know, Brian was really awesome in the sense
that you know, he is a self proclaimed dyslexic and
he said that, you know, the only thing he learned
in school was that he couldn't learn in school, So
he wanted this kind of what's called a curiosity tutor
(08:16):
and just to kind of teach him about the world
and help him get outside the Hollywood bubble. Curiosity tutor.
That is so cool. Yeah, and everyone should have or
you should be your title for yeah, curiosity. How long
did you work with Brian Grays or tutoring him, being
(08:38):
the curiosity tutor the curiosity And was that like your
solo gig? It was solo gig, it was like my life.
I did it for five years. So how did you pivot?
Like what was the sort of moment You're like, done
this thing for five years? Like amazing opportunity, but there's
clearly something bigger that I could be doing here, Like
did you have a moment? Was it a lot and
(09:00):
drown out business plan? Like what was it? Two things?
One um, I didn't want to be a movie producer,
so and you know, so there was no reason for
me to stay in that position. I realized that I've
always had a career in terms of education, but educating
(09:22):
people in a way that inspires them. That's why I
call myself as a guy's coach instead of a tutor,
because like, I'm more of a coach, right, I didn't
call myself a chemistry tutor. I called myself an academic
coach because my job is to help you reach your
full potential. And I just thought that what I did
for Brian I could do for other people. At first,
I was meeting with a lot of people and telling
(09:44):
them what my idea was to work with people in
every single vertical so to speak. Um and they're like,
what are you kidding me? Like, go back to Hollywood,
that job doesn't exist. You went from and are going
from just giving people information to actually teaching them how
to think. Yes, right, so people are pulling you into
(10:04):
their organizations and you're actually teaching sea level executives how
to think and then how to train their teams to think.
They don't really have time to really sit and think
and brainstorm with the person who is outside of the
chaos let's I mean, let's you know, the chaos of
(10:25):
their daily lives and the chaos of the industry or
how their companies are being disrupted. You know, it's it's
they could strategize with the geniuses inside, and they could
hire a bunch of consultants to kind of come in
and advise them what to do, but very few of
them have the time to just kind of like think
(10:46):
like a science fiction writer with somebody who is very
multidisciplinary like me and my team. So what is curious?
So that's really interesting, like thinking like a science fiction
writer or a filmmaker creator, like I I got taught
how to think like a movie a movie producer right
in the movie business. And that's basically thinking in a
(11:10):
way that is so blue sky that anything can happen
from because they can't take. What we're realizing now is
that anything can happen. I mean, and anything that happens
now has more impact on the world and business than
anything that has ever happened before. It's any black swat
event that you know, everything is happening so quickly, and
(11:30):
we're so connected and at the core, media impacts culture, right,
and now that social media is causing more media to
be out there and connecting to more people, just more
things are happening that you never really thought that would
expect be expected at a much faster right. Right. So
(11:53):
things you just said are on media impacting culture, right.
So obviously is the show talking to brand marketers and
gency folk and creative types who are creating the messaging
that's it's adjacent to that media using that pipe to
disseminate you know, thoughts and provocations and and all the
things that we do as marketers. Um, is it fair
(12:14):
to say and and curious your take as as a
zeitgeist coach tutor guru. UM. The brands nowadays have more
or less influence in the market. We're seemingly consuming more
and more and more, But at the same time it
feels that consumers are equally skeptic. I think, well, I
(12:34):
think consumers have more power than ever before. Now more
than ever. Uh, consumers are shaping businesses UM because they're
just not gonna buy anything that you're you know that
that you're that they're selling to you unless they actually
want it. And there's so much information out there that
(12:56):
the brands don't have the direct Not only do they
not have the direct line to them, they also UM
their messaging is being crowded out by everything else that's
worked at Goldman Sachs, I've worked with Unilever, Disney, worked
with Fox, um Sony g E. S, beethcom Stock, I mean, Nickelodeon.
(13:19):
I've worked with What is the key to curiosity? Like,
how does a curious person behave no where you go
excited about learning, knowing that they don't know UM, not
going to the most obvious source for the answer, UM,
(13:42):
not even having direction sometimes and not even having a plan.
I tell my clients that they should just like have
one day, which is almost impossible. UM two, just go
on a learning journey. You know, what would that look
like for like Beth com Stock, Disney executive, what does
(14:04):
that look like? What I say that to them, is
that right on a piece of paper, every single question
that you've been having or been thinking about that you
don't really know the answer to. Um. That's one part
of the process. The other part of the process is,
you know, get all the material, all the emails, and
basically just see like what your gut is really you know,
(14:27):
connecting to Like I think we're all curious right now, subconsciously, right,
but I think you have to be curious consciously as well.
First of all, you have to admit that you don't
know something, and if you don't know something, you shouldn't
feel bad about it. You. I think we do a
lot in this industry. I think that we have a
lot of questions that we don't actually allow ourselves to ask.
(14:50):
Like you don't actually stop and say, I just I
have a question about that. Why doesn't that make sense?
I got this media plan? Like how many people have said, oh,
I got this media plan and someone says, well, what
about Dad? And they're like, I don't know. I don't
ask why. Well, I think that that's a tremendous uh
(15:10):
distinction in the marketplace of people focused on transactional media
versus creative media. And I think ultimately the end of
the day, people are judging things on face value, and
rate cards and things that have finite definitions are an
understanding of the way the market works. And then I
think the difference of other people's work is what you
just said, pushing back and saying that actually isn't finite,
(15:33):
like a rate card is the fucking finite, right, But
but I do think that that is a distinct difference.
What I think is interesting too, and I think it
is a sign of some of the leaders that I've
enjoyed are the people who know are comfortable knowing what
they don't know, and they surround themselves with people who
can help input those answers so that they can come
to a more informed decision. And I think seeing that offering,
(15:55):
it's it's interesting. Just as you're talking, I'm spending a
lot of time right now looking at tools and resources
and inputs that helped make us better marketers and specifically
better media planners. And frustrating thing is so many of
the tools and resources that are currently available do everything
but provide context and culture. And so I'm wondering if
(16:19):
you're not onto something. We also had Pierce Fox on
this show at PSFK, and you know, all of this
different trend spotting and these signals and the fact that
you know you're sort of contained right now in in
the c suite, Like I want to see the Zeke
coach unleashed to the area of the market where I
think it's so desperately needed. And that's the people making
(16:39):
some of these these daily decisions that companies are a
mass a lot of data, a lot, a lot, a lot,
a lot of data. Um. You know that they're going
to be starting to donate their data for good in
the like the United Nations. Any buddy who's researching the
(17:01):
impact of AIDS, of anything, frankly anything. I think it's
more about solving big global problems and where corporations could
use that data, um, not just to help their consumers,
but to help their consumers that are just citizens of
the world. So should we get into our game? Yes, Brad,
(17:24):
it's time kill by d I Y. If you could
kill anything, what would it be? Bullying and hate? But
I'm down with that. What would you buy if you
could buy anything love and peace? And what would you
do yourself that somebody else may be doing that? You
want to build a yoga instructor? Nice? Um so, Brad.
(17:50):
If people want to get in touch with you, ask
you more about the zekegeist, how do they get in
touch with you? They want to ask you about the
zeke geist and get your coaching? Yeah, um, well they
could go to zeitgut dot com. Um again zeke does
z e i t g u i d e um
ze meaning time in German to help you remember guide
(18:12):
like TV guide which you know doesn't existing or does it?
Um so zegui dot com And uh, I'm also at
bragg ro Well, Brad, thank you, thank you, thanks, This
is really fun. So thank you to Rad Grossman, the
(18:38):
CEO of Zagat. A big thanks to our family and friends,
the Panoply, Matt Turk, Andy Bower's Jacob Weisberg. Will be
back in two weeks see you at Landia. Full disclosure
our opinions are
I'm off my game today. People are going to have
to start making better content. I think we're gonna be
talking about this for a long time. When you program
for everyone, you program for no one. I think it's
that we're purpose driven platform, Like we're trying to get
to substance. How was that? Are you happy with that?
This is marketing therapy right now? It really is? What's up?
(00:28):
I'm Laura Currency and I'm Alexa Kristen. Welcome back to
at Landia. So one of the things Laura and I
have always talked about is why don't people just ask
more questions? Right? We are super obsessed with the why.
And I think a lot of the work that we
have focused on over the course of our time working
together and UM, the things that we always point to
(00:49):
and say, yes, that's the thing, has been what I
think bleeds into culture. And you can tell when people
really take their time with wrapping content next um and
putting work into the market that integrates seamlessly versus lives
adjacent to And I think as marketers we forget to
like kind of ask ourselves that question of like why
(01:12):
what motivates me? What right? What excites me? And putting
that into your work and actually asking questions about the work.
It's funny. I sit with a lot of people now
who are writing a lot of like marketing copy, and
I always ask, would you read this? Would you actually
read this? Great simple questions, simple question? And you want
(01:33):
the answer is how many times? No? They're like yeah, no,
I'm like, well, then we gotta go rewrite it. I mean,
two of the key things that I think we've heard
over the last few episodes, I think stemming back to
Josh Sternberg being on the show, Um, you know somebody
who's watching the market as as a reporter over ad week,
to you know, Cody and Mike Tongue, to young guys
(01:53):
who left the agency world to build their own thing. There,
there's these piecemeal signals right into the the biggest trends
that I think we're seeing our the idea of like
being able to bring your whole self to the table,
allowing all of the inputs and influences in your life
to affect your creativity and call that data by the way, right,
and then the other the other is really about asking
(02:15):
the simple questions, like questioning it, and I think what
we're going to hear from our next guest is allowing
yourself to imagine and allowing yourself to kind of like
go down the road where you start with a simple
question actually can lead to bigger and cooler and smarter
and more impactful work than it is. When we have
(02:40):
something in a nice little clean box that we've put together,
either whether it's a brief for a media plan or something,
ask what isn't there? Yeah, the blue sky thinking. We
can all talk about thinking this way, but it's really
about behavior. It's how we start training our brains. I
think our next guest, Brad Grossman, who is the founder
of zeit Guide, really has been training sea level executives
(03:04):
to think like a Hollywood producer, to dream, to let
their minds kind of go down and pull in a
ton of data, but use their gut and their heart
to lead them to what really makes sense. And my
hope is that that then trickles down through organizations because
I think some of these young people making these decisions
(03:25):
in the weeds are in search of those sorts of
inputs that go far beyond an index or a data
point or something. As Beth comp Stock has always said,
they feel like permissions granted. On that note, we'll be
right back and we're back in the studio with Brad Grossman,
(03:54):
the founder and CEO of Zeitguide, the oracle to the industry. Welcome. Wow, God,
I don't know who is the oracle to you? So where?
What is the zeit Guide and how did you become
(04:15):
the zeck Guide to the Zeitgeist? Okay? Zeke Guide means
guide to the Zeitgeist. Okay, Zeitgeist which many people don't know,
um what the real meaning is of it. But Zeitgeist
means spirit of the times in German. What the Zieguide
is is basically, we guide super busy executives on what
they need to know so that they can lead themselves
(04:38):
towards what's next. So you're the coach, the Zeitgeist coach. Yes, yes,
we guide them through our constantly changing culture so they're
best prepared for the future. Yeah. My brother is a
business guy, so he makes me kind of say that stuff.
He's one of my partners. Tell us because it's it's
an unlikely story about how Zeitguide and how you became
(04:59):
the zeit Guide coach for the Zeitgeist, and it has
to do with Hollywood. You were in Hollywood? Yes, Well,
to tell you the truth. UM. I started this company
after doing what I do now for other leaders and
helping them understand what's outside their company walls. I did
(05:19):
it for the Oscar Award winning and Emmy Award winning
producer Brian Grazer, who's a really good friend of yours.
That's a very good friend of mine. Yes, he produces
some stuff. And did you grow up together? How do
you know? Brian? Oh god, you're you're even going further back.
I actually was now that I'm like a tutor to
C suites, UM, C suite executives. UM. I was a
(05:40):
chemistry tutor to high school kids in Los Angeles and
it started this little tutoring company called Institutor. And then
one day I get a call from I feel like
there was like some logo on like a geo tracker.
It's like you're jamming through l A like it's the tutor.
It's so funny my logo that Yeah, well, I I
(06:01):
modeled after Charles and Charles meets the Nanny, right. So,
And I was a delight to you know, all the
parents of my clients, UM, who were students UM, who
happened to be from the Hollywood establishment. And yes, I
had this little Volkswagen convertible and my logo had me
and the convertible with sunglasses on with the horn honking
(06:25):
and said too too seriously, Oh how about that? The
great marketing was it? Totally was? Oh my god, I
so wanted that car in high school. But anyway, they
don't make it. They called it a cabrio then, yeah, cabrio. Yeah.
In what year was this? Two thousand two? I was
tutoring some of the sons and daughters of Brian Grazer's
(06:48):
friends and he heard about me. And after three years
of building this company, I get this phone call from
Brian Grazer's office and they're like, Hi, this is uh.
I think his assistant at that point was mc l Hi,
this is Miguel from Brian Grazer's office, and uh, I'd
love to set up a meeting between you and Brian Grazer.
And I'm like really, and you know, does he want
(07:09):
me to tutor his kid? And I said and and
they said no, he just wants to meet you. He
loves doing this thing, he loves meeting with interesting people
who are outside his UM industry, and he heard that
you're a great tutor and I'm like, wow, okay, well
I'll come in and see him. And so I walked
into his office and he's like, there's Brad Grossman, the
(07:31):
tutor to the stars. And I'm like, wow, that's that's
that's generous. And he's like, I don't want you to
tutor my daughter. I want you to tutor me. And
I'm like, in what you know? He's like, whoa, what
do you tutor? I'm like, I do calculus. I do chemistry.
He's like chemistry really, and he takes out this periodic
table from behind his sofa and that Oliver Sacks gave
(07:55):
him and I basically taught him with the oodic table.
Was you know, Brian was really awesome in the sense
that you know, he is a self proclaimed dyslexic and
he said that, you know, the only thing he learned
in school was that he couldn't learn in school, So
he wanted this kind of what's called a curiosity tutor
(08:16):
and just to kind of teach him about the world
and help him get outside the Hollywood bubble. Curiosity tutor.
That is so cool. Yeah, and everyone should have or
you should be your title for yeah, curiosity. How long
did you work with Brian Grays or tutoring him, being
(08:38):
the curiosity tutor the curiosity And was that like your
solo gig? It was solo gig, it was like my life.
I did it for five years. So how did you pivot?
Like what was the sort of moment You're like, done
this thing for five years? Like amazing opportunity, but there's
clearly something bigger that I could be doing here, Like
did you have a moment? Was it a lot and
(09:00):
drown out business plan? Like what was it? Two things?
One um, I didn't want to be a movie producer,
so and you know, so there was no reason for
me to stay in that position. I realized that I've
always had a career in terms of education, but educating
(09:22):
people in a way that inspires them. That's why I
call myself as a guy's coach instead of a tutor,
because like, I'm more of a coach, right, I didn't
call myself a chemistry tutor. I called myself an academic
coach because my job is to help you reach your
full potential. And I just thought that what I did
for Brian I could do for other people. At first,
I was meeting with a lot of people and telling
(09:44):
them what my idea was to work with people in
every single vertical so to speak. Um and they're like,
what are you kidding me? Like, go back to Hollywood,
that job doesn't exist. You went from and are going
from just giving people information to actually teaching them how
to think. Yes, right, so people are pulling you into
(10:04):
their organizations and you're actually teaching sea level executives how
to think and then how to train their teams to think.
They don't really have time to really sit and think
and brainstorm with the person who is outside of the
chaos let's I mean, let's you know, the chaos of
(10:25):
their daily lives and the chaos of the industry or
how their companies are being disrupted. You know, it's it's
they could strategize with the geniuses inside, and they could
hire a bunch of consultants to kind of come in
and advise them what to do, but very few of
them have the time to just kind of like think
(10:46):
like a science fiction writer with somebody who is very
multidisciplinary like me and my team. So what is curious?
So that's really interesting, like thinking like a science fiction
writer or a filmmaker creator, like I I got taught
how to think like a movie a movie producer right
in the movie business. And that's basically thinking in a
(11:10):
way that is so blue sky that anything can happen
from because they can't take. What we're realizing now is
that anything can happen. I mean, and anything that happens
now has more impact on the world and business than
anything that has ever happened before. It's any black swat
event that you know, everything is happening so quickly, and
(11:30):
we're so connected and at the core, media impacts culture, right,
and now that social media is causing more media to
be out there and connecting to more people, just more
things are happening that you never really thought that would
expect be expected at a much faster right. Right. So
(11:53):
things you just said are on media impacting culture, right.
So obviously is the show talking to brand marketers and
gency folk and creative types who are creating the messaging
that's it's adjacent to that media using that pipe to
disseminate you know, thoughts and provocations and and all the
things that we do as marketers. Um, is it fair
(12:14):
to say and and curious your take as as a
zeitgeist coach tutor guru. UM. The brands nowadays have more
or less influence in the market. We're seemingly consuming more
and more and more, But at the same time it
feels that consumers are equally skeptic. I think, well, I
(12:34):
think consumers have more power than ever before. Now more
than ever. Uh, consumers are shaping businesses UM because they're
just not gonna buy anything that you're you know that
that you're that they're selling to you unless they actually
want it. And there's so much information out there that
(12:56):
the brands don't have the direct Not only do they
not have the direct line to them, they also UM
their messaging is being crowded out by everything else that's
worked at Goldman Sachs, I've worked with Unilever, Disney, worked
with Fox, um Sony g E. S, beethcom Stock, I mean, Nickelodeon.
(13:19):
I've worked with What is the key to curiosity? Like,
how does a curious person behave no where you go
excited about learning, knowing that they don't know UM, not
going to the most obvious source for the answer, UM,
(13:42):
not even having direction sometimes and not even having a plan.
I tell my clients that they should just like have
one day, which is almost impossible. UM two, just go
on a learning journey. You know, what would that look
like for like Beth com Stock, Disney executive, what does
(14:04):
that look like? What I say that to them, is
that right on a piece of paper, every single question
that you've been having or been thinking about that you
don't really know the answer to. Um. That's one part
of the process. The other part of the process is,
you know, get all the material, all the emails, and
basically just see like what your gut is really you know,
(14:27):
connecting to Like I think we're all curious right now, subconsciously, right,
but I think you have to be curious consciously as well.
First of all, you have to admit that you don't
know something, and if you don't know something, you shouldn't
feel bad about it. You. I think we do a
lot in this industry. I think that we have a
lot of questions that we don't actually allow ourselves to ask.
(14:50):
Like you don't actually stop and say, I just I
have a question about that. Why doesn't that make sense?
I got this media plan? Like how many people have said, oh,
I got this media plan and someone says, well, what
about Dad? And they're like, I don't know. I don't
ask why. Well, I think that that's a tremendous uh
(15:10):
distinction in the marketplace of people focused on transactional media
versus creative media. And I think ultimately the end of
the day, people are judging things on face value, and
rate cards and things that have finite definitions are an
understanding of the way the market works. And then I
think the difference of other people's work is what you
just said, pushing back and saying that actually isn't finite,
(15:33):
like a rate card is the fucking finite, right, But
but I do think that that is a distinct difference.
What I think is interesting too, and I think it
is a sign of some of the leaders that I've
enjoyed are the people who know are comfortable knowing what
they don't know, and they surround themselves with people who
can help input those answers so that they can come
to a more informed decision. And I think seeing that offering,
(15:55):
it's it's interesting. Just as you're talking, I'm spending a
lot of time right now looking at tools and resources
and inputs that helped make us better marketers and specifically
better media planners. And frustrating thing is so many of
the tools and resources that are currently available do everything
but provide context and culture. And so I'm wondering if
(16:19):
you're not onto something. We also had Pierce Fox on
this show at PSFK, and you know, all of this
different trend spotting and these signals and the fact that
you know you're sort of contained right now in in
the c suite, Like I want to see the Zeke
coach unleashed to the area of the market where I
think it's so desperately needed. And that's the people making
(16:39):
some of these these daily decisions that companies are a
mass a lot of data, a lot, a lot, a lot,
a lot of data. Um. You know that they're going
to be starting to donate their data for good in
the like the United Nations. Any buddy who's researching the
(17:01):
impact of AIDS, of anything, frankly anything. I think it's
more about solving big global problems and where corporations could
use that data, um, not just to help their consumers,
but to help their consumers that are just citizens of
the world. So should we get into our game? Yes, Brad,
(17:24):
it's time kill by d I Y. If you could
kill anything, what would it be? Bullying and hate? But
I'm down with that. What would you buy if you
could buy anything love and peace? And what would you
do yourself that somebody else may be doing that? You
want to build a yoga instructor? Nice? Um so, Brad.
(17:50):
If people want to get in touch with you, ask
you more about the zekegeist, how do they get in
touch with you? They want to ask you about the
zeke geist and get your coaching? Yeah, um, well they
could go to zeitgut dot com. Um again zeke does
z e i t g u i d e um
ze meaning time in German to help you remember guide
(18:12):
like TV guide which you know doesn't existing or does it?
Um so zegui dot com And uh, I'm also at
bragg ro Well, Brad, thank you, thank you, thanks, This
is really fun. So thank you to Rad Grossman, the
(18:38):
CEO of Zagat. A big thanks to our family and friends,
the Panoply, Matt Turk, Andy Bower's Jacob Weisberg. Will be
back in two weeks see you at Landia. Full disclosure
our opinions are
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