Matt Bretz: Try to remind yourself that when you are fairly transparent about the transition that you're going into, you are opening doors and windows to all sorts of people helping you out, which is basically what most humans want to do, is help you.,
Chris Do: You know, I was a little surprised when I got this message from you. Hey, guess what? Me and Gary are no longer with Eisenberg. I was like, oh, my god, we just saw each other on an airplane, which was a very pleasant surprise bumping into the both of you on the Southwest flight to South by Southwest. And I was, that was really cool. It was like a nice two and a half hour just hanging out with my boys.
And it was really great. And so to get this message, I think within a couple of weeks from you guys returning and you were telling me, I'm going to go to Hawaii, I need the break.
Matt Bretz: Yeah.
Chris Do: And then I get this message. I'm like, oh my gosh, what is happening? And we know that advertising has been on. I think what I would maybe I'm exaggerating here, catastrophizing about on a death spiral. And you guys are telling me the margins are really thin in advertising. It's tough. And I was like, I had so much empathy for you guys. And maybe we can pick up the story from there. And you reaching out and your feelings about this and and oftentimes I tell people, we have life insurance, we have car insurance, we have home insurance. What we don't have is job insurance. And it's an idea that I'm trying to get people to understand. So maybe we'll pick it up from there.
Matt Bretz: Yeah, I remember that as well. And I was actually, I remember thinking that I was so grateful to have that time with you right before it all dropped. Cause we were, uh, Gary and I pretty blindsided by the actual transition out of Eisenberg where we were working.
That being said. It makes sense to me now in reverse, looking backwards. Doesn't make it easy, and it doesn't make it not painful in some ways, but I understand kind of the forces that are at play, you know? So, maybe we go into a little bit of that. For one thing, I know for a fact as a business owner at Eisenberg, you know, as a partner and a stakeholder at the highest level there at the business, that it's an extremely challenging and fatiguing time for business owners, particularly in our space, but really all across the world and certainly in the US economy.
And I've confirmed that in the aftermath of being laid off, I've been meeting with many of my friends who run a lot of our competitive, uh, agencies in town in the same space and to a person, they have all said in my, whatever it is, 20, 30, 40 years of doing business, this is the hardest time, including the pandemic.
And the reason for that is, I think this is me extrapolating a little bit from what I've experienced and what they've said. The reason for that is that we are experiencing kind of a Moore's Law of marketing and communications landscape change. So what I mean by that is, you know, the Moore's Law is the, you're going to catch me here on not being like a super technical expert, but Moore's Law tells us that the capacity of chip sets is going to increase, has increased since the beginning of computers at an exponential rate, you know, rather than just an additive rate.
And I see that change in the entertainment marketing landscape in particular, but marketing and communications in general, change of every kind is increasing at an exponential rate. If you look back over the last couple of years, everybody was suddenly like, it's all about blockchain. We've got to understand blockchain, blockchain and web three is coming.
Then that kind of, for a variety of reasons, faded rather swiftly, almost like a cliff into the background as everybody was like, It's all about NFTs. NFTs are an expression, an expression of blockchain, but NFTs are the thing. And it's, you know, and you have to learn about NFTs and figure out how much of your business you are going to devote to making or dealing with NFTs.
Then it was AI, then it was content creators. You're. Right now, I think we're in a wave of mainstream advertisers and brands going we need to figure out how to incorporate content creators either as content creators or as production units, almost like mini production companies into our workflow. And who knows how long exactly this trend will last.
But my main point is change is happening faster and faster and faster, and it is very fatiguing for any business owner. And so when I look back at how we were blindsided by the transition I realized because I was, even though I was literally working on how we would restructure the business to where we saw it going with Eric Eisenberg, who's the CEO and founder of the agency.
I just wasn't paying attention to that I myself was only useful and useful is important in capitalism on a certain trajectory that the company might take. And so now I look back and I go, oh yeah, Eric's got a very clear idea of where he's heading with the company and he doesn't need me.
Chris Do: Now, before we go further, I forgot, we need to tell people who you are. So can you, I consider you a friend, a client, and many other things just so a person just wrap ideas with. But for people who don't know who you are, can you please introduce yourself? Tell them what you do and a little bit of your back story.
Matt Bretz: Yeah, sure. My name is Matt Bretz and I am a creative. The reason I stated that simply is I've worked in a lot of different channels over time. I think my core capabilities are around storytelling, mostly in the form of words and moving pictures. So I came up through live theater and music, put on many, many, many different types of live entertainment shows and filled many roles from stagehand to director. And then I began getting into working in the advertising space.
And so I started producing, writing, directing commercials, and that led to becoming a creative leader in the space of advertising agencies so that my work very clearly then began to grow into supporting and raising up creatives who are not just word based, but who were also design based, you know, you kind of get to a space where like, I'm not by when I do this, I'm not by any means saying that I am on a level with one of my great inspirations, Rick Rubin. But, you know, Rick Rubin is capable of overseeing and growing and even innovating. In spaces that he's not necessarily natively a maker. And I've found that that happens for me as well.
So I eventually became a chief creative officer at Eisenberg, which is a independently owned advertising agency on the, on the West Coast. And then I was laid off from that position a few weeks ago. And so I think we're here to do the show, to give a viewpoint on one person's journey as they get laid off.
Chris Do: Now for context, my other company, who I no longer actively contribute anything to called Blind, has a relationship with the company that you were the chief creative officer for, which is Eisenberg. And it's quite interesting for me to kind of, I just want to back up to tell people what's going on. So we used to make commercials and music videos for a living. And worked in that advertising space. So there's naturally this overlap of interest and things that we can do together. And as we are figuring out The Futur, quite literally, the company, we were in a great relationship with Eisenberg. We had done some really amazing work. Some of the work that I'm most proud of was done for Eisenberg.
And we were talking about some Xbox, I guess, videos and content. And we were so excited about it. We had made this decision, can we be an education company full time? And it's like one of those decisions where we had to make where, can we serve two masters at the same time? We can, but not well. And so it was kind of like for us, it was peak, our relationship with Eisenberg when we decided, you know what?
It was peak relationship, like where it hurt me emotionally. It hurt me financially when Gary and others came knocking and said, hey, do you want to take a look at this thing? Because I love video games. I've grown up playing video games and to work on things with Master Chief and Halo and Xbox is what you work your whole career to.
But we had to make this really hard decision on where we, where we left. And we said, you know what? Thank you so much, guys, but we're no longer doing this. And, you know, I was looking at the checking account, like, shoot, what did we just do? But for context, what I want to tell our audience is, when I see a trend going a specific direction, And when I'm saying like negatively, like financially, I was thinking it rarely ever goes the opposite direction again.
What I'm talking about is we see over the course of 20 plus years, advertisers, advertising agencies ask for more, have smaller budgets and more constraints, less time. And it just kept going this way. And then we see more competitors entering into the field, willing to do more for less money. And we're just looking around is like, is this ever going to correct itself?
And over that course of 20 plus years, It never went back to the way it was. And when we started hearing about agencies laying people off, shutting down, I was getting nervous because if our clients are struggling to get through this kind of advertising social media era, then for sure we're at the bottom of that food chain. We're going to feel it. So it was a strategic decision. And so I think that's all the context I wanted to set up for everybody.
Matt Bretz: Yeah. I remember those days. I, and I remember being, we were a little bit surprised and mystified as you kind of, uh, were aware obviously of, but you know, when you hit those points of transition and thankfully in the case of you and Blind, you were fully in control of that.
I think Gary and I are going through a similar transition that began with us a little out of control. And then now the question is, I think for anybody getting laid off, how can you move from something may have been started out of control to getting in control? You know, but I, I do remember that when you told us, hey, we're not going to do this anymore, even though you were the best in the That was why we worked with you, we respected that.
And that's an important thing to remember, too, is that the people that you work for and are friends with and surround you that are the ones worth having in your network are going to get it no matter what you decide to do and probably reorient themselves to figure out if, how there's any way to help you down that next path, which is of course what you and I have done.
We've stayed in touch and, and I'm a huge believer in the mission of The Futur and which is why I enjoyed taking that plane ride for you.
Chris Do: It was such a pleasant surprise. Okay, so it's very rare that we get the opportunity to speak to someone who's an industry veteran, who's at, I guess, one of the highest positions you can attain within a creative agency. And so I want to help our audience because they're very far from that world. They're on the other side, they're vendors, and they might be one or two person companies. I wouldn't even use the word studios or agencies to for them to kind of get a perspective here that they're, they're not going to get. So let's just rewind the tape a little bit. How long were you at Eisenberg?
Matt Bretz: I was at Eisenberg for almost exactly 10 years. Like, it was four days short or something of 10 years. And Gary, my creative partner, had been there for 24 years.
Chris Do: I know times are lean and margins aren't what they used to be. And I think if there's an enemy here, I think it's social media. And the landscape of advertising and marketing has changed. A lot of people think marketing is advertising because advertising was marketing for the longest time and was the, the 800 pound juggernaut at these immovable force within the world. And then things started to change where brands, companies can have direct relationships with their audience and their fans, and then it starts to change. And I'd love to get your perspective on that, but so things start to change. Things are moving around and you guys are feeling it and you're adjusting and we all adjust as we do. From the inside, prior to you kind of being blindsided by this, what was the temperature in the room, if you will, like before you got on a plane to go to South by Southwest?
Matt Bretz: Well, you know, it's interesting seeing it through the lens that you're offering up. I mean, the Eisenberg is actually doing quite well in the grand scheme of things. And the funny thing about saying, and I understand why you do it. The social media is the enemy is that actually quite literally where Eric is heading with the company is leaning into retained repeatable social media, as opposed to doing big disruptive awareness advertising, which is what most advertising agencies are built around.
And I know you were actually going for that same, highlighting that same dichotomy, you know, of like, what's the difference between marketing and advertising. But we came up, I think Gary and I very much focused on how to make big disruptive moments that even elevate into cultural moments that people remember and are moved by and remember the feeling of as opposed to making those small personal moments that happen every day and social, which we had another team that does that, and that work is not by any means easy.
There's a lower overhead involved, right? Like if I'm going out to make a super bowl spot, then I'm definitely going to do months and months of prep and have a gigantic crew. And it's going to be a cost intensive endeavor. So those, that type of work typically is high risk, high reward. We would have years that were fantastic.
And then years where we were reliant on those more steady and reliable sources of profit and income for the company, not just social, but also media placement and buying. Eisenberg is terrific at a very innovative style of that, where they're they're actually working with content creators, organic media, and paid media at the same time. And on the paid media, you make a steady 10 percent profit. So you're never going to make multi million dollars on an individual media project, but you're going to always make 10 percent. So that company was, you know, leaning back into, as we enter this period that many people think could be a continuing kind of economic slowdown.
How do we double down on our profit centers? And that's why they came to where it did, which is that if you're looking at also staying on the cutting edge of content creators, kind of the third pillar for Eric Eisenberg, and I do think there are a lot of content creators in your audience, those content creators are going to be a big part of all of marketing, advertising, and communication in general for a long time to come. So every agency is focusing on them. Content creator, media, And social, none of those are the things that you need Gary and I for, although I will say that we're good at building a community inside of an agency and a sense of nurturing collaboration and networking so that different people help out with their different strengths and grow people through their different weaknesses.
And so it'll be interesting to see how, if that ends up missing from the agency culture, how they'll respond to that, but mostly we were good at making these big disruptive moments, and so I think we're going to see a period now where that's less important than having regular, steady interaction with fans through social and digital channels, and that's where the company's placing its emphasis.
Chris Do: We see something in decline. How do you respond? And you were saying the agency has responded. And it seems like there are maybe for the lack of better terms, like a couple different camps. I don't know if there are two or more, but there's at least two where one is focused on dealing with the social media landscape, having regular retained repeatable work that you can do that I think, I don't know if this is the right term, but is maybe more reflective of the culture, that you're part of the culture, you're having the conversations with inside the culture. Whereas the kinds of things that you and Gary would build create culture. That's what somebody in advertising told me.
It's like, we can actually change the game. And I remember just for the people who are young enough or old enough at this point can remember, there was a TV spot that Wieden put out. When time slows down because Michael Jordan is playing. And that was something that kind of captured a feeling, but gave it a voice that we didn't even know. And when we watched it, we felt something. And that used to be the way, because we watch TV and we watch ads. And then something like TiVo or something comes along and now we can start to skip ads. That was the beginning. It was like, uh oh. If we make ads and people can skip ads, eventually somebody will say, hey, why are we still doing this? And it just starts to like chip away at that. The thing, like today, I wanted to ask you about this, your own personal consumption. Outside of YouTube ads that I'm seeing, I don't know where I would see ads anymore.
Matt Bretz: Where I see ads now is I watch sports. So I, there are still a lot of sports platforms where, I mean, you certainly can watch sports without ads. But there are a lot of sports platforms where you're still in there, you know? Also, uh, if I watch ESPN at night, you know, I'm going to see that stuff. Big tentpole moments, you know, I mean, I think you could argue that the stuff that's happening on the Vegas sphere and the 3D, they even call it 5D billboard events that are happening in Times Square and things like that, which are big awareness plays, they're happening on, uh, platforms or places that are more traditional, but what's equally important now is that the creators have figured out how that's going to extend into the space that you talked about being in the community in social. You have to plan programs and engagement mechanisms that will go from seeing a billboard in Times Square to wanting to share it in social media, maybe even getting into a gamified experience in social media that's related to what was happening and extends what was happening on the board.
And the bottom line is that no one wants to look at old school advertising where a brand has, I would argue, often a misguided sense of kind of what it has to say and who it is, what its personality is. And it's going to broadcast it to the masses, you know, and they're going to start down a funnel that leads to them understanding the feature set of what the brand makes and then deciding to buy the brand.
That is completely blown up now where, you know, particularly with, uh, you know, my daughter's generation, I have a daughter who I have two daughters and actually it's a very, it's a superpower for me to have a daughter who is Gen Z and a daughter who is Gen Alpha because I just kind of work with both of them as micro audience testing units, you know, but my 21 year old who's squarely Gen Z, I can see in her everything that we're learning from our research about people that age, which is that they're no longer in a funnel, a linear journey from what a brand wants to say about a product to clicking for whether they want to buy it or not. They are in a wonderful way figuring out and holding tightly to identity that they believe in that is at their core, that's very authentic.
You know, they're into authenticity, as we all know, and and so they're they're making a nuanced choice about who they are and by virtue of who they are, it determines kind of what other humans are around them and what type of activities they do and where they go. And then when they're there in that community, which is critical to them, collaboration is a key part of their values. They are noticing what brands are authentically there by their side already, because the brand has chosen based on the brand purpose to be there and the humans have accepted that because they can see that it's authentic and then they're buying those brands at the times that they need them. And so it's this completely non linear journey that has very little to do as you were, when you started the question, as you were thinking of very little to do with big screens at the Super Bowl ads or billboards in Times Square, it really has to do with a way of life and, uh, you know, a sense of culture and starting there and brands have the opportunity to choose, to be authentically a part of some of these cultures, and then that is what will be the source of their success, I think.
Chris Do: I want to kind of take it, like, inside the agency, and we'll get into the nuts and bolts of, like, the laying off process and kind of helping others to prepare for that in case that happens to them. But inside the agency, let's say like take it back like five years, like let's say 2019. What are you guys actively talking about within the agency if you are seeing these trends or the trend lines, how you adjust as an agency? I'm just curious as to the kinds of conversations we're having at the C suite level.
Matt Bretz: Just prior to 2019, for several years, we were super excited about the many platforms coming into the communication space. So you're seeing, Instagram grow and diversify its offering. You're seeing Snapchat enter the space. You're seeing arguably in some ways, Facebook receding as a principal way in which people really experience culture and communication together, at least for younger people. And you're seeing eventually TikTok enter that space, but it's all about the platforms themselves.
So brighter 2019, we're basically focused on what are the features of these platforms? What are they natively capable of doing from an engineering standpoint? And how can we make advertising and communications assets that optimize engaging experiences in those spaces? And that that's kind of the where our minds are.
Around 2019, interestingly, that you pick that date, one of the things that started to happen at Eisenberg is we started to realize we're missing the point. All of these platforms are servicing people and communities and fans, audiences. And we started more purposefully thinking of ourselves as audience led in terms of what we recommended to clients about what they make in order to advertise or communicate.
And the difference there is we started to devote our research and marketing science to figuring out who are the people that have the most affinity for this product and this brand? And then from there we would go, where do they actually live in the digital world and in the real world? And what ways do they behave?
What are they like? What do they dislike? How likely are they to, you know, engage in a game versus engage in an emotional laid back experience of just crying over a sad film or something like that. So where are they? How do they behave? And a main pivot point was how do we take content to them? Not a broadcast point of view from a brand, take content to them that enhances their experience at the place that they already are?
We're not going to ask them to come to us. We're going to go to them and we're going to go to them in the way that their friends and their favorite influencers and content creators go to them with content. That genuinely adds value to their lives or makes them want to interact. And so that's how we, like in that period of, I would say the last eight years, those were sort of the major beats of that journey.
We're still refining that what does it mean to be audience led? Because the, the spiel that I just gave about what Gen Z is looking for is another major pivot point of, yes, we're not broadcasting anymore. Yes we're going to them where they live, but now we need to understand that we are just one of many things that they have chosen to be in their life and in their culture. And we in a way need to be true to ourselves and have an identity and an integrity as a brand in order for them to choose to keep us as part of their culture and their community and their family.
Chris Do: Okay, that was a lot to process. So the conversations we had, merging platforms, maturing shifts in consumption and usage. We're also talking about changing our strategy to be more audience led and seeing what kind of connections they have and understanding how certain generations behave differently, think differently. So there was a, an observation or a plan. So now jump forward, now we're catching up to real time, 2024. How did your agency execute on that plan and those observations? If you were to give yourselves a scorecard, what did you guys do really well and what could be better?
Matt Bretz: What I want to go back to, Chris, is, we have this foundational belief at Eisenberg, and it's one of the things that, uh, that attracted me there, in a mantra that we articulate as, listen, create, share. And for me, I'm going to tell you my very personal take on it, which is something that I would evangelize with the agency, but as with any, you know, mantra or point of communication, it meant different things to different people.
But for me, one of the most critical parts of it was listen first in every way. Almost every other advertising agency that I had been in or that I had observed was about talking first. It was about the ego, basically the idea that we know how to reach people and move people. So we're going to come into your company and we're going to tell you, you need to do this and what, you know, yes, we're going to try to take your notes and things, but we're basically going to start from the presumption that we know better than you.
That's at the essence of shy days, disrupt, or even Wyden Kennedy's fail fast, failing fast means doing fast means not listening means go, go, go. So I was really attracted to Eisenberg by the idea that we are simply going to start by listening to each other, listening to the clients, listening to the other influences in our lives, and only based on that are we then going to purposely begin to create to address what we're learning from what we're listening. And then we would share what we created out into the world. And we have the tools to do that. And then listen again to see how the audience responded to what we created. So that we could then create again. And it was this virtual, virtual cycle.
You know, I think that in many respects, Eisenberg does listen, create, share very well, but there are ways in which internally, I think we were failing at listening to each other. And that's how I think we got to the point that as chief creative officer, I was out of alignment with my founder and CEO. So we were focused on listening in the work that we did and to our clients, but we had ceased to listen to each other as partners and teammates.
And I think we could do that if we had done that better. We may have found other paths than the one we're taking now where Gary and I are diverging to do our own thing. And, uh, Eric and a lot of other creatives and talent at the agency are heading in a different direction. And I believe in teams and I believe in collaboration at its core. So if I ever had a choice between splitting and diverging and staying together and deepening, I would choose the latter. So that is kind of where I think we fell down.
Chris Do: It parallels a lot of what happened at Blind. So there was this moment when we're recognizing that the ship that we're on, that was sailing on the winds of advertising and marketing, it was slowing down and we needed to build another ship. And I would tell, quite literally, we'd have meetings with the management team and I told them this and I said, I need some runway here, guys. You guys continue to service our ad clients, but we need to do some client direct work and we need to figure this out. It took over a year for us to figure it out, but eventually we made inroads there and then when what I predicted was the advertising mark was going to slow down for us. We had another vehicle to work with. Now, when I made that announcement, well, maybe we'll call it the old guard and the new guard, the old guard is like, no, Chris, you're being alarmist. This is always going to work.
It will always will work. And I'm like, you guys help me out here. You do understand there's this other thing. And I'm telling you, all I do is spend my waking hours. thinking about where The Futur is going to be. And so, of course, when that shift happens, the advertising work started to slow down really fast, actually. When it catches you, it just doesn't come creeping slowly, it just stops. And when we were bidding on two to three projects a week, it started to become like four or five projects a month. So I can already tell things weren't going to work.
And that was a moment where I now needed more resources for the client direct work versus the agency service work that we were doing. And then they self selected, pretty much. Some of them said, you know what, I'm not interested in this future that you're building. I'm getting off this ship, and I say, thank you for being a professional, recognizing that. And some of them were passively, aggressively resisting this whole thing.
And in a way, I have to say, I had to let them go. It's like, you're not trying to help, but not only are you not trying to help, you're trying to sabotage what we're trying to do by creating unnecessary drama. And so we would shift. And we would shift and we've shifted many times, we've had to for survival.
So we shifted once again from doing client direct work to content and educational things. Again, there was this attrition where I would say like 80 percent of the team made the jump. 20 of them percent didn't want to be and we're happy for all of them because they went on to do different things and they knew it at this point that if this wasn't something 100 percent committed to, that they made other choices.
So it seems like what you're saying there is kind of reflect on what you were saying. We're listening to the audience, the community and kind of creating from that space, but there was this internal listening that wasn't 100 percent in alignment. Was that a similar parallel, you think?
Matt Bretz: Yes, definitely. Yeah. And I'm not even sure that, like, I had set up that thing where I said, uh, I believe in trying to stay together. Eric and I have remained friends and he was very purposeful about saying, this isn't about you. This is about where I'm taking the business that I founded, that I capitalized. And I think you are free to go and do something that is, makes more sense to you and you are better aligned with. And so by virtue of him saying that, I would say that he leans towards, it's fine to split up. Splitting up is how cells divide and how human life or life on this planet grew. And there is a kind of a pendulum swing there.
I, I talk a lot, I think a lot about pendulum swings in trends and the way that we work and things like that. And so sometimes you're coming together, coming together, coming together, deepening, growing, and sometimes you are, it's healthy for you to move apart and become a, the catalyst of a new thing and a new group of people and things like that.
The Futur: It's time for a quick break, but we'll be right back.
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The Futur: And we're back. Welcome back to our conversation.
Chris Do: Well, one of those examples, I mean, two of them, both my former executive producers, Tobin, who I think you know,
Matt Bretz: I talked to Tobin yesterday actually.
Chris Do: He's a great guy. And so he wound up becoming the head of production over at an agency. And Scott Rothstein, our executive producer too, started his own agency or his own company. I was like, good for you guys. You stayed in the industry that you love and are passionate about. And now you even have a better position than the one that you previously had. And they both came to the idea like, Hey, I see where you're going. It's cool. I think I have another thing and I want to move this way.
And both of them, when they came to me and to tell me, Chris, we're leaving you, they were kind of like emotional. It was a teary eyed moment there, you know, where we gave each other space to say, I'm like, hey, Scott, look, this blade cuts both directions. Sometimes it's best for you to move on of your own accord, and sometimes it's best for us to move on without you. And I hope you don't, I hold no ill will, I just wish the very best of you. And, you know, I still talk to Tobin, too, on the semi regular, and, and just to see kind of what's up and having lunch with him. So, okay, let's take the conversation back to, I think what will be most useful to our broader audience here is, okay, we're coming back from South by Southwest, you're going on vacation, and then the hammer drops. So how does one prepare or respond to things like that, such that if and when the hammer drops in the future, you're better equipped? You mentioned a couple of things, but let's get into it.
Matt Bretz: Yeah, so we talked about thinking about keeping your channels. This is a very nuts and bolts recommendation as I, thinking about keeping your tech platforms and channels separate. From your work platforms and channels and devices and things like that. So I was actually in a better position than Gary, you know, who, if you can imagine Gary had been at that company for 24 years and intended to be there for the rest of his career. I also had thought it was the last beat of my career.
I had come out of ant farm about 10 years earlier. And while it was less of an abrupt transition, like I had a very amicable and unusually fluid transition out of Antfarm. They knew I was leaving. We agreed on it. I was actually finishing work over there. Nothing got like switched off. Nowadays, in particular with the lawyers, you can pretty much count on, especially the higher up you go in a company, the day that you're informed that you're laid off. Everything is going to get turned off, and you will not have access anymore to any of that stuff. Because of my Antfarm transition, I had switched everything to my Bretsnikov is an identity that I have on Instagram, on Twitter, on iCloud. I started using Bretsnikov all through my time at Eisenberg as the basis for my subscription to Midjourney, my login to Discord, my, you know, everything was in my personal stuff.
Everything for Gary was in [email protected] so he could no longer even get into his LinkedIn without lengthy collaboration, which they supported us in. But it was slow from the company that we left. So I would recommend to people to think in advance about keeping your stuff your stuff, because even when you don't think that you're going to move on to a different chapter, you just never know. You know, you just never know. So, um, that was a big one.
Chris Do: Can we pause there so everybody understands? Have your own email address, have your own website. Just make sure all your accounts are attached to an email that you can control forever. And even then, it's not the same because people hack your accounts, but that's a story for a different day. And I understand from the employer perspective, I know this feels rotten as an employee, like, wait a minute. Yesterday I was working with you guys, and today I'm not, and everything I touch is dead and turned off. There's a real reason why, and you have to understand liability, because what happens is, depending on how the person responds, they do an email blast to all their clients, all their friends, the co workers, and say, this place is the freaking blah, blah, blah, it's a terrible place, and just ruins the reputation, not even considering how that's going to impact their future employment and lawsuits, all that kind of stuff.
So we do that so that people don't have that ability to sabotage. All the files and assets, just throw them in the trash and just be like, see you later. So we kind of have to do that and it sucks. I know it sucks, but it's like we've done it the other way and it's not been good.
Matt Bretz: Yeah, definitely. So, you know, another thing that has stood me in good stead in the last few weeks is the instinct, and this is partly a personality thing, but from the very first moment, like two layers of instincts. One is, first of all, you're not doing yourself any favors by being self conscious and secret about this transition that is happening for you. And I know that this, my ability to be transparent about getting laid off right out of the gate with my friends, my family, co workers, etc. uh, is partly related probably to being an extrovert.
So I bet it's a lot harder if you are an introvert or somewhere in between, but I would highly recommend that you try to remind yourself that when you are fairly transparent about the transition that you're going into, you are opening doors and windows to all sorts of people helping you out, which is basically what most humans want to do, is help you.
So the first layer is try to have as much as you can, a level of transparency about it so that people know you're going through something and can find a way to offer you assistance and support. And one of the ways that that manifested for me is every single person who began to reach out to me and many people would say, I know you're going to be fine. Let me know if there's something I can do, but not a really specific offer to do anything. But a fairly significant number of people would say, if you want to talk, I'm here, or give me a call if you think there's something I can do every single one of those people, I have had coffee with a call with a meal with no matter how obvious or completely unobvious it was that they could do something for me from my perspective.
That's the key to me is and what happened is there have been people who, you know, were like a junior copywriter who worked with me years ago, who said, let me know if you'd like to get on a call. And I said, okay, let's get on a call. And in talking to them, I learned about a opportunity that they were working on, that they were able to bring me in on. And I would never have foreseen this person and this moment as something new for me. And I was just wrong. Take, open every door, you know, because it will lead to the next door is a really key one.
Chris Do: There's something really beautiful about that. I think what I'm getting from what you're saying is, there's a humility to say like, hey, this happened and not to hold it inside of you. And then the universe or the community that you've cultivated for the last x number of years or decades will respond. And I think this says a lot about who you are because you say it's a, it's more natural thing for an extrovert, but I think that's part of it. But I think the real part of it is you've been a genuinely good human being.
And so when things happen to you, for you, with you, then you reap the seeds that you've planted. Because if you were a jerk, and I've seen this happen too, we've had clients who are total, like, bullies and did not treat us well, and eventually they got laid off or fired for different reasons. Everybody's like dancing on their grave.
It's like I knew it, you know, karma's a b-. You know how that works? Where, you know, you are a totally different kind of person where in all my interactions with you, it's been warm, genuine, friendly. And so it's like, oh my god, I can't believe this happened. What do we need to do? So then your community mobilizes in small and big ways, and you're talking about this, and I 100 percent believe this. If you hold it in, no one knows it's a secret. Maybe it's because there's some shame or something around it, some stigma. It's like, hey, things happen. People move on. Things transition all the time. All kinds of relationships transition. We need to be able to let it out. And then, you, the people who love you, who believe in you, who you've built a relationship with, will conspire to help you now. And you never know where that road leads.
Matt Bretz: Very well said. And thank you for the compliment. I have always found you also to be a great human and a great teacher. Like I, that's why I'm partly here on the show, is I, every time I talk with you, I learn something important for me. And so I really appreciate it.
Chris Do: Thank you. You said there are two things.
Matt Bretz: Yeah, a couple. Well, I think another, I don't remember if I, if this was the second thing I was thinking of at that moment, but I did think as you were describing that the power of that surprise place of being out of a job ,the impact, you know, this is something we touched on earlier about how do you transition from being surprised at thrown out of control into being in control of your own destiny?
One of the things I think that's important is coming back to my faith in listening. I am still at this point, people have been asking me, do you know what you're going to do? Have you thought about the pathways before you? And what I've been realizing and saying back to them is I'm still listening. I'm still on the intake. I'm still on the in breath of our breath cycle of in and out. So right now I'm just taking in what I can take in from Chris, what I can take in from the junior copywriter, what I can take in from my wife and daughters. Because I know the exhale will come, you know, the point at which I go, now I'm going to flow this way and, and try that out.
But I think it's important to take the time, take that in breath after you've been laid off and not focus on executionally, what am I going to do now? Not everyone has that luxury. I will say I'm privileged to have a little bit of space to deal. So I think you obviously got to, if you have to have a job the next day, then you look at it as problem solving and you find out how can I take contract jobs, but then still do the next thing that I was going to say, which is, this has been very hard for me is when I was at Eisenberg, I had an expectation of working from nine to six. I had a business day in front of me. And for the first time in my career, over the last few years, I had really begun to focus on the importance of work life balance and really, you know, trying not to work after six and on weekends. And sometimes it was possible and sometimes it wasn't, but there were boundaries.
One of the things that happens, I found when you get laid off is there's no more boundaries. So I was back to kind of like when I was a young person driving, driving, driving for everything I wanted working till 11 o'clock at night next to my wife in bed, as we're trying to watch a show on my phone, networking with people. And to the point that she, Carolyn was like, hey, you actually turned into a workaholic. Now that you've been laid off, you know, So I would say make sure you really need to try to be conscious of things can only go so fast and try to take a breath in and listen to the universe and listen to your peers and And then uh also try to turn it off certain times, you know.
Chris Do: Well, I think that's the difference between someone who has a job and someone who's on their own. Because the mind of the entrepreneur, and right now I guess you're an entrepreneur for the time being, it's hard to turn it off because you eat what you kill or you eat what you catch. And so if you're not out there in the river, in the field, guess what's going to happen? Not a lot's going to happen. And that's the curse of entrepreneurship, right? It's really not that, like, even when things are going well, you're like, okay, how does this not go well? And you think about that scenario and you design for that and you're constantly adjusting. So we're a few weeks removed from, from you getting laid off. What is the current Matt doing and thinking and feeling and operating?
Matt Bretz: Well, I'll tell you, uh, there was a good segue there and I can answer the question, even though you've moved on into kind of a new area, which is, which is cool. You reminded me with your talk of entrepreneurship, like incidentally, by the way, I've always thought of myself in a funny way as an entrepreneur inside of the agency environment of always innovating, always trying to find new ways to do things, always trying to drive a new kind of success and get into new places.
So it's not surprising that one of the first things that happened was an old friend reached out to me and said, uh, hey, I've been out on my own, she had worked for a long time at a, one of the major clients that I had at a big corporation. And then a number of years ago, she struck out on her own and became a full on entrepreneur. I think she's been involved with three startups of her own and many, many, a handful of others that she just councils and helps to grow. She reached out and said, hey, I'd like to come and talk to you and Gary about what I've experienced, because I think I could help you in terms of, you know, pitfalls and things like that, as you strike out on your own.
So I said, well, that's amazingly generous and thank you. And she was coming from out of town. I was like, as long as you're coming all the way into town to do that could we get a reciprocal flow back towards you of something that you need? Like, what are you looking for in your startups now? What are your roadblocks? How could we help you? And she was able to articulate, well, these are the things I'm stuck on right now. I have this one startup that needs this and this other startup that needs that. And so I thought about my network and I said, um, I'm going to reach out to a number of other entrepreneurs, they were all people, not members of companies, but people that I'd worked with over time who were out on their own. I reached out to seven, eight other people and said, Hey, if I threw, this is a term, I think from the earliest 20th century, they used to, the impressionists used the painters used to have salons where they would get together and just share inspiration and sit amongst their paintings on the walls and talk about what motivated them and what their challenges were and things like that. And I said to my friend, what if I could host a salon where we got like 8 to 10 of us that are doing different things?
I think I can bring someone that has the experience that you said you were looking for in this area and that area. And then I'll bring some more from this area and that area. And we just did that yesterday. We, we, we met at a restaurant that was able to, that was like, hey, yeah, sure. Come as long as you drink coffee and tea the whole time. We're happy to have you sit there for three hours. And to a person every person at that table has been like, this was one of the most important transformative things that has happened in the last few years for me. And so we're now they're starting to, they're cross collaborating. They are, you know, working on each other's projects.
There is a steady communication on email. And so that is literally one of the things that I'm doing is connecting people, even though I'm not in a company anymore, just connecting friends, letting people raise their hands. I also said in the process, hey, if you don't want to do this, don't do it because you're my friend. Like you don't need to come to this thing. And I think that is a really good instinct. People were just really inspired by one another's journeys and their challenges were different and they all learned from each other and are now beginning to work together.
Aside from that, I've been doing a lot of hiking, getting out in the outdoors. I had this great experience a few years ago where I was shooting a project for Microsoft education. And I was with a senior educator leader who told me about the volatility of managing parents was a big part of his job. Like parents would come into the school. They were pissed off about what was happening with their kids. And the first thing he would do is say, would you like to go for a walk? Because he had learned that when animals can see the horizon, they feel safer. And so whenever he had a high conflict situation, he would get outside. So I've been getting outside a lot. I've been reminding myself to get out to hike and it instantly, you know, like helps me work through lots of the things that I'm struggling with.
By the way, in terms of frankness, I've been having a lot of emotions. I've been upset. I miss people. I'm angry. Despite how reasonable I've been, I'm angry at Eric Eisenberg. You know, I'm angry at those parts of my life that feel like they, you know, I can't control. But what can you do besides learn to accept and embrace it and move on? And part of accepting and embracing it is also acknowledging emotion and depression and anxiety. I'm definitely afraid that a lot of the factors that are at play with our economy, with the history of injustice and inequity in our country and in our industry with ageism that I will never find another job. But what can you do? You know, the only thing you can do is gather your friends together and try to provide for yourself and others, I think.
Chris Do: Yeah, I want to circle back to the emotions a little bit. We don't get that many opportunities to talk about it, if you're willing. But, okay, so, your title at Eisenberg was Chief Creative Officer. There are not many of those positions going around. So it's not like every day that there's a hundred of those positions open and you just find the best one suited for you. It's the kind of like this weird thing that happens where the higher you go up in companies, the more money you make, the better title, the position, but positions are rare. It's not like everywhere you go, they're available to you. So that's the kind of additional challenge that you have because you don't want to start where you were 20 years ago. That wouldn't make any sense. And so you want to leverage your experience, your perspective, and your way of working with people and management skills that you have.
But then it's just, it's harder to land one of those things. Now, getting back to the emotion part, which I'm, I'm glad that you're bringing it up because everybody's listening to this like, wait, Matt's pretty cool for a guy who's just like got blindsided. Well, let's talk about some of those emotions, wherever you want to take this. Tell me a little bit about the anger and the depression. Those two stuck out to me, like for as much as you can say, and I don't want to talk bad about anybody, but what were you angry about and how were you processing that?
Matt Bretz: First of all. I think my anger typically comes from a sense of injustice, you know, like I, whether it's about other people or it's about me. So what I call the anger was that probably stemming from that place of what the hell I'm the, we should all strive to think that we're the most important and most valuable human on the face of the planet, you know, without letting that color, how we interact with others. Cause obviously that would lead towards, you know, being totally self centered and, uh, and headstrong and stuff.
But I do think that if you can have in your heart that you're super valid, you know, that then when you get dismissed, you have to face the fact that somebody doesn't want you there. Somebody doesn't think that you're a value. And the anger is related to feeling like you're wrong about that. And that is also where the solution to letting the anger go comes from. Because if you think about it rationally, they're probably not wrong about it. They're just valuing different things than you value, which has, by the way, been a big stepping stone towards my feeling positively about what's next is that then I went from there to, oh yeah, I've been fighting for, you know, 10 years to make this place in some ways, something that it wasn't because it didn't reflect my core values.
And that's why I'm being ushered out the door right now. And so this is a good thing because now I can find or build. The thing that is closer to my core values, but I think the anger comes from that. The depression, you know, I'm a person that has always suffered from anxiety and depression. I'm thankfully in a place right now where during COVID I developed for the first time in my life, a really purposeful and regular meditation practice, and it has changed the whole landscape of my anxiety and depression. So I highly recommend that to people. I use the Calm app to find my way into it. I was spurred into it by another great creative leader named John Couch, who used to be the head of creative at Hulu and a number of other places. And he wrote a great book and talked about how he would get up every morning at, you know, 5am and meditate before he started his day. And with kids, the only time I'm going to be able to do this is when John did it at 5am. So now I have this regular routine where I get up, I meditate, sit for about, uh, 45 minutes, and then I go for a hike where I continue my meditation out for about 45 minutes.
And then I come home and I take my kid to school and then I get my workday going. So the meditation has been a big underlying solution for me to the depression and anxiety I feel, but it doesn't erase it. And so these moments that bubble up of rejection and loss. One of the main qualities of a chief creative officer should be nurturing and supporting and growing other creatives. I had, uh, at times 70, I think by the time I left, you know, more like 30 or 40 creative humans who I was talking to every day about what they were trying to do and figuring out if there was a way that I could help them to do it and taking pride in the way that they were learning new things and growing and, and, and feeling satisfied themselves and all of that was just ripped away, like, and that is a note actually that is related to the be transparent about it thing.
I don't know how it's going to end up. Cause I feel like at first they thought it was a little weird. I'm still, you know, texting with many of those people quite frequently. So as to not be weird about it, I'm mostly saying things like, hey, how you doing, you know, and I'm doing good. And here's what I'm up to because I do want to maintain those connections. Those were the people that in some ways I spend more time with, unfortunately, than my family. And so that can be very depressing to have all that connectivity pulled away from you.
Chris Do: There's this thing that you had said about the sense of injustice and the values and the things that you wanted to build weren't actually the same things that Eric wanted to build, small or big. And this is a common problem that I see on a much smaller scale. There was a woman who worked for me for a period of time and she was probably the single most talented creative I've ever come across. And her idea of building a company was to do the very best work at all costs, at the cost of personal health, cost of relationships, making other, other people feel inadequate.
And I was like, you're so talented, but it's so destructive to this company. And in ways that she spoke to me, it was almost, condescending, which I understand young people, they don't, sometimes not that careful, but I was like, I don't need you to save the company. We were here before you, we'll be fine after you. And it was one of those things where it really hurt me to say, like, I don't think you can be here anymore because as talented as you are, it's comes with a certain kind of destructive power. And so we all need to be able to then find what it is that we want, or to say, you know, is what I'm doing important and valuable to the person who's in the position to control my, my future?
And we have to make those decisions. And so it seems like you're coming away having realized, man, I actually wasn't building a vision that they shared. It was something that I wanted. And maybe this is an opportunity for you to get to build that exact thing, either with people that want that same thing, or where you're the lead and you're like, this is how it's going to be.
Matt Bretz: Yes, that's right. Yeah, and I, I really identify with the challenge that you described that you had, and I think that, you know, interestingly enough, they're, you know, related in the sense that, like, one of the things, for better or for worse, capitalism is going to push us towards lack of care in business for one another as humans. There's no question, well, no, there are even our questions about this come to think of it. Like there are people that can go a long way to demonstrating to you that when you treat people as more than just a resource, they actually deliver more, which creates more value in your business, which ends up with better financial success and better capitalist success as well.
But I'm sure all of us that are watching this are in the room, you know, me and Chris would acknowledge that most businesses, like when we came out of, uh, the dark times of, uh, economic slowdowns, when we went into them, I mean, there was definitely a sense that well, tough luck humans. We can stop worrying about feeding each other and getting enough sleep and having time to play with our kids and all of that stuff because everybody knows the economy is struggling and we've got to focus on our business first and people get laid off and that's going to continue to happen at a high level and in a system like the one that we've built.
So I feel like as I strike out onto the next thing that I do, I'm going to try to continually find ways to mitigate that. One obvious one is I'm a very firm believer in an organization, in transparency and context for everyone. When I brought this up just with Tobin, actually, yesterday, we were talking about this belief and, uh, he rightly pointed out, and a number of people will often go shortly thereafter too. Well, there's some people that don't want to know. Like I've had people say, you know, I don't need to know about the fiscals. I just want to put my head down and make my motion graphics. So that leads you to the next piece of the puzzle is can you create a system inside of an organization where people can opt in for the right amount of context that they want?
But I think that it, it is important to me and it it helps with a lot of other elements. Later in this volatile space where Moore's Law is driving us to have a changing landscape faster and faster and faster that the whole company can see and understand both the challenges and the successes that we're having and how they relate to one another and hopefully be motivated to collaborate in the solutions for the sticky points.
So that's an important you know, will be an important part of everything that I do moving forward. Another thing I'm trying to get better about is reading those pendulum swings that I was talking about. What I mean by that is that there are trends in our industry, like in the game advertising space, sometimes game publisher doesn't, publishers and developers who have the money to spend on advertising are spending it on agencies to make all their stuff. And then sometimes they building an in house studio to do it all themselves or working directly with content creators. And I've watched in the 20 plus years I've been doing it, that pendulum swing back and forth between the two. So the key thing for us to, for me to understand as a, uh, leader of organizations trying to be in that space is how can I have the sensors out to be able to understand when the pendulum is swinging toward me and it's time for me to jump on and swing with it back the other direction and then jump off at the right moment to get off the other side? You know, that's never going to be easy, but I think I'm going to be devoting more attention to, to that because it has the ripple effect.
That's the other thing to keep in mind about leaders like myself, the good ones, which I hope I am one of, even when it doesn't seem like it, I swear we are thinking about everyone in the organization. Like we are trying, we know, I know that there are literally at Eisenberg, there were hundreds of people who were to some degree dependent upon me making the right choices. And all I'm really trying to do is make the right choices. It doesn't mean I always do it right, but that's why it's important to me to be, I don't think that your motion graphic artist has to love it if they contribute to it, but has to understand the pendulum swings in the way that I do.
Chris Do: Well, speaking of the pendulum swinging, timing and making smart choices, we're almost out of time here. And timing is everything in life. It's like understanding that if you jump too soon, you fall, you can't grab onto anything. You jump too late, it actually hits you in the head. So I'm just curious as we kind of wind down here is what's next for you? Where do we go from here?
Matt Bretz: I might start a franchise of School of Rock because I love music and I love kids and I love teaching. And so I've been like literally looking into that franchise deal. I think that's actually kind of unlikely. I don't know if I could.
Chris Do: But the teacher in me, I just wanted to say this, the teacher in me would encourage the teacher in you to maybe start doing creativity workshops. I mean, the thing that you had said, like, you're responsible for tapping into and helping people realize their fullest creative potential on a scale that most of us don't get to see, on a timeline that most of us don't get to participate in. So you're talking about decades of just working with teams of maybe a few people, up to 60 people, and saying, how do I help you realize something? To see through the, the fog of creativity and your loss in the sauce, and to inspire you, but not to tell you what to do? That's a very delicate art or dance to do, and if that is your calling in life, I think maybe we can have a second conversation about this privately, is how you can do that and build a world around what it is that is your gift. I would encourage you to do that, Matt.
Matt Bretz: Wow. That would be phenomenal. I would love that. So let's do that. And I might drop right back into, uh, an agency and do what I was doing. You know, I find that a lot of the people that have called me about that are naturally interested. All these business owners, you know, I was talking about talking to and how this is the worst time in their business. One of the solutions for them is to add a revenue stream. So if you look at my LinkedIn right now, The main descriptor I have under my name is rainmaker, because that's a term that often means like, I have found that I am able to make great things happen for people wherever I've landed, which is awesome.
Like it's the only real thing to do for, uh, other humans. And so that's like a rainstorm, you know, so I call it rainmaking and talent farmer. I think I'm very good at bringing out the best in people, as you just suggested, and attracting good people. I love my circle of friends and co workers, you know. And then the last one is design champion. And the reason I have design champion there is that I have realized over time that all of what we've been talking about, in a way, is design. I began as an artist. I, you know, ran a theater company and played in bands and did all that stuff. And artists ask questions of the world, which is why they also often don't get paid very well, because people pay you to answer their questions.
Designers answer questions. And I'm lucky to have skills in both areas, but I've made my career in design. Whether it's literal design, it's not been as literal design as you, for example, but it's been a big revelation to me that everything we've been doing here in this conversation is design. That's what I'm going to be doing. Rainmaking, talent farming, and design championing.
Chris Do: I love that. Matt, I want to thank you for being so vulnerable, being so transparent, and sharing what's going on with you in real time. A lot of people don't have that kind of courage. I'm excited for your future, and I think as one door closes, a thousand new doors open, and I always feel this way this is just the beginning of the next best chapter in your life. So, best of luck to you, Matt.
Thank you so much. And you too. My name's Matt Bretz and you're listening to The Futur.
The Futur: Thanks for joining us. If you haven't already, subscribe to our show on your favorite podcasting app and get new insightful episodes from us every week. The Futre Podcast is hosted by Chris Do and produced and edited by Rich Cardona Media. Thank you to Adam Sanborn for our intro music. If you enjoyed this episode, then do us a favor by reviewing and rating our show on Apple Podcasts.
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