How to Turn Job Loss into a Creative Career Opportunity w/ Matt Bretz

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 backstory yeah sure my name is Matt Bratz and uh I am a creative uh that and for me the reason I state it 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 and moving pictures so I uh came up through live theater and music put on many many many different types of live entertainment shows and filled many roles from uh stage hand to director uh and then I began getting into working in the advertising space and so I started uh producing ing writing directing commercials and that led to um becoming a creative leader in the space of advertising agencies so that my work very clearly then began to grow into supporting and uh and and uh raising up creatives who were not just word-based but who were also uh design based when I do this I'm not by any means saying that I am uh on a level with one of my uh great Inspirations Rick reubin but you know Rick Rubin is capable of uh 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 uh a chief creative officer at uh Eisenberg which is uh a 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 a a viewpoint on one person's Journey as they as they get laid off I was a little surprised when I got this message from you hey guess what me and Gary no longer with Eisenberg I was like oh my God we just saw each other on an airplane spent which was a a very pleasant surprise bumping into the both of you on on the Southwest flight to South South by Southwest that was really cool it was like a nice two and a half hour hanging out with with my boys and it was really great and so to get this message 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 were 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 pick it up from there I I remember that as well and I was actually I remember thinking that I was so grateful to have that time with you uh right before it all dropped because we were uh Gary and I pretty blindsided by the actual transition out of Eisenberg where we were working that being said uh it makes sense to me now in Reverse looking backwards uh it doesn't make it easy and it doesn't make it not painful and 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 I know for a fact as a business owner at Eisenberg you know as a partner and a stakeholder at the the highest level there at the business that it's an extremely challenging and fatiguing time for business owners particularly on our space I've confirmed that in the uh in the aftermath of uh being laid off I've been meeting with many of my friends who run a lot of our competitive 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 uh 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 Moors law of marketing and communic Communications landscape change so what I mean by that is you know the Moors law is the you're going to catch me here on not being like a super technical expert but Mo's law tells us that the um capacity of chipsets is going to ex you know increase has increased since the beginning of computers at an exponential rate you know rather than just an addtive rate and I see that change in the uh entertainment marketing landscape in particular but marketing and Communications in general change of every kind is increasing at an exponential rate you know so we're going through like uh you you if you look back over the last couple of years you know there was everybody was suddenly like ah it's all about blockchain we've got to understand blockchain blockchain and web 3 is coming then uh that kind of for a variety of reasons faded rather swiftly almost like a cliff into the background as everybody was like a it's all about nfts nfts are an an expression of blockchain but nfts are the thing and it's you know and you had to learn about nfts and figure out how much of your business you were going to devote to uh making or dealing with nfts then it was AI then it was content creators you're you're right now I think we're in a a wave of mainstream advertisers and Brands going we need to figure out how to incorporate content creators if 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 I never you know I just wasn't paying attention to uh that I myself was only useful and useful is important in capit 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 my other company who I 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 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 the advertising space so there's naturally this overlap of interest and things that we can do together and as we are figuring out the future 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 and and and content and we were so excited about it but 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 can we serve two masters at the same time we can but not well it was Peak relationship like where it hurt me emotionally it hurt me financially when when when Gary and others came knocking 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 is what you work your whole career to but we had to make this really hard decision where we where we left and we said you know what thank you so much guys but we're no longer doing this and and you know I'm looking at the checking account like shoot what did you what you just do but for context what I want to tell our audiences 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 it's 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 through to to get through this kind of advertising social media era then for sure we're we're at the bottom of that food chain we're going to feel it so it's a strategic decision and so I I think that's all the context I wanted to set up for everybody yeah I remember those days I and I remember being we were a little bit surprised and mystified as you kind of uh you know were aware obviously of but you know when you hit those points of transition um and thankfully in the case of you and blind uh you were fully in control of that you know uh I mean I think Gary and I are going through a similar transition that in that began with us a little out of control and that now the question is I think for uh anybody getting laid off how can you move from something may have been started out of control to getting in control you know when you told us hey we're not going to do this anymore even though you were the best in the business I mean you were uh that was why we worked with you we respected that you know and that's an important thing to remember too is that the people that uh you work for and are friends with and Surround you that are the ones worth having in your network are going to get it you know no matter what you decide to do and probably um 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 future and which is why I enjoyed taking that plane ride for you it was such a pleasant surprise okay so it's very rare that we get the opportunity to speak to someone who is 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 and 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 let's just rewind the tape a little bit how long were you at Eisenberg I was at Eisenberg for almost exactly 10 years like it was four days short or something of 10 years and Gary my uh creative partner had been there for 24 years I know times are lean and and margins aren't what they used to be and I 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 lb Juggernaut this 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 your take what was the temperature in the room if you will like before you got on a plane to go to South by Southwest well you know Eisenberg is actually uh doing quite well in the grand scheme of things and the funny thing about uh you know saying and I understand why you do it the social media is the uh enemy is that actually quite literally where Eric is heading with the company is leaning into retained repeatable social media uh as opposed to doing big disruptive awareness advertising which is what most advertising agencies are built around highlighting that same dichotomy you know of like what's the difference between marketing and advertising we came up uh I think Gary and I very much focused on how to make big disruptive moments that even uh Elevate into cultural moments that people remember and are moved by and remember the feeling of as opposed to making those small personal moments uh that happen day and social which we had another team that does that and that work is not by any means uh easy um it is a lower uh there 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 a cost intensive Endeavor that type of work typically is uh highrisk High reward you know we would uh 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 a very um Innovative uh style of that where they're um they're actually working with content creators or media and paid media at the same time on the paid media you make a steady 10% profit so you're never going to make uh you know multi-million dollars on uh on media uh on an individual media project but you're going to always make 10% 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 um and that's why you know they that it came to where it did which is that if you're looking at also staying on The Cutting Edge of content creator is kind of the third pillar for Eric Eisenberg and I do think there are a lot of content creators in your audience um you 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 the things that you need Gary and I for we're good at although I will say that we're good at building a community inside of an agency and a sense of nurturing uh collaboration and networking so that different people help out with their different strengths and uh you know 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 uh we were good at making these big disruptive moments I think we're going to see a period now where uh where that's less important than having regular steady interaction with fans through social and digital channels you know and that's where the company's placing its emphasis one of the things that um has gets racked into focus when you get laid off is how Reliant you've become on a particular Tech setup which is often turned off by the company that you get laid off from and so I've been thrown into this having to re think and redo the ways that I you know slack with people email with people which programs I'm using what platforms I'm using reigning into them all and it creates my calendar is super screwed up so like I've I've been thinking about getting it uh much more agnostic to the place that I work this next time so that I can get laid off again and uh and not be so uh you know uh thrown off by it like the rug pulled underneath you on a tech stack you're like Wait nothing works anymore I think what we were talking about is when we see something in Decline how do you respond and you were saying the agency has responded and it seems like there are may maybe for the lack of better terms like a couple different camps I don't know if there 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 widen put out when time slows down cuz 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 we watch TV and we watch ads and then something like to or something comes along and now we can start to skip the ads that was the beginning I 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 yeah you know I see where I see ads now is I watch sports so I still there are still a lot of sports platforms where I mean you certainly can watch sports without ads big tent pole U moments you know I mean I think you could argue that uh the stuff that's happening on the Vegas sphere and the um the 3D uh and they even call it 5D uh billboard events that are happening in Time Square and things like that which are big awareness plays they're Happ in on uh platforms or places um that are more traditional but what's equally important now is that uh 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 uh plan programs uh and engagement mechanisms that will go from seeing a billboard in Time 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 none of us no one wants to look at old school advertising right where a where a brand has I would argue often a misguided uh you know 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 you know the feature set of what the brand makes and then deciding to buy the brand that is completely blown up 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 Jen Alpha because I just kind of work with both of as you know uh micro uh audience uh testing units you know but my 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 uh they're no longer in a funnel a linear Journey from uh 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 uh and holding tightly to Identity that they believe in that is at their core that's very authent you know they're into authenticity as we all know and and so they're they're making a a nuanced choice about who they are and by virtue of who they are it determines kind of who 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 uh you know is is a key uh 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 and the humans have accepted that because they can see that it's authentic and then they're those brands at the times that they need them and so it's this completely nonlinear uh 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 of Super Bowl ads or Billboards in Time Square it really has to do with a way of life and a you know a sense of culture and brands have the opportunity to choose to be authentically a part of some of these cultures and and and then that is what will be the um the the ESS the source of their success I think I wanted 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 how you adjust as an agency I'm just curious as the kinds of conversations they're having at the SE Suite level just prior to 2019 for several years we were super excited about uh the many platforms coming into uh the communication space so you're seeing Instagram grow and diversify its offering you're seeing Snapchat uh enter the space uh you're seeing arguably in some ways Facebook receding uh as a principle way in which people really experience culture and communication together um at least for younger people um and you're seeing uh eventually Tik Tock uh enter that space But it's all about the platforms themselves so prior to 2019 we're basically focused on what are the features of these platforms what are they natively capable of doing from an from an engineering standpoint and how can we make advertising and Communications assets that um 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 F F audiences and we started more purposefully thinking of ourselves as audience Le in terms of what we recommended to clients about what they make in order to advertise or communicate and what and the difference there is we started to devote our uh research and uh marketing science to figuring out who are the people that are most uh have the most affinity for this project product and 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 do they like what do they dislike um How likely are they to you know engage in a game versus engage in an emotional uh laid-back experience of just crying over a sad film or something like that so where are they um you know what do how do they behave and the 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 cont content that genuinely adds value to their lives or makes them want to interact that's how we like in that period of I would say the last eight years those were sort of the major beats of of that Journey you know um and we're still refining that what does it mean to be audience L because because the the Spiel that I just gave about what gen Z is looking for is another major pivot point of uh 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 um in order for them to choose to keep us as part of their culture and their community and their family that was a lot to process so the conversation being had emerging platforms maturing shifts in consumption and usage we are also talking about changing our strategy to being more audience Le and seeing what kind of connections they have and understanding how certain Generations behave differently think differently so there was a an observation and 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 yourself a scorecard what did you guys do really well and what could be better that's a great question what I want to go back to Chris is uh 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 for me I'm gonna tell you my very personal take on it uh which is something that I would evangelize with the agency but I as with any you know Mantra or point of communication it 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 day's disrupt or even uh widen Kennedy's fail fast failing fast means doing fast means not listening means go go go 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 and 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 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 uh 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 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 Eric Eisenberg 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 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 a lot of other creatives and uh and talent at the agency are heading in a different direction I believe in teams and I believe in collaboration uh 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 does that answer your question yeah it it parallels a lot of what happened at blind so there was this moment when we're recognizing that the ship that were'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 or 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 we maybe we'll call it the Old Guard and the new guard the Old Guard was like no Chris you're being an alarmist uh this is always going to work at always will work and I'm like you guys help me out here you do understand there's this other thing that I'm telling you all I do is spend my waking hours thinking about where the future 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 it it just doesn't come creeping slowly it just stops and when we were bidding on two to three um projects a week 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 the 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 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% of the team made the jump 20 of them per 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 they 100% committed to that they made other choices so it seems like what you're saying there I kind of reflect on what you were saying we're listening to the the the audience the community and kind of creating from that space But there was this internal listening that wasn't 100% in alignment was that a similar parallel you think yes definitely you know and there and I'm not even sure that like I I had set up that thing where I said uh I believe in trying to stay together Eric and I have remained friends and uh and he was very uh purposeful about saying um this isn't n about you this is about where I'm taking the business that I founded that I capitalized I think uh you are free to go and do something that is makes more sense to you and you are better aligned with by virtue of him saying that I would say that he leans towards it's fine to split up you know splitting up is how cells divide and how human life or life on this planet grew you know there is a a um you know kind of a pendulum swing there I I talk a lot I think a lot about pendulum swings um in in the in Trends and the way that we work and things like that you know sometimes you're coming together coming together coming together deepening growing and sometimes you it's healthy for you to move apart and uh and it and become a the Catalyst of a new thing and a new group of people and things like that well one of those examples I mean two of them both my former executive producers Tobin who I think you know he wound up becoming the head of production over at an agency and Scott rodstein uh our executive producer too started his own agency or his own company I was like good for you guys you 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 that I want to move this way and both of them when they came to me to tell me Chris were believe in you they were kind of like emotional it was a a Tey moment there you know where we gave each other space to say I'm like hey Scott 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 on the semi-regular and and just to see kind of what's up and having lunch with him let's take the conversation back to I think what will be most useful to our our brought 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 things but let's get into it yeah so we talked about thinking about keeping your uh your channels this is a very nuts and bolts uh recommendation is I thinking about keeping your Tech platforms and channels separate from your work you know platforms and channels and devices and things like that 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 thought it was the last beat of my career I had come out of ant farm about 10 years earlier while it was less of an Abrupt transition like I had a very uh amicable and um unusually um fluid trans transition out of ant farm 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 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 ant farm transition I had switched everything to my uh Brett nikov is a is an identity that I have on Instagram on Twitter and iCloud I started using Brett sikov all through my time at Eisenberg as the basis for you know my subscription to Mid Journey uh my my login to Discord my you know everything was in my personal stuff everything for Gary was in Gary Eisenberg domcom so he could no longer even get into his LinkedIn you know um without uh lengthy collaboration which they supported us in but it slow uh from the company that we left so I would recommend to people to think in advance about keeping your your stuff your stuff because even when you don't think that you're going to move on to a a different chapter you just never know you know you just never know so can we pause there can we pause there so everybody understands have your own email address at your own domain if you and 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 I understand from the employer perspective I know this feels rotten as an employee like wait a it to 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 all their clients all their friends the co-worker and say this place is the freaking blah blah blah this is 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 or take all the files and assets just throw them in the trash and just 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 you know another thing that has um stood me in good stead in the last few weeks is the Instinct uh and this is partly a personality thing but from the very first moment like two two layers of instincts one is first of all you're not doing yourself any favors by being self-conscious and secret about this Mo this transition that is happening for you and I know that this my ability to be transparent about getting laid off um right out of the gate with my friends my family uh co-workers Etc 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 the first layer is try to have as much as you can uh a 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 and not everybody would say many people would say I know you're going to be fine uh let me kind of just something generic like let me know if there's something I can do but not a really um specific offer to do anything 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 what happened is there have been people who you know were like um a junior copywriter who worked with me years ago who said uh you know let me know if you'd like to get on a call and I said okay let's get on a call in talking to them I learned about um a uh opportunity that they were working on that they um 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 you know like so like take open every door you know because it will lead to the next door 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 I think this has a about who you are you say it's a it's a more natural thing for an extrovert but I think that's part of it but I think the the real part of it is you've been a genuinely good human being and so when when things happen to you for you with you then 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 uh and did not treat us well and eventually they got laid off or fired for different reasons everybody's like dancing on their grave you know karma is a me 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 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% 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 the people who who 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 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 uh I learn uh something important for me uh you know and and so I really appreciate it thank you you said there were two things 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 the power of that uh surprise place of being out of a job the empow you know this is something we touched on earlier about how do you transition from being surprised and thrown off of and thrown out of control into uh being in control of your own destiny 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 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 you know my wife and daughters because I know the exhale will come you know the 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 to take that in breath after you've been laid off and not focus on execution 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 when I was at Eisenberg I had an expectation of working from 9 to 6 I had a business day in front of me and for the first time in my career over the last few years um I had really begun to focus on the importance of work life balance and 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 like 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 don't you don't you you actually turned into a workaholic now that you've been laid off you know and I was like oh yeah I am doing that you know ironic ironic yes so I would say make sure you really need to try to be conscious of things can only go so fast and um 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 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 you 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 and that's the curse of Entrepreneurship 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 scenar and you designed for that and you're constantly adjusting so U we're we're a few weeks removed from from you getting laid off what is the current Matt doing and thinking and feeling and operating well I'll tell you there was a good segue there and I can answer the question you reminded me with your talk of Entrepreneurship like incidentally by the way I've always thought of myself in in a funny way as an entrepreneur inside of the agency environment um of always innovating always uh you know trying to find new ways to do things um always trying to drive a new kind of success and get into new places it's not surprising that uh one of the first things that happened was an old friend reached out to me and said uh hey I'm I'm 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 uh a number of years ago she struck out on her own and became a full-on entrepreneur I think she's like been involved in uh she's been involved with three startups of her own and many many a handful of others that she just counsels 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 you know what I've experienced because I think I could help you in terms of let you know pitfalls and things like that as you strike out on your own so I said um well that's amazingly generous and thank you and she was coming from out of town I was like as long if you're coming all the way into town to do that could we get um 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 um they were all people not um members of uh companies but people that I'd worked with over time who were out on their own I reached out to uh seven eight other people and said hey if we if I threw this is a term I think from the earliest 20th century 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 you know eight 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 if as long as you drink coffee and tea the whole time we're happy to have you sit there for three hours to a person every person at that table has been like this was one of the most important transformative period uh 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 they're there's 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 I think that is a really good Instinct like you know the the 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 am uh I've been doing a lot of hiking uh you know 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 educator leader who told me about uh 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 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 you know um I've by the way uh 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 uh at you know the um those parts of my life that feel like they you know I can't control but you know you you what can you do besides learn to accept and embrace it and uh and move on and part of accepting and embracing it is also acknowledging emotion and uh depression and anxiety um I'm definitely afraid that a lot of um the factors that are at play with our economy with um the history of injust Justice and inequity in our country uh and in our industry with uh agism that I will never find another job I mean you know I'm like 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 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 your title at Eisenberg was Chief creative officer there 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 and position but those positions are rare it's not like everywhere you go they're available to you so that's the the 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 manage skills that you have but then it's just it's harder to land one of those things now getting back to theem motion part which I'm I'm glad that you're bringing up because everybody's listening to this like wait Matt's pretty cool for a guy who just like got blindsided well let's talk about some of those emotions whatever 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 I think my anger typically comes from a sense of Injustice you know like whether it's about other people or it's about me so um what I call the anger was probably stemming from that place of what the hell I'm the you know like we all I 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 because obviously that would lead towards you know being totally self-centered and and headstrong 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 you have to face the fact that um somebody doesn't want you there somebody doesn't think that you're of value and anger the anger is related to feeling like you're wrong about that that is also where the solution to letting the anger go comes from because uh you know 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 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 that 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 um I did during Co I developed for the first time in my life a really purposeful and regular meditation practice and uh and it has just changed the whole landscape of my anxiety and depression so I highly recommend commend that to people I used the call app to find my way into it um I was spurred into it by um another great creative leader named John couch who used to be the um head of creative at Hulu and a number of other places and uh he wrote a great book and talked about how he would get up every morning at you know 5: am and meditate before he started his day and with kids you only you know I was like the only time I'm going to be able to do this is when John did it at 5:00 a.m. 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 uh then I get my workday going the meditation has been a big you know uh 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 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 and that is a note actually that that is related to the be transparent about it thing um I don't know how it's going to end up because I can know I I can tell 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 and and so as to not be weird about it I'm mostly saying things like hey how you doing you know and I'm I'm doing good uh and here's what I'm up to I do want to maintain those connections you know uh there 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 there's this thing that you had said about the sense of Injustice and the values and the things that you wanted to build were actually the same things that Eric wanted to build small or big this is a 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 her idea of building a company was to do the very best work at all costs at the cost of personal health uh 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 as talented as you are it 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 like this is how it's going to be yes that's right yeah and I I really identify with the challenge that you described that you had interestingly enough they're you know related in the sense that like one of the things you know For Better or For Worse capitalism is going to push us towards uh lack of care in business for one another as humans there's no question well no there even are questions about this come to think of it like there are people that will um 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 you know uh with better financial success and better capitalist success as well but you're definit you I'm sure all of us that are watching this or in the room you know me and uh Chris would acknowledge that you know most businesses like when we came out of uh the dark times of uh you know economic slowdowns when we went into them I mean there was definitely a sense that well you know tough luck humans we can stop worrying about feeding each other and getting enough sleep and you know uh um having time to play with our kids and all of that stuff because everybody knows it's the business you know economy is struggling and we've got to uh focus on our business first and people get laid off and that's going to continue to happen you know at a high level in a in a in a um system like the one that we've built I feel like as I strike out uh onto the next thing that I do um I'm going to try to continually find ways to mitigate that you know one of one obvious one is I'm a very firm believer in an organization in uh transparen and context uh for everyone uh you know when I brought this up just with uh Tobin actually uh 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 you know uh 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 you know but I think that it is important to me and it it helps with a lot of other elements um later in this volatile space where Moore's Law is driving us to have a changing landscape faster and faster and faster that uh 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 you know um so I'm so that's an you know will be an important part of of everything that I do moving forward and I'm trying another thing I'm trying to get better about reading those pendulum swings that I was talking about so that what I mean by that is that you know there are Trends in our industry like you know uh in the game advertising space sometimes uh game publisher 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 be uh 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 and uh 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 um 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 that's why it's important to me to be I don't think that your motion graphic artist has to i' love it if they contribute to it but has to understand the pendulum swings in the way that I do speaking of the pendulum swinging timing and making smart choices 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 and actually hit you in the head I'm just curious as we kind of wind down here is what is the the what's next for you where where do we go from here the teacher and me I just wanted to say this the teacher and me would encourage the teacher and 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 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 if that is your calling in life I think and 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 wow that would be phen phenomenal I would love that so let's do that and I might drop right back into uh an agency and and do what I was doing you know I find that a lot of the people that have called me about that um 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 if you look at my LinkedIn right now um the main descriptor I have under my uh name is rain maker because that's a term that often means like um 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 like real thing to do for for uh other humans that's like a rainstorm you know so I call it rain makinging um and uh 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 um 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 as AO you know that I 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 uh people pay you to answer their questions designers answer questions I'm lucky to have skills in both area 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 rain makinging Talent farming and design Champion Matt uh I 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 1 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 Future