Jared Belsky 0:00 

If you're a client, how do you give feedback to an expert? Right? How do you motivate that creative on the other side of the table? How do you motivate that analytics expert, not demotivate her? Well, here's a tactic I talk about, for example, return to the brief you

David Novak 0:23 

it's one of the most costly things in a business, but it never shows up on your P and L today, we're going to help you find it and fix it. Welcome to how leaders lead. I'm David Novak, and every week I have conversations with the very best leaders in the world to help you become the best leader that you can be my guest today is Jared Belsky. He's the CEO of Acadia, a digital marketing agency that's making waves at age name them, the performance agency of the year for 2024 today you're going to hear about what Jared calls the dysfunction tax. It's the hidden cost companies pay when they're dealing with internal politics or jumping through hoops and have needless bureaucracy that everyone hates. So if you want to avoid that dysfunction tax both on your team and in your creative partnerships, you're in for a real treat. Here's my conversation with my good friend and soon to be yours. Jared Belsky, you you

Speaker 1 1:20 

know,

David Novak 1:26 

I can't wait to get into how you lead, and specifically go deep on the agency, supplier relationship, but first, let's let me take you back a little bit. Tell us a story from your upbringing that shapes, that shape the kind of leader you are today. Well,

Jared Belsky 1:41 

I guess the most honest thing would be, I don't think I was amazing at anything. I was a I was an average athlete. I was a barely above average student. And where I'm going with this is, I think at a very young age, I realized you have to surround yourself with people who made up for your own weaknesses. And I think I was lucky at a very young age to kind of realize that. So you know, whether it was academics and I chose to have friends who are really intelligent and kind of benefit from that, or if I was in a sports team and I wasn't too fast to find a fast wide receiver on the team, my biggest, most honest answer is by being average in many things, but always being in everything, I learned you had to surround yourself with folks to compliment you. And I know that's not one specific thing, but you just it's a very foundational feeling and memory Absolutely

David Novak 2:33 

and you know, I understand, you know, you were on the client side of marketing earlier in your career, and Coca Cola is one of those companies. What was the biggest learning you got in that job?

Jared Belsky 2:47 

I think the biggest learning by far I got in this job is that you have to respect the field. You know, Coca Cola is on the street called North Avenue, and it's very easy to be in the ivory tower. I was a brand manager in Fanta, and it's very easy to say, I know the right color for the can, and I know what consumers want, and I understand how Walmart Kroger works, but the reality is, you can get stuck in your four walls and start thinking you're a lot smarter than you are. And so I would say the most influential thing that ever happened to me. I'll tell this story a little bit of my own expense. For about three weeks during a very hot summer, I got to do a ride along in a big old truck in West Philadelphia, and I'm in the passenger seat of this 18 wheeler that's delivering soda right throughout West Philly. And the driver and delivery guy's name was Gus. This guy was just so strong and I was pretty weak. And we're working and working and working and helping for three weeks in West Philadelphia, and we pull up next to this gas station. And next to the gas station was this pole sign, you know where it says 220 ounce bottles of Fanta for dollar 99 and he goes, you see that sign? Kid? I go, Yeah. He goes, someone up at North Avenue with bleep for brains built it. I go, oh yeah. I go, What about it. He goes, Jared, you know what's outside, son, I go, what? He goes, rain, sun, weather. And sure enough, David, when I looked on this pole sign, it was a picture of the of the fantanas, and this cans of Fanta that was melted and the colors had faded. And here's the why, here's the why. For your listeners, I didn't know that the sign needed UV protection. I didn't know the sign was going to be hit by tons of pedestrians and cars. I didn't know anything because I thought I knew everything, because I was sitting up at North Avenue in a beautiful chair talking to other brand managers, and what I had to do was be out with Gus, learning about the real world and how our products hit shelves and hit gas stations and hit Walmarts and hit the streets and that was a lot of humble pie to eat at one time, but um, this gentleman named guswell, I'll never know, and I can never repay. I owe him a great a great debt. Did

David Novak 4:56 

you tell him that you were that crazy guy that COVID. And

Jared Belsky 5:00 

I did my voice. My voice got several octaves higher. Like, yeah, that was that. That was me, the guy you're complimenting, but he appreciated. We sat there in that truck for a while, and we shared, we shared our experiences, and I, I'm pretty sure I learned more from him than the other way

David Novak 5:17 

around. Yeah, been there, done that, I tell you, that's great, you know. And you know, here you are now. You're in the corner office as a CEO, and you've grown to be one of the top digital marketing leaders in the world. You know what took you down the digital path, as

Jared Belsky 5:31 

is the case for most situations where we all take a good career path, we like to post rationalize our own brilliance, but usually it's about being open minded. So I graduated school, and I was working in a congressman's office. His name was Congressman Shaka Fatah, and I was spending half of my time working on legislative matters, and half of my time working on campaign, re election for this for this gentleman, and the communications director who I was reporting to, kind of called me into her office. She had a scowl on her face. I go, Oh, this doesn't feel very good. She goes, Yeah, you don't look happy. I'm like, Oh, well, this is not good at all. She goes, when you're talking about legislation, it looks like your pet died. When you're talking about the re election, you're so happy. I got bad news for you, Jared. I go, what? Well, you need to be a marketer. Oh, okay, so what, what she saw was the truth, which is, I like puzzles. I like marketing. I like trying to figure out how to get someone or something discovered and found. And so I realized she wasn't trying to make fun of me, she was trying to help me see where my natural love was. And after that, I just tethered that insight, frankly, to the fact that it was 1999 it was 1999 and the Internet seemed like such an obvious thing that if you were given a choice to make an ad, that you would never know if it had effect, or if you had the choice to make a digital ad where you can track target and understand how much return on investment you would have a 21 year old me still could See that the internet was destined to be the huge thing. So one, I have to thank this woman, whose name I do not know. But two, I was lucky to be a product of the time, right? That was 1999 is when the digital advertising world was becoming a commercially viable thing. What

David Novak 7:19 

advice Jared, can you give to leaders on how to be become really competent in the digital marketing arena? I

Jared Belsky 7:26 

think there's a few things. The first is that details and data matter a lot. David, and you know this because of where you've been in your profession, sometimes marketers like to wing it. They love to talk about intuition. They love to talk about gut. And that's fine. There's a place for that, but if you're going to be excellent in digital marketing, you better learn how to respect details and respect data. And I don't mean talk about a regression analysis, I mean understand what that really is. I think the second thing is, the minute you listen, you lose sight of the keyboard, you're toast. I It's the number one question I ask people when I'm interviewing. I'm like, you know, tell me about how often use a keyboard. What I mean by that's a metaphor for you have to stay close to the details. For example, Google changes every two months. If you're not staying on top of the new ad products and not stay on top of the news, you become irrelevant. So I would just, would say, staying fresh, staying curious, and the last thing I don't know, be careful not to chase every fad. Right? A year ago, we were all talking about the metaverse, not as much. Now, you have to look for quality. You can't be distracted. Because I'll tell you, one of the biggest challenges for someone young in this field, FOMO can kill you if you're always having fear of missing out on some new digital technology or some new digital strategy, you can just end up chasing stars versus chasing quality. But I'd end by end by where I started, which is you just have to care a lot about data and a lot about the details, you know.

David Novak 8:59 

And at the age of 40, you leave as CEO of 360 i, which is a major global advertising agency. And how'd you muster up the courage to go out on your own?

Jared Belsky 9:10 

You know, there's a friend of mine named Sean belnick who I knew for 10 years. He's this young wizard who had 14 started an E commerce furniture company, and him and I got together and said, You know what, if we started the digital marketing and analytics agency focused on the mid market that actually, and this part is really important, cared about core values, put core values at the center, and put our employee at the center, we could do something great. And what I know you know, because you know a lot about agencies. Agencies average about a 40% employee turnover rate, right? That's That's crazy. So we said, if we can solve that conundrum, if we could put employees back to being at the center of the agency model, our clients will love us. The agency will work the economics of work. So literally, that is the only KPI we focus on. And obsess on unwanted employee turnover,

David Novak 10:03 

you know, unwanted attrition. I love that. I mean, that is, that's a great key measure to measure to have, you know, how do you personally stay on top of that? Because, you know, you get in the hustle bustle of serving clients and, you know, running to work like you say every day. I mean, how do you stay on top of that? I look at

Jared Belsky 10:24 

that metric with the management team obsessively, every month, without fail. And the first key is that accountability and actually following through. But the second key is actually more interesting. Let's, let's pull the word apart for a minute, ensuring that we're looking at unwanted attrition, meaning sometimes people play games. I'm okay with that person leaving. I wanted that person to leave. All those are games. You have to look at the stats as they are. So again, getting back to your question. One, we look at that data monthly. But the second thing is not just the data, it's what you do to make the culture worthy of people staying so our four core values are can do curiosity, candor and community. And unlike places I've been in the past, they're not just words, right? They are packed with meaning, packed with action. Quintessential story last Christmas, our largest client was, in my opinion, in our judgment, giving our team too much of a hard time, almost borderline, you know, verbal abuse, emotional abuse, this sort of thing. And that night, at 11pm the night before Christmas, we let them go, and we said, you know, our core values mandate that we stick up for our employees, not revenue. We stick up for our core values, not profit. And I think that legend and that, that feeling that we stuck up for our employees did us a great service. But right core values are, are how you live your life when it's raining and hailing outside, not when it's 72 degrees and sunny. What

David Novak 12:00 

do you love now? Jared about being out on your own. What do you love the most about that in

Jared Belsky 12:05 

the last three years, I can't name a time where I've come to work with anything in my way of doing the right thing for our employees and our clients, right? We have a yearly budget, but we could make it or miss it a little bit. We don't have to play games with quarterly numbers. We have a strategic plan, but we don't need to sacrifice people's health or sanity to hit them. It's just very simple. We can do the right thing at all times. We can be proud of what we're doing at all times, and we have to make zero ethical sacrifices ever. And we don't have to be short term minded and that is a huge strategic advantage, a huge strategic advantage. I mean, the the there's a gentleman named Adam Bryant who wrote this thing corner office for New York Times. He's written other books, and he talks a lot about how sometimes larger entities have this thing called a dysfunction tax, and that you build up all these strange meetings and politics where people are spending half their day making PowerPoints for some boss they don't even know, like we're just taking all that wasa dysfunction and investing it in obsessing about our clients and our employees.

David Novak 13:14 

Well, it must be working, because you launch Acadia in two, in 2021 you achieve rapid growth. You adding 100 employees in just six months, and now you have over 225, employees and and over $30 million in revenue. That's just in two years. How'd you get out of the gate so fast? I mean, it takes companies usually a lot longer to get so much traction. Yeah. So

Jared Belsky 13:41 

in the spirit of candor, there's two pieces, right? There's an organic growth piece and there was an acquisition piece to start. And the acquisition piece is a big, crazy part of the story, right? Because Sean and I started. There were just the two of us. We had a drawing of what we wanted the the agency to look like. I spilled some coffee on the drawing. Actually, I have it. I have it hung up in my office, but long story short, we acquired five agencies within a 12 month period. Now, why? Why? I sense you're probably smiling, is that that is a suicide mission in our industry. Right? Acquisition is difficult. Acquisitions of service into businesses are notoriously difficult. I think where we got very lucky is we were able to acquire agencies with founders who were incredibly humble. They had already great core values. They believed that they would get further as a team than by themselves, and they wanted to buy into a bigger vision, which was Acadia. And so we brought these people together. I'm proud to say, all those founders are still in the business and part of the executive team. And then with that base, we went about focusing on a strategy. And the strategy was simple. We wanted to be focused on digital media and analytics. We wanted. To be in the Accountable part of of marketing. We want it to be where big challenges were for marketers. So for example, one of our biggest bets is focusing on helping clients navigate Amazon, Instacart, Walmart, sort of this new era of retail media. We do a lot of data work to help clients understand their customer. But the short answer is, we brought five agencies together instead of 12 months, which a lot of people deem to be certifiably crazy, but we did it, and my thanks goes out to those founders who trusted Sean and I and a lot of focus on strategy and core values.

David Novak 15:34 

You know, I'm curious, how do you go about getting feedback on how you're doing with your clients or your customers? Yeah, we've got,

Jared Belsky 15:41 

we've got two systems for this, and I think one is quite what I mean that there's, there's a system, a survey, kind of like, equivalent of an MPS score, where we're surveying, you know, at each at each client, three to four top stakeholders, and we're getting anonymous feedback. But I'll tell you, David, that that's only half the battle, right? Because you get different types of feedback, some good, some bad, some real, some not. But for most of our clients are assigning executive sponsor that might be myself or CEO or someone else senior, and it's my job to stay close to the business, not to take someone for a glass of wine, not to take someone golfing. That's That's not what people want. My job is to be in their business, be at their HQ, be in their stores and trying to find out where falling short. And that is an old school way of Act, active, listening and asking, you know, deep, thoughtful, hard questions. I I just don't think there's a substitute for feedback. So, yeah, we do it through systems and surveys, but every single client is executive, executive sponsor.

Koula Callahan 16:45 

Hey, everyone, it's cool. We'll get back to the interview in just a second before we do though, I have a question for you. Have you downloaded the how leaders lead app on your iPhone? If you haven't take 20 seconds right now, go to the App Store, search for how leaders lead and download the how leaders lead app. In the app every day, you'll get a two minute video that'll give you a leadership insight from one of our amazing guests from our podcast to inspire you and to really get your mind in the right place before you start your work day. So go to the App Store, search how leaders lead, download the how leaders lead app, and start your day, every day, with two minutes of leadership wisdom. It'll take 20 seconds, go to the App Store, download the app, and you'll be able to watch every day, just like me, the leadership insight from how leaders lead.

David Novak 17:32 

So you write this best selling book, you get the agency you deserve. Why'd you write the book? Now I've heard that phrase said many, many times before, and I I understand it, but, but why'd you write the book?

Jared Belsky 17:45 

Over the course of the last call it, year prior to writing the book, did a survey of about 100 CMOS. But way more importantly, I probably had the privilege of taking about 50 CMOS. I'm lucky to count as friends out for lunch, and I would attempt to sometimes have a glass of wine, and maybe after a second glass of wine, when things were, you know, a little, a little extra comfortable, I would stare across to my friend and ask the following question. I'd say, Yogi, why are clients not that great at being clients? But I would, trust me, I would say in a non arrogant way, with a smile. It's, it's really, it was a question, a thought provoking question, not to, not to be sarcastic. But here's what's interesting to a person everyone said the same three things. One, I was never taught how to be a great client. Two, why should I care? Given the power dynamic like, you know, very honest, right? Why care? And three, this is also interesting. No boss of mine ever brought this up in a review ever so you put those three things together, and I got really, really, really, really fascinated with this topic. And then if I could just add one more thing to the answer, personal experience, which I'm not proud to admit. But when I was a client back at Coke Infanta, I was a terrible client, right? I was in my late 20s as a snot nose brand manager, you know, if I didn't like the creative, I would say, make it more energetic. Make it more vibrant. Like, what does that mean? Make it more strategic. Or the deadlines this Friday at, you know, 5pm before the holiday. Or, you know, Hey, Jared, you didn't give me a good brief figure it out. Like, all the mistakes I made. A, I was all young, but B, there's no training. So I just got fascinated with this, in this area where there's so much value to be created, or accidentally value to be destroyed. Why is this so? Why is there no training? I mean, did you ever get trained? No, I

David Novak 19:37 

never did, but I will say that I always thought it was crazy that marketers didn't understand how important the advertising agency is, and not the fact that I came up on the agency side of the business was a big plus, because I knew what motivated agencies. And you know, in marketing, you have to wear your work and if you don't have a good advertising day. Agency to help you do it, you're in real trouble. So, you know, the leaders that can get the most out of their advertising agencies, you know, tend to, tend to do a heck of a lot better than those that don't.

Jared Belsky 20:12 

It's so interesting, right? Because some of your listeners who are CMOS, I'd venture to guess that their largest two expense items on their ledger, in this order are the media spend, and then collectively, their agency compensation, right? And in some cases, if you're talking about a fortune 1000 company, those two things combined could be half a billion dollars, potentially. And so you're saying it right, right? The opportunity to figure out how to get more value out of that relationship and to really invest in it and train in it. It just felt like I could, I could do as I could help, maybe help the industry along a little bit. That's why I wrote

David Novak 20:52 

it, so leaders need to learn how to work with advertising agencies. And I go so far as to say, with their their key suppliers. You know, what do you see really great client partners doing?

Jared Belsky 21:05 

I think, I think probably two things. I think great client partners are the best listeners. Great, great client partners don't know how to ask great, penetrating questions, and they know how to push back. So, for example, you know, maybe a client gives you a brief and says, I want to raise brand awareness of my product. X, well, okay, instead of running off, it's like, okay, let's talk about that. Do you want to raise brand awareness generally? Do you want everyone to raise it maybe against your most valuable customer cohort? Do you want to raise it against your most loyal customer. The art of diving deeper, of active listening, of pushing back is probably, I think one thing that's really key. I think the second thing a great client partner does is they fall in love with the product. I don't care if your if your client sells soda. I don't care if they sell books, or, if it's a trampoline part, you better be loving and living that product and getting to know it deeply and getting to really understand the business. But I think it's funny, like, you know, David, that's that's a side though of what is a great client partner do? I think what I hope from the book is the opposite. What do we get clients to appreciate about agencies, and what could the CMO do? Right? So I'll give you example that you know. How do you if you're a client, how do you give feedback to an expert, right? How do you motivate that creative on the other side of the table? How do you motivate that analytics expert, not demotivate her? Well, here's a tactic I talk about, for example, you know, you're shown an ad and you get upset. What's typical person say? Oh, I wish that. I wish that spot was more vibrant. I wish the Blue was more blue. I wish the characters were more peppy, right? All this vague emotional feedback, right? We've all done that. But what's the best practice? Return to the brief. Hey, Jared, in the brief we set out, we set out to say, Oreos have to talk always about joy. Oreos have to symbolize the joy of bringing family together of Duncan and Oreo and milk. Joy, joy, joy. And when we look at the 32nd draft, there's not enough signals of joy. Okay, well, a creative can get around that. But I think the book is meant to be these digestible tips like that. Is like, how do you get feedback to an expert? Therapy is cheaper than divorce. What do you mean by that? Oh, that's my favorite. Well, I'm sure, I'm sure you and many listeners, maybe a listener right now wants to fire their agency, right? That's divorce. Well, I'll push for therapy. Here's why, maybe you got to pause and ask yourself, do you hate the agency, or do you just maybe hate your account person? Does she just irritate you? Do you hate the agency, or have you maybe not briefed the agency properly? Do you hate the agency, or did you give them goals that were not achievable? Do you hate the agency? Need to fire them, or do you maybe need to renegotiate the pricing terms? That's what's upsetting you. But my point sort of is like, look, I'm happily married to my lovely wife, Janine, who are almost 18 years and the only thing I've learned about marriage, but also business relationships, is when there's a struggle, there's so much benefit to talking it through, hearing each other out and pushing through it. But what's happening is, you know all too well. You see it in the adage headlines, the average agency client relationship is now 18 months. So why get a divorce? Push through, get therapy.

David Novak 24:41 

You know, I know this could lead to a gross generalization, but, but what kind of advertising clients are out there?

Jared Belsky 24:48 

The way I talk about it here at Acadia is there's only two types of clients in the whole world. There are clients that your best teamers want to run to, and there are clients where your best teamers want to run from. I think. The logo. I think our industry makes too big of a deal the logo. I think when you have a client worth fighting for and a team worth fighting for and clear briefs and reasonable budgets and good timelines, and you're treated like a partner, and the client makes you feel like you're in the boat with them, that's the client that that's give me that every day over Nike, every day twice on Sunday. You

David Novak 25:24 

know, as an agency, you really don't have any hard assets. It's, it's all, it's all about the people, the talent that you bring to your clients. What's your biggest insight that you think you've gained on just talent management itself?

Jared Belsky 25:39 

I think that the whole world, but especially the marketing industry, reaches for what they call someone ready on day one. And what typically happens is that they grab recycled talent and even some people who are inexplicably failing up. But I think that in the marketing field and the creative field and the agency field, you're looking for problem solvers. And frankly, if you have a lot of different problem solvers, you're more likely to solve the problem. And I think what we've done well, and what I really would prefer to credit, is one of my partners, Chad Crow, or our head of people named Tiana, what they have helped me see, frankly, I've had to learn from them, is to not reach for ready on day one, but find who's going to be the best on day 90. So I'll tell you a very short story that exemplifies us. So we have a pretty open floor plan, pretty informal culture. So I sit down in my cube and this gentleman not too far from me, and I say, Hi, I'm Jared. He says, Hi, I'm Derek. Nice to meet you. And I go, what do you do? He goes, Well, I've joined the SEO team, the search engine optimization team. I go, Oh, great to Great. Thank you. He goes, what do you do? I go, you know, I'm CEO of co founder. He's like, Oh, I stepped in it now. So, no, no, no, don't worry, it's really flat. Good, good to know you. And I start to ask him what agency has come from, you know, here in Atlanta, where we're headquartered. And like most guys, he mumbles something, swarm. I go, Oh, I I know that. Did you say swarm? He goes, No, no, no, no. And he repeats himself. He goes, No, swell. I go, Oh, swell. I know that agency. Goes, no, Jared, not swell. He goes, swat the SWAT team, the Atlanta SWAT team. I said, Derek, we hired you from the Atlanta SWAT team, he goes, Yeah, I go, that's awesome. So sure enough, I go and talk to our head of people ops, and everyone else said. What they said was this guy had perseverance, he had core values, he was technically oriented, and he was making a career switch that was so clear that he was going to be amazing at day 90. And sure enough, he is.

David Novak 27:43 

I've also read where you you talk about managing talent with urgency. You know? What do you mean by that?

Jared Belsky 27:50 

Oh, man. So I think there's two pieces to that. First of all, I think it's a leader's responsibility to help someone get to reach their greatest potential or help them to find a different job. It is inhumane to allow someone to suffer at a job and just to tell them why they're bad. It is your job as a leader to find their greatest potential at your place under your stewardship, or to find them a home where they'll be successful. But but here's the problem is that in most companies, not just marketing agencies, but really most companies, there's something I like to call the tyranny of the six, right? If you think about all your employees on scale, one to 10, and I do not really do that, it's a metaphor, and we don't have any grading scale, anything like that. But bear with me on the analogy. You kind of always know who your eights and your nines and your 10s are, right, your stars, and you kind of know who the ones, twos, threes, fours and so forth are. And they're not bad people. They're just maybe it's just not a good fit, right? What are you left with? Five, six and seven? So the six right, and the person is just sort of coasting and not doing great. You kick the can right, because you have more urgent things. The problem is your all stars look at you, the leader as kicking the can on the six, and all the people who are really not a good fit look up at the six and say, well, that must be the bar, and they perform worse. And so I think the general problem is that we are so busy being polite that we're not coaching people up to their greatest potential, or benevolently helping them find a better fit elsewhere, and we end up, I think, being negligent of our duties as leaders by just being non urgent and letting these things slide. And you think you're helping someone, David, but you're not helping someone because that person is not doing well. They know it, and they go home and they feel frustrated and they feel less than And truly, everyone is a great employee somewhere, just maybe not at that somewhere, you

David Novak 29:51 

know, I've always believed that with agencies, you got to be careful not to lead the witness, you know, or you can really. Squash creativity. I mean, that's the worst thing that can happen. I love your story that you share about red roof in and the big learning that you got from it. Yeah.

Jared Belsky 30:11 

So first of all, love Red Roof Inn. It's exemplified, you know, kind of exemplifies our favorite type of client. It's like, look great for Marriott, but give me red roofing. I want to fight for the people who need fighting for so I love red roofing. Marina McDonald to see him over there. She's incredible. At any rate, the challenge is simple, right around, you know, the COVID period, red roofing had to figure out how to win, but on a far smaller budget than Expedia or Marriott or Hyatt, and we were just trying, we were stuck, right? We were all trying to figure this out. You can't really outglam or Airbnb. You can't outglam or Marriott, that's not going to work. You're not going to outspend them, that's for sure, right? So we were trying to figure out the winning insight, and the winning insight turned out to be pets. Red Roof in as a business was smart enough to lean into being pet friendly. Well before the pandemic, what we were able to help figure out was that during the pandemic, everyone ran out and bought a pandemic pup, right? And if you're wealthy, that's fine. You can get a pedo pair or boredom. But if you're just an average American, you got to bring your little scrubs with you on the road right. And red roofing was pet friendly, so we leaned into red roof in being the most pet friendly hotel out there, and we brought them onto Tik Tok. We created a little mascot called Red Rufus, who could have a lot of fun on Tik Tok and be a reverend and bring sort of a smile to the brand. And you know, help them increase bookings and engagement and help them find a scene. But as it gets back to your story, where I credit Marina, see Marina shared us the business challenge, right? Are our budgets limited relative to these big competitors, our advantage is being pet friendly. What do we do with this? Right? It was a blue sky brief. It was good direction, but it wasn't micro management to your point, right? People want to think. People need room to breathe. People. We were allowed to think of Tiktok versus Facebook. We were allowed to think of red Rufus out of nowhere. We were allowed to we were allowed to dream, and it takes a lot of courage not to control and that's what they did well, and that's what she did well. I'm very grateful for that. The

David Novak 32:27 

other thing it takes courage on is to really go through the process of mediating conflict, getting people on board, aligned around the real challenge that you face? Do you have a process you use to create alignment with your clients? I don't know if

Jared Belsky 32:46 

it's a process as in 20 years of making mistakes, I've sort of learned a few things about how to try to do it better. The number one mistake the agencies go through is they get single, mindedly focused on the KPI they're given, right? So, so for example, let's just pick, let's go with red roof, right? Let's just say our goal was to get cost effective bookings, right, to get to get hotel bookings. Well, what gets very dangerous with alignment or misalignment, you start packing your patting yourself on the back when you get your ROAs right. Return on Investment to be a great ratio, and an agency will start back, patting itself like no tomorrow when they've achieved their goal. What's the problem, though? Cmo, CEO, CFO, they've got multiple goals. Maybe their cost of goods are up. Maybe the cost to pay labor and housekeepers has gone up. And my point of where the story is going, although I'm guessing you could predict, is their KPI is the overall profitability of the company. Maybe it's share price. And so I think the number one thing to do, first of all, the lineman, is try and understand where the goal you're given ladders up to the goal of the C suite and shareholders. That's number one. Two is the following, an sow is not the Bible. Whether you believe in the Bible or not, it's done and it's written. An sow was man made. You can redraft it, you know, but, but agencies and suppliers, they get an sow, it's signed, and they tend to just stick to it for three or four years. Meanwhile, their clients business has changed seven times over. So I guess, if I were trying to be succinct, I think that the two learnings not again, not smart enough to say the process one is recognize that whatever goals you got on day one are are changing, and you have to adapt your sows and MSAs and all your and all your and all your literature that you have with the client. And I think number two is understand that the KPI you may have, and that you may even be compensated against, is a KPI that fits under three or four other KPIs at the board level, and you better be business curious about those other K. Bis,

David Novak 35:00 

for the uninitiated, what's, what's the so? W,

Jared Belsky 35:03 

oh, thank you. Yeah. So a statement of work, you know, it's to say that every agency and supplier has some sort of contract with a client. And in all your listeners, all your clients, know that they have some sort of contract with with an agency, but it's written before you get to know each other, and so you have to, you have to have the courage to rip up the sow and evolve it, right? Maybe you enter a relationship where linear TV is really important. A year later, you're focused on Tiktok. Okay, fine. But the pricing, the team, the expertise, is obsolete, misalignment, absolutely,

David Novak 35:38 

you know, you also say that agencies and clients hold too many cards to their vest. You know, what do you mean by this? And give us a story of how you got all the cards out on the table.

Jared Belsky 35:50 

I have a favorite one, and it's, it's sort of very, it's very niche. I was, I was at 360 I we were working with Capital One. Capital One is just one of the smartest marketers out there. Our team was being driven a little crazy, though. Just to be candid, in the first couple months, we were running ragged, running around the clock, doing test after test. We had a B, test, CD, test A, B, C, D, F, G, tests. Tests on tests, test, the test, tests. And my my team, came to me almost in tears, being like Jared. I don't know what's going on, but, but we are just being put through our paces with tests. I said, okay, okay, Hang on. Let me take the client out for, you know, for a meal and just and just ask. So I'm with this gentleman. We're having a meal about a half hour through. I said, you know, I gotta ask you a question. The team feels like it's being tortured with testing, like what's going on and and he lowered his shoulders, and he said, you know, Jared, I need to understand that a part of my bonus compensation is based upon this KPI volume of tests. And right away I smiled, and he smiled, because we had a breakthrough in the relationship, right? I realized what I already thought I knew, which is, this was a great person. He just had part of his compensation tied to volume of tests. My team now, knowing this, was able to see, oh, this is a great person. This is just how he's compensated. And the team was able to say, You know what, what we'll do is, every single Monday, we'll present all the possible tests on a graph that are ranked between ease of implementation and likelihood of impact, and we'll talk, and we'll prioritize. And there was a honeymoon after this. We're still friends since but I think the point of that is you have to have the courage to be curious and to understand what's behind the why, and not just be petulant and be angry and be passive aggressive, but to but to get to know the other person who's making an ask in

David Novak 37:55 

that situation. You know, I've always felt like really good partners, really good agencies give you what you need, not what you want. Okay, this guy's, you know. I mean, why didn't you just tell him he's full of shit? I mean, why didn't you say, hey, look, you know, why are you, you know? Why are you doing all these tests, even though you're paid that way? I mean, can't you do something with who you work with to get them to understand that we could be spending our time more productively. I mean, speaking of conflict, why didn't you take him on?

Jared Belsky 38:27 

I think you know in this particular case, but, but the stories in general is, um, I think you got to meet people halfway. This, this, this person is still a dear friend. Was caught in a bind, a very real bind. He wanted to be a great partner to us, but he also had a boss, and he has a mortgage and there's rules and there's big company, so I think like a great client partner. This is what I've been told by my friends or marketers. They want someone who's gonna have courage to push back, push back a second time, maybe push back a third time, but still, at some point, be willing to listen and understand when there's a little bit of a wall. So, I don't know, it's a great question. I think the answer is, I try and go all the way until I hear I've reached the point of, I pushed enough,

David Novak 39:17 

fair enough. You know, I love this quote of yours. You say, this is a good one. You know, if you only master hard skills, it's a one way ticket to middle management. Oh, my God,

Jared Belsky 39:26 

that's the truest thing. Look, the quote, The quote is everything to me in terms of meaning. So think about what happens, right? You graduate college, and this is for whatever. I don't care if you're in engineering, if you want to be in medicine, if you want to be an accountant, if you want to be a CMO, if you want to be an agency, whatever you graduate college, you get your first job, and for the first, I don't know, 10 years of your life, you're basically evaluated as individual contributor, right? Are you good at delivering the donuts, right? So in my field, are you good at media planning and good at data? Can you get the reports out on time, or you could adopt them? If you're in creative it's, can you answer the brief? Can you inspire? Can you raise awareness, whatever, right? But for literally a decade, you're given bonuses and raises based upon your ability to execute some hard skill. And then somewhere around 27 there's like this secret book of rules that you don't quite know where it is. It's like the hidden book in the Harry Potter library. But all of a sudden, some of your friends at some companies are getting promoted, and some people aren't, and some people move up into the C suite and some people never do. And so it turns out that all the people across the land who are in the C suite in some capacity. Lucky as they are, they tend to be great soft skills, right? They're great at persuasion, they're great at listening, they're great at arbitrary, arbitrating conflict, they're great at looking around a corner. They're great at building trust. They're great at empathy, but, but those hard skills are less important, but our culture has it all wrong, right? Our culture lionizes being graded Microsoft Excel, but doesn't teach active listening, right? Colleges, colleges around the country teach statistics, but none teach the art of persuasion. Why? Why? But, but absolutely, if you don't have soft skills, that is a one way ticket to middle management, you'll be stuck in the tragedy as you will not know why.

David Novak 41:31 

We'll be back with the rest of my conversation with Jared Belsky in just a moment. You know, Jared has a pretty clear belief that the details matter, and that leaders need to stay connected to them if they want to do excellent work. It reminds me of something the legendary golf course architect Gil Hance said when he joined me on the podcast, if you want to make good decisions, you can't get too far away from the bulldozer.

Speaker 2 41:55 

A lot of traditional golf architects would do a very detailed set of plans and turn them over to somebody else to build the golf course, and then they'd make site visits and kind of check up on everything. We've flipped that on its head based on the way Pete Dye taught, you know, as I said, Tom Doak, Bill Kuhr, all, all the guys who I think are doing the best work, learned this way is that you need to be in the field to make decisions, and you need to either, if you're not there, then you have to have somebody who's empowered to make those decisions. Because every day, something will happen on a golf course in construction. I mean literally, you put a bulldozer over the top of something, and it disappears. Every day, the sun is going to the angles and the shadows and the wind, and there's always something to be observed and learned on site, and so if I'm there, I'm always taking stock of all that. Same with Jim. But even if it's our guys, our shapers, we've empowered them to go ahead and make those types of decisions that maximize the site over maximizing something that's on a piece of paper.

David Novak 42:57 

Go back and listen to my entire conversation with Gil, episode 139, here on how leaders lead. You know, you also have another quote I really enjoy, which is, people ask recklessly wasteful questions. You know. Give us an example of that,

Jared Belsky 43:16 

yeah, you know. So a great example is, you know, in our field, or some of your listeners spend their energy in marketing, is that, you know, maybe a creative director, whoever goes in to present a new spot or a new ad campaign, whatever it is, they present it to the client, the client sees it, and then that Creative director asked the following question, what did you think? How did you feel about it? The reason why these are such terrible questions, they elicit a binary response, I liked it, I didn't like it. It was good or it was bad, right? These are throw away questions. A great question unlocks an answer. A great question unlocks an insight. A great question unlocks the next step. So what could that gentleman have done? Well, he could have asked, Hey, I showed you three concepts a minute ago. It would mean a great deal to me if you could rank them in your order of preference and tell me why you ranked them that way. Oh, Jared, thanks for asking. Well, the first one was spot X that I loved. And the reason why is that our company is going into a new a new era, and you hit the oh, okay, I see. So now you know that the spot a you just showed hit a tickle the funny bone, because it represents where they think the company is going in the future, but point at risk of being long winded is that a lot of us waste our questions by asking what's called a closed question, was it good? Did you like it? And those elicit a binary response, and we got to challenge ourselves and teach people how to ask thought provoking questions that are, that are what the the term? College is open questions. You know,

David Novak 45:01 

it's been so much fun, and I want to have some some more with my lightning round of questions. Okay, are Are you ready for this? All right, think so. Okay, what's one word others would use to best describe you kind? What's one word you would use to best describe you loyal? If you could be one person for a day. Who would it be? Think Walter

Jared Belsky 45:22 

Cronkite, just to be able to report such amazing news, and to have seen so many things and met so many people, maybe a close second, close second, I get one in. Frank Sinatra, it just feels like that would have been

David Novak 45:36 

amazing. Who would play you in a movie? Eli

Jared Belsky 45:39 

Manning, I'll tell you why he was very successful. Won two Super Bowls. But as anyone who's a football fan knows, it wasn't really the start. He helped the team. He was a little bit off, shucks, he was probably like the 10th best known person on the team when he walks in the streets of New York. No one barely knows who he is, and they won as a group, and they won as a group, and he remained his folksy normal self even to this day. So I don't know weird answer, but

David Novak 46:09 

Eli, what's your biggest pet peeve

Jared Belsky 46:14 

condescending people who are not curious? What's

David Novak 46:17 

the one account you'd love to bring into the agency that you want the most.

Jared Belsky 46:23 

When one of my kids graduate from college and they're running a company I would love to work on, whatever business they'll be working on, what's the

David Novak 46:34 

speaking of your kids? What's the biggest thing your kids have taught you? Oh,

Jared Belsky 46:38 

my God. Well, both of my kids have the greatest gift. We're a dyslexic, proud family, and I think what I've learned is they work so hard and they're so creative, is that we everyone's got different talents and brains, and everyone thinks differently, but it's allowed me to just loved how many different ways there are to solve problems. I just respect them as problem solvers and these incredible people, and it's made me want to be a better problem

David Novak 47:08 

solver. What's the biggest thing your wife's taught you? I think my

Jared Belsky 47:13 

wife has taught me something I probably don't thank her enough for, which is to respect details. You know, I'm probably oriented as a as a thinker and a visionary, but she's so good at carrying a caring about things, being passionate about things, and then respecting the details to make those things happen. And vision without details, vision without specifics, gets you nowhere. And I think she's amazing at bringing passion with follow through together. And yeah, she's the best.

David Novak 47:44 

If I turned on the radio in your car, what would I hear? You'd hear

Jared Belsky 47:48 

three things. You'd hear nerdy podcasts about our industry, about management, I just care a lot about it. You'd hear a lot of jazz. And then you'd hear whatever my son put on the radio because he commandeers it a lot. And so that's all.

David Novak 48:03 

What's something about you few people would know some of the

Jared Belsky 48:07 

success I've had, and success most people have is only the good people see. I you know, during that time that you kindly asked me about where we were magically, Sean and I and all these people putting Acadia together and growing it from nothing to 30 million. You know, at the start of that, my wife found me and, you know, in tears in the bedroom, with just, just just internalizing worry, and how would we, how would we make our employees happy, and how would we live up to our promises, and how would we make payroll? And how would I live up to the potential. And I just think that a lot of people see me, and not just me, but these leaders on podcasts like this or on TV, and they think it's easy, and they think that we have it together, and they think we're super human, and it's just not true. I think that we all worry. I worry, and that's and the worry is good and the worry is good, but I think that maybe people wouldn't know

David Novak 49:03 

that. All right, we're out of the lightning round, and I just have a couple more questions, and I'll let you go. You're a self described business historian. Okay? Give us an example of how you lean on history to make a decision. History

Jared Belsky 49:17 

is a guide, right? And you can look backwards to see good repetition and try and repeat that, or you can see bad repetition and use that as a guide to repeat to do something different. So I'll give you an example. This is very specific, but I hope it answers the question, since the dawn of time of advertising agencies, the idea has been that client pays the agency, and the agency pays the publisher, you know, NBC or Google or what have you. I don't understand this. An agency is not a bank. An agency shouldn't control the funds. An agency should make recommendations and should steward it and the client. Should pay the publisher directly, ensuring there's no fraud, ensuring there's no misalignment of incentives, ensuring there's no funding in business, ensuring they keep their own relationship. So I looked back through 80 years in my industry and said, God, everyone's been doing the same damn thing for 80 years. The agency has all that money that's dangerous, very dangerous, too dangerous to go into in this podcast, I'm gonna go the opposite. I'm gonna look the client in the eye and say, I want you to pay Google, I want you to pay Facebook. I want you to pay NBC. I want you to control that money, and I want you to know that all I'm doing is working in your best interest. But that's just an example. There's so there's so much of that, or you look back just three years ago, history could be recent history. Everyone was lionizing growth and not thinking about cash flow or profit. That was bananas. So my partners and I said, we're going to make sure we manage cash carefully. We're going to be profitable, which seemed like a good idea. We're going to watch our costs and offer a value to our clients. So I just think that you got to be curious. If you're going to be CEO and be a leader, you should be reading biographies all the time. You should be studying past of your industry, looking for good and bad and trying to see what to repeat and what to avoid. Just keep reading and consuming information. I

David Novak 51:20 

got one last one last question for you here, if you had one piece of advice for aspiring leaders, what would it be? My

Jared Belsky 51:27 

number one piece of advice for aspiring leaders would be to find a mentor who cares about you non transactionally. At my last company, I got to work for a gentleman named Brian wiener. He's since gone on to do great things or in industry, and he cared deeply about my success. He cared deeply about my family. Cared deeply about me as a person. When I give a presentation and I wasn't my best, he pulled me quietly aside and give me three tips of how to get better when I when I ran a company meeting and I was too verbose, he talked to me about the power of brevity. You know, if I, if I was too sales oriented, he would tell me to be less salesy if I wasn't running to the to the data. He would talk to me about the value of caring about the P and L data and cash. And just the sort of point is, it is very hard to get ahead unless you have someone who is advocating for you and having the courage to teach you lessons and to and to just keep caring about you. It is near impossible otherwise. And so the problem, I'm so glad this last question, because this is my this is my singular passion. I think the average American spends more time thinking about their cell phone plan than their career, and so to look up and they pick a logo. Oh, Nike. It must be amazing. It's Nike. You don't work for Nike. No one works for a logo. You work for a person, a human, and you better be damn sure that human is going to invest in you. And you work for a set of core values in a culture, and you better be darn sure that that culture and those core values sit well with you, and somewhere in that is the chance to be great, but you gotta find your Brian, otherwise you're gonna float well. Great

David Novak 53:13 

advice, and thank you so much Jared for taking the time to be with me today. Really appreciate it and lot of good lessons there. I enjoyed it,

Jared Belsky 53:23 

hardest questions I've ever been asked, but I loved it. Thanks for keeping me on my toes.

David Novak 53:32 

Talking to Jared. One thing is for certain leaders who know how to avoid dysfunction have a huge advantage over those who don't. Jared works hard to take care of his team and keep dysfunction at bay, because for him, a cohesive, satisfied team is a competitive advantage. They're able to focus on their clients and goals, not pointless meetings and slide decks. This week, I want you to look for signs of that dysfunction. Tax in your business. Where are you losing your team's time and energy to needless politics, meetings or red tape? I bet you already know. I guarantee you your team members know. See if you can eliminate or push back on just one of those elements this week, you'll be one step closer to kicking dysfunction to the curb and freeing up your team to focus on what's really going to drive growth. So do you want to know how leaders lead? What we learned today is that the great leaders avoid the dysfunction tax. Coming up next on how leaders lead is Heidi ubroth, president of Global con and executive co chair of pebble beach resorts. Great

Heidi Ueberroth 54:39 

ideas come from so many different places. The trick is is listening to them. They're from customers, they're from partners, they're from employees. I love information. I love ideas. I don't like them filtered.

David Novak 54:53 

So be sure to come back again next week to hear our entire conversation. Thanks again for tuning in to another. Episode of how leaders lead, where every Thursday, you get to listen in while I interview some of the very best leaders in the world. I make it a point to give you something simple on each episode that you can apply to your business, so that you will become the best leader you can be. You