Join us in a dynamic conversation with Mike Falkow, CEO of Meritus Media, where his vibrant life experiences from sports to spirituality inform his unique approach to marketing and personal philosophy. Expect tales of surfing, creative marathons, and branding brilliance in an episode that oscillates between profound insights and delightful details.

Here are a few of the topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Masters in Marketing Agency Podcast.

Getting deep on branding
Personal journeys and business
The influence of Peaky Blinders
Mike Falkow’s creative process
The problem with old agency models

Resources:

Connect with Mike Falkow:

Connect with our hosts:

Josh Hoffman - LinkedIn
Alex Garashchenko - LinkedIn

Quotables:

19:06 - I hate being bored. I mean, if you really want to abstract it all the way down, that's it for me. Like I was having a conversation with my sister yesterday actually, and she was like, it's good that you're doing things and blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, you know, I despise the idea of being unproductive. It really bothers me. And so, I, wherever that comes from for me, who knows, I think it's not even worth analyzing all that deeply. But like, I find great joy in being productive. I find that my morale comes up. I find that I tend to feel like I'm exchanging more with the world around me. I feel like I'm in a better position to help the people who I care about. You know, like all those added benefits, but like sitting still for too long really drives me nuts and feeling lazy and feeling unproductive, and like, I'm not contributing like that.
22:09 - And then also just having your biggest competition being yourself. Like, there's nothing that I can control about how that guy surfs that way. There's nothing that I can control about how that actor auditions for that part. Like, those are entirely out of my hands. So if I want to do the best job that I can do, all I need to do is focus on myself.
13:08 - You need to treat your business like your body of, like, it needs to be well fed, it needs to have good sleep, it needs to get exercise like you, you need to respect it and treat it as such. 'cause a lot of times, especially with small businesses and, one man operations, it gets into this thing of like, ah, I'm just gonna cope and try and, juggle the plates and do everything all at once. And, but it's like, no, take time to rest. Take time to exercise, take time to feed it, and we can sort of extrapolate that metaphor all the way down the road, but being in the present, I think that's, that's the business right there.
40:41 - Mike: It's unethical. If I want to be straight up about it. That's just my view of it. I feel like that's unfair. If you're already paying me a retainer to be your consultant and your PR strategist, why would I upsell you if I'm finding opportunities for you to do paid branding? Right?
Alex: That's interesting. That stems into a lot of different industries as well, and like the owning relationships and kind of keeping those to the chest, close to the chest, and then upcharging for access, really. Yeah, Where that access may not even be limited to that agency. Maybe Lucky Strike could have gone and knocked on that door themselves.
39:36 - Mike: The product is the commercial, but now you've got a product that you can sell at like massive, massive margins and then do these huge profits on media buys. Where like that's where the money is for the old agency model.
Alex: So was that really in the relationship and them owning the relationship to those media distribution
Mike: Products? Yeah, like if, if you look at like, okay, so Lucky Strike comes in as an admin example, right? So they come up with a great creative idea of how to put the commercials together and what that ad campaign would look like. But okay, so they're getting paid some for that. But the contract with the, with Lucky Strike is all in service of getting to the media buyers. 'cause the media buyers where, okay, I, I pay, you know, $50,000 or whatever it is, or a hundred thousand dollars for this, but the client is now paying me five or, or whatever it is. Because the media buy upsell is, is such a large margin.