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What's The Secret To Turning PR Into Profit? Eric Yaverbaum Reveals All | #118
00:50:25
What’s the Secret to turning PR into Profit? In this episode of On The Homefront with Jeff Dudan, Jeff sits down with Eric Yaverbaum, a seven-time author and PR expert who has shaped major brands and guided CEOs through some of the biggest wins and challenges in media. Eric shares fascinating insights from his career, including his early mentorship with Henry Kissinger, his experience managing PR crises, and the essential role of storytelling in building billion-dollar companies. They discuss the evolution of media in the digital age, AI's potential, and the importance of intentionality in both business and life. Don't miss this engaging conversation filled with personal anecdotes, actionable advice, and Eric's thoughts on using media exposure to move the needle for businesses. ⭐ Enjoyed this episode? Be sure to like, subscribe, and share your thoughts in the comments! Your feedback helps us grow and keep bringing valuable conversations your way. 🔗 Listen on your favorite plat...
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- [00:01]
A
Welcome everyone to on the Homefront with Jeff Duden. Thanks for tuning in. Just a quick reminder before we get rolling, if you enjoy the podcast, take a second drop down to that comment or review section and leave us some feedback. And whether you're listening On Apple Podcasts, YouTube or Spotify, we want to hear from you. And please like and subscribe Today on the home front, we have a very special guest. We are here with Eric Yaverbaum. Welcome, Eric.
- [00:27]
B
Thank you so much for having me. I'm a big fan.
- [00:30]
A
Ah, Eric is for those of you who don't know seven times author over a million books sold in his secrets of successful CEOs. Also wrote a book with his daughter most recently, but has had a long career in pr, cnn, all of the, all of the major networks and really has really excited to hear some stories about some of the great PR wins and losses that you've been a part of over this time. But Eric, to get started, can you share a little bit about who you are and maybe a little bit about where you're from?
- [01:14]
B
Well, yeah, I'll tell you a funny story and then I'll tell you about who I am.
- [01:18]
A
All right.
- [01:18]
B
Because as we were chatting before, you know, we went on air here when I was a kid, my first mentor, and I'm a big, big believer in mentors, everybody should in your careers get mentors, get people that you can learn from. My very first mentor was Henry Kissinger. And Kissinger told me that when he used to go before the White House press corps, he would walk out. And this is, you know, during Watergate, you got presses going after a sitting president. You know, this is in the early 70s. I mean, it's unheard of. The press did not go after a sitting president. Kissinger would go out before the White House press corps and say, does anybody have any questions for the answers I'm already giving? So when you asked, you know, is there anything we want to talk about? The questions don't matter. I'm giving the same answers anyway. It won't make a difference. But I've literally taught that to Fortune 500 CEOs for, you know, 40 years now, how to conduct themselves in interviews so that they can get out messages that they want to get out. And, you know, I'm not so proud of the fact that I think that's what modern day politics is. We never seem to get answers to the questions that we're actually asking. But that is the subtle art of public relations is how do you use a tool of getting media Exposure to move a needle, to make you money, to enhance your brand, to help your reputation and you know, for, for 40 plus years. And you mentioned some of the shows. I've been on national television for my whole career. I'm written about newspapers and magazines. I practice what I preach as far as my career goes. When I was a kid I ran a traditional PR agency for about 20 years, sold it to Wall street, thought oh my gosh, all my dreams have come true. I have a lot of money. I just sold my company to Wall Street. I would say it was the most miserable year and a half of my life. A big, big life lesson there. Be careful what you wish for. It's not about money. It's not what it's about. You gotta love what you do. You love what you do. You'll never work a day in your life. First 20 years I worked my backside off to sell my place or I would say in retrospect, sell my soul to Wall Street. I stayed there for about 15 months. I walked in the middle of a three year earn out. I just couldn't do it. And I worked on the transition team between the Bush and the Obama administration which was supposed to be brief and I ended up staying around the first year of Obama's presidency in the White House while I was starting. The agency that I run now, the agency that I run now is very, very different than a traditional PR agency. I grew up both inside my industry and outside my books. Didn't hurt. You mentioned leadership secrets that, you know, that book is now actually sold 3 million copies if you include digital. And I got a reputation inside the C suite which, you know, here when I was a kid, all I ever wanted to do was be in a boardroom. All I ever wanted to do was let me sit in the room with the CEO who makes the decisions. But I was just, you know, I was a PR guy. We all get our hair gel in New York in the same place. We all talk a really good game. How do you do that? How do you get in the room with the chairman? And you know, that was always my objective, to get in the room with the decision maker. And you know, that's what I do now. I do it for startups which I take great pride in, startups that turn into billion dollar businesses. I do it for, in philanthropy, I do it in sports. I'm in the room with the decision makers and you know, I did that on purpose. That's the thing about, you know, having goals and objectives and an actual plan to do it. Is I'm in the room with the decision maker because I feel like I can convince decision makers if I am in the same room with them. Intentionality is a superpower. And if you have a goal and you can accomplish that goal on purpose, you'll be amazed at what can happen. So, you know, in my career, I've run agencies now for 40 years. This is the second. The one that I run now is my second. I've had this one for 17 years. And, you know, during the entire course of my career, I've. I am working on my eighth book right now. And, you know, I did a brief stint at the White House, so I've done a few things.
- [05:48]
A
You talk about being in the boardroom. PR is oftentimes not in the initial cocktail for entrepreneurs. They're getting their business started. They're thinking about direct response marketing. PR is defensive in a crisis. But are you saying that it needs to be offensive from day one?
- [06:12]
B
Don't miss the offensive part. It's ironic because when I started my career, we were involved with a lot of infomercial companies and these infomercial companies, direct response companies, we were doing their pr and I would watch the art of direct response. They go on television, they buy, you know, they make ads, they buy time. They literally measure how many widgets do they sell from their ad, what time works better. Which does the 30, 60 or 90 second spot work better? Is long form, an hour or half hour, is that better? You can literally measure it. And I always thought to myself, we don't do that in pr. We don't. There's no measurement. You know, my clients want me to get impressed. They want to be in newspapers and magazines, they want to be on television, radio shows. But we don't measure. To me, you know, the art of PR is all about cash registers. And one of the things that I found out when I was a kid was, you know, my first 20 years, I represented all the big bad brands. We represented Sony, we represented Progressive Insurance, Ikea, home furnishings, H and M. I mean, I go on and on with all of those and by the way, loved them all. Learned from all of them. What I learned was companies. And by the way, this includes startups. Because I was involved with a lot of startups at the time too, including, like one in particular that got bought by Google. They weren't like, insignificant. That agencies like mine got hired and were expected to get press. That's the bare minimum. That's what we're paid to do. In reality, if a company's not fiscally healthy. The first thing they cut is pr. That's right, the first thing that gets cut. So I became very interested in, and one of the reasons I wanted to be in the chairman's office, one of the reasons I wanted to be on, know, sit on boards is I became very interested in what's the relationship between positive media exposure and the cash register and how do I build a bridge from media exposure over the cash register. Because I do know that if I get my clients a lot of press and they monetize that press, they'll keep me forever. And you know, I would say my average client is around for about 15 years, give or take. I mean, I have clients on my raw. I have two clients, they've been with me for 40 years. They don't. I mean, obviously, I mean, I feel like family with them now, but they keep, at least in the beginning, because I know how to make people money from the art of public relations. When I was a kid, what I was known for was crisis. As you mentioned, I got paid really well to handle crisis and put out fires. And I put out a lot of fires that you never read about because I did my job. But I don't do that anymore. I don't put out. I'm not interested in putting out fires. I'm entrepreneurial. I always have been. It's what I discovered when I sold my soul to Wall street is what I like rubbing two sticks together and making forest fires. And I like using the art that I practice, the discipline of pr, to rub those two sticks together and make businesses, billion dollar companies, which I have a long storied history of. And so yes, PR should be. And by the way, pr, of all the things that you're going to do in marketing, is the least expensive. I mean, not if you need to hire agencies like mine, but you can actually do it yourself. And if you can get press exposure that generates interest that translates over to a cash register. It's magical what it could do. And you know, I've pontificated this very theory for over 40 years. And when I was a kid in the 80s and I would tell this to everybody and everybody would say, you know, big shot, what did you ever do? And nothing. Who do you know? Nobody. I still don't believe you need to know anybody to get on their shows. So my partner and I in my first agency, when we were small, we were working out of our living room. That's how we started. We said, what can we do to demonstrate? It's one thing statement is one thing. Demonstration is a whole other thing. What can we do to demonstrate literally our philosophies? How do we use media exposure to generate interest in our little agency that's worked? Five people working out of the living room in my house and my brownstone, Capitol Hill in D.C. how do we generate interest in what we do? How do we use media exposure to do that? So we looked at the landscape of the world, which is ever so interesting, not always in a positive play, and we said, what story can we predict with a reasonable degree of certainty is going to have a long shelf life? And what story could we look at and say, we kind of know how it's going to be. The coverage is going to play itself out. In 1985, there was a pending Major League Baseball strike. And, you know, in the good old days, the way labor disputes got covered in professional sports was rich players, wealthier owners, and the fans. So the story is what the players want, what the owners want, and then they find some guy in the street who is going to complain about legitimately. So why I can't take my family to a baseball game I can't buy if I'm going to get a hot dog and a soda and, you know, french fries for my whole family and buy, you know, four tickets, like, that's almost out of my price range. And I got to hear about players who are wealthy and owners who are wealthier, argue about money, right? Just trying to go to a game a year and get hot dogs for my kids. It's the same. It was. It was always the same. So in 85, we formed the National Citizens Action Group to protest the pending Major League Baseball strike. And the premise of the organization was, you know, everybody had, you know, labor unions. Everybody has the do what you want. Everybody's got their right. But we were forming a national citizens action group for the fans so that the fans would have a voice. And our message was, it's okay, you want to strike, go ahead. For every game you strike, we're going to strike. And we asked people to send us a letter. That. That's it. That's all the fans had to do. Just send us a letter. And, you know, we got tens of thousands of letters, and we used to dump them on Peter Ueberoff's doorstep. He was the commissioner at the time. Daily and CNN would come into my living room on Capitol Hill just to see how many bags of mail we got every day. And, you know, when the strike started, we called Eboroff's office and they were like, you know, cute kids. Nobody was taking our call. When we started dropping off bags of mail on their doorstep. The people who were honoring, going to honor our boycott, they started to take us a little bit more seriously. When that strike started in 85, they invited my partner and I into the negotiations. We sat. I'm 24 years old. I'm sitting in Major League Baseball's negotiations to end a labor dispute that is absolutely fantastic. All I know is I don't want it. After day one of those negotiations, we go out to a river of press. Who wants to hear, what's the fans opinion? That fans that were in the room, what's your opinion? What was discussed?
- [14:05]
A
You were the proxy. You were the proxy for the fans, basically. Okay. You were representing the broader fan base.
- [14:12]
B
Yes, got it. So, I mean, the coverage that we got was extraordinary. And, you know, in the good old days, and, you know, some of these names your viewers may or may not know. But, you know, I was on. I mean, I did. I was on everything. Ted Koppel asked me the same question that Larry King asked me. He was the same way that Time magazine covered what we did. Everybody said, why? Why are you doing this? Like, and my answer was, this is what I do for a living. I get my clients on television, radio, talk shows. I get my clients in newspapers and magazines. I'm just using the same avenues as I would to promote any of my clients, to promote this cause that I feel so strongly about. When this. When the strike started, I had three clients. When the strike ended, I had 11. From all the exposure that we generated, that was exposure where I got to do something good. It drove people over to my cash register, which was a service business. And I was on the map. As a 24 year old, I was able to use the art of public relations and press exposure to make my business better. And that, to me, is what PR should be all about. Not always defending yourself, not always correcting yourself, not always dealing with the press when you don't want to be in the, you know, the spotlight because you said something wrong. Which is the way I think most people look at pr. If you're a startup, if you're an entrepreneur, if you're, you know, looking to raise money, if you're a small business, it's the great equalizer. The kind of press that I got with five people working out of my living room on Capitol Hill in D.C. rivaled what any, you know, any Fortune 500 was getting in, you know, in any given day. Why? Why is that? Why could I get that kind of exposure, which is the same kind of exposure that my clients ended up paying for me to get for them. Because you can. And you can use, you know, that exposure to build your business.
- [16:15]
A
Have your fundamentals changed with the rise of social media and the ability to more quickly understand the reach and the impact of the campaigns that you launch?
- [16:30]
B
As my kids would say, hell, yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, when I started in this business, you know, I'm a kid and, you know, Cronkite was just going off the air at the time, and, you know, at the end of CBS Evening News is when he ended the news, he would say, and that's the way it is. And it was. And it was godsend. That's not the case anymore. And, you know, if. Just to give, like, a crisis example, if we had a crisis in the 80s, well, I'll give you one. I do for multinational without, you know, naming names or talking about the crisis. But I get a phone call on Friday. Oh, boy. You're not going to believe what happened over here in this part of the world today. By Monday, it's going to hit the US Today. I have a second, and I don't have a weekend to prepare. I have one second, which really means. Which I learned from Elizabeth Dole, who said to me, the worst time to prepare is while the tide is rising. If you don't have a crisis plan in place right now, you're already. You can lose your entire business in an Internet second. Warp speed. That's how fast information travels, and that's how fast misinformation travels. And that entire landscape is different. And here's the thing about that, is that everybody who you know, I call it information dissemination. Now. It's still. I mean, I'm still called a PR guy. We're still a PR agency. It's surround sound information dissemination. How do you get your news? How do you make your decisions? And, you know, your unique algorithm is telling you what you already want to hear anyway on any social medium. So don't be expecting to hear two sides of the story. You literally, you know, when you come to a fork in the road, as Yogi Berra once famously remarked, when you come to a fork in the road, take it digitally. When you come to a fork in the road, you're being pulled in the direction you're already inclined to go anyway. It's that easy to keep going down that road without evaluating facts in the way that you might have, you know, 10 years ago. You don't do that anymore. So you know, your Facebook algorithm, your Google, you know, algorithm, it's all, it's pulling you in the direction you're predisposed to going. And we're all doing that, which is, you know, rears its ugly head in politics, just as one example. I mean, there's no middle anymore. There's no intellectual friction. Used to be a great thing. You get two smart people in a room who don't agree. The intellectual friction gets you a better decision. There's none of that anymore. Everybody goes one of two ways.
- [19:21]
A
Yeah. The same situation, the same facts, a political issue, and you're going to get pulled into your echo chamber deeper because they're going to spin it in the, you know, in the way. And you, you know, sometimes I like to watch, when I'm traveling, I like to watch like the BBC network to see what their view is of the things that are happening in the United States or even Australian news. By the way, Australia is absolutely fascinated with the news cycle in American politics because, you know, we catch a cold and, you know, we, we get sick. The whole world catches a cold and they know in some cases more about our politics than our citizens do here. But it's, it's. Are you still activ in politics or do you work in that arena anymore?
- [20:08]
B
Run far enough away from politics?
- [20:09]
A
I was gonna say, well, because there's plenty to do there.
- [20:12]
B
But I mean, I was a. After I left the White House, I was a political pundit for almost a decade. I was the only person, at least that I know of. I've yet to hear anybody say, no, you weren't. There was this other person. I was. I did three hours a week for Fox and I did two hours a week for, for msnbc. I did both. I mean, talk about two polarizing networks. I did them both in the same week every week for almost a decade, spun through two presidential election cycles. Me personally, I was not beloved at Fox, semi worshiped at msnbc, only because, again, telling people what they, what they, you know, they want to hear. What I found interesting for myself about both networks was it was always a debate with me. It didn't matter which one I was, which network I was on. Again, I'm dating myself a little bit because that's not the case anymore.
- [21:15]
A
Right.
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B
So I could go onto a network where I wasn't popular with the viewers, which was very clear if I walked out the front door. But I had the opportunity to have those debates on air. And one of the things I found fascinating about this is all about information. I Debated the healthcare bill ad nauseam for, I don't know, a year and a half. And I was debating it on national television for months and months and months and months. And I said to myself, I never actually even read that bill. I wonder everybody that I'm debating with because we're all arguing about the virtues of it or how terrible it is, but none of us read it because nobody ever reads Bill. So I decided to read it. And I used to take this big. It was 1100 pages. I used to take it on air with me on both networks. And it was all marked up almost like a textbook was. I had my little sticky notes sticking out the side so I could flip to a page and say, well, this isn't what it says on page 921. That's what we do here. We debate misinformation. And we were doing that then too. I mean, and I started an organization back in that period of time called, you know, readthebill.org where I tried to get congresspeople and senators to read the. Read the bill, commit to reading the actual bill that they were voting on. And you know, again, hundreds of thousands of. And people, because we're all voting based on these, you know, what our perception is of that hundreds of thousands of voters Sign the pledge. 0 Congresspeople or senators did.
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A
Well, they don't have time. You can't possibly read 1100 pages.
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B
You can't read it when you're getting it at 2:00 in the morning, the morning before a vote. And that's the way that we're set up. Something's wrong with that.
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A
100%. 100%. I've heard people say there's no such thing as bad pr. Obviously when you look at some of the massive mistakes that people have made that maybe have cost a billion dollars lately around shoes, things like that. But oftentimes you see people get in the news over something negative and then a year later they've got their own talk show. You know, how.
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B
Well, you know, I mean, if getting your own talk show is your goal, I mean, first.
- [23:34]
A
Well, true, yeah, that's, that's punishment in and of itself. But you know, it's, it's, you know, at some point, you know, once you have reached and people know who you are, and I mean, we're just creatures of habit. I mean, we're interested to see what's going on with Britney Spears right now. I mean, there's, you know, Britney Spears has been one PR matter after another for the last 15 or 20 years, but yet, you know, people continue to follow and, you know, like, what she's doing and all that kind of stuff. What kind of. What kind of opportunities are there for companies to take some chances, to push the envelope a little bit, but yet not put who they are and their customer base at risk?
- [24:27]
B
That's up to each individual company and each individual person. I would say I'm kind of out there on my opinions. My opinion is they are what I think. I'd rather just say what I think and say what I'm supposed to say. I mean, I can be politically correct all day long, but that's not me.
- [24:47]
A
That's no fun.
- [24:50]
B
My agency, we are who we are. I'm really proud of that particular factoid, and with emphasis on factoid, I don't ask anybody to be anything but what they are. I would much rather know who you are in real life than who you pretend to be in front of the camera all the time. And I think corporate America gets in trouble a lot for that because they're trying to sell stuff. So they're going to lose half their customers on any given day based on what they say. What are your values? What do you actually stand for? And the people who don't want to buy your product because of that, to me, I say, fine, that's okay. Let people buy your products for who you are. Transparently and genuinely. I just think that's so much better. You're going to get yourself in trouble. I can say right or I can say left in this interview. By the way, no matter what I say ever, somebody's going to disagree. And in my case, sometimes a lot of people. And you know, for people, my entire career, I've been dealing with that. I mean, if I say the wrong thing on national television, you know, my social media gets flooded with really awful things. In the old days, I would watch what people would say about me. It didn't but didn't make it to air. I'd see the stuff coming in, what the viewers were saying, but they make the air. And, you know, and I can feel it some days. And, you know, I live in New York City. I go out at night. I can feel. I can feel it. Somebody sees me on television one day, they got a definite opinion one way or the other. I can't be anything but myself. That's just who I'm going to be. And, you know, I look, you know, I told you 10 minutes ago I couldn't get far enough from politics if I tried. After spending most of my career Involved in politics in some way, shape or form, it's toxic. I don't want to be involved. Personally, I'd rather do stuff that makes the world a better place. Right now at this particular stage in my career where I've never had so much fun in my life. I'm talking about life and I'm talking about professionally. The first 50 years are the hardest. After that, man, if you learn some stuff, if you let life teach you, it's a great. You'll learn great stuff every day. And it's not always because, you know, counting money is easy. Losing it's painful. What do you learn from the challenging situations? I believe there's silver linings in every one of them. You tell me what was the worst day of your life? I will tell you why it was the best. That's the day that changed you. You know, there's. There everything's a matter of perception. And your entire life, yours and anybody who's listening to this, your all damn life is in between your ears. It's how you think. Whatever you are thinking is literally how you are living. That's your life. So if my life, if I say my life's great and believe it in my own head, guess what? Things are great. I mean, everything's a matter of perception. And I am in that business for a living. And you know, people always say, you know, I was just talking about on the show earlier today, you know, Eric, you know me, an optimist. I mean, I learned how to be optimistic when I was a kid. I literally taught myself how to be optimistic, learned optimism. The first book that I read that started to frame a different way of looking at things and, you know, is the glass half full? Is the glass half empty? Which, you know, which one are you? Who cares? Just fill up the glass again. That's actually an option. Nobody throws that into the equation. It's actually possible. It doesn't make a difference if the glass is half empty or half, you know, full. You literally have the opportunity and the option any given day, fill it up again, start all over, you know, you know, get up. It's like as a kid, you know, I'm a big believer in, you know, in team sports. I played basketball as point guard. I wasn't the best player on the court. I directed the offense. I've been directing the offense my entire career. I was also a boxer, a really, a really lousy one. I got knocked down a lot. I didn't do a lot of knocking down, but one of the things I always did When I got knocked down, I got back up. Everybody would say, yeah, stay down. It's like, I don't think so. I'm going to keep trying. But, you know, all metaphors for life, for your career, personally, professionally, all of. We all get the same 86,400 seconds in a day. You got them, I got them. Same ones, equal. What do you want to do with them? I'm going to just take them. That's what I'm going to do. I'm going to get every one of them. That's all. Because I can. I got that choice. So do you. So does everybody listening. What do you want to do with them? Because, you know, we're all going to the same place in the end anyway. All of us, same again. And the thing about it is, you know what you want to do today, you want to have lunch or you want to have dinner, you want to, like, sleep in a bed. Tonight, you want to have. Depending on what climate you're in, you want to have an air. You know, air conditioning or heat. We all want the same stuff. I'm hungry at dinner time. I want to eat. You hungry at dinner time. You want to eat? There's not that. I mean, you know, money pollutes, commit. I mean, it's definitely, you know, I've had a great career. You know, I'm not going to apologize for being, you know, successful ever. I never have. And, you know, I made this all on my own. I did this all on purpose. And yes, I can pay my bills, so I don't have to worry about that part. But it's the stuff. The stuff that's priceless. You know, go ahead and fall in love. Or if you want, if you're really wealthy, just buy that because you can't get sick and you'll realize what matters. The day that you get sick, everything changes in your life. All you want is good health. The day you lose somebody, all you want is them back. Everything that matters is not for sale.
- [31:22]
A
Yeah, I. A little trick that I've recently adopted when I find myself not wanting to do something or, you know, something that I just, you know, not interested in doing or is upsetting me. I just changed the meaning of it. I was in New York this weekend. My daughter lives on. In. On the Upper east side, and she's teaching. She gets to go into school at nyu and she's teaching yoga. And I did yoga once before, and I almost had a stroke. Like, it was tough for me. I'm not a yoga guy, but, you know, she wanted, she wanted us to go. There was nobody else signed up for her class. And, you know, and I'm just, I just said, you know what? I want to do this because she wants to show me how she does this particular aspect of her life. And dude, I went and had the best class with the best attitude. And it was so simple to do. We just get out of our own way and again, change the view, sit in awareness for a minute. What's the universe trying to teach you? And if you, you know, take it, be open to that. Because at the end of the day, like you said, man, it all comes to a screeching, abrupt halt for every single one of us one day. And then you're going to look back and say, man, I wasted a lot of time being petty.
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B
Yeah, you. That's why I said the first 50 years are the hardest. I learned all this in the first 50 years.
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A
Yeah, right.
- [32:42]
B
I've been having the greatest life ever since. You know, the trappings have changed. Things are different. I learned what was priceless and what, you know, what wasn't priceless. But, you know, I also, you know, everybody, you know how many obstacles you're going to face in your life. You know how many obstacles you're going to have just today. Obstacles are actually the path. They're not obstacles. We all have them. Nobody's life is, you know, like Facebook makes it out to be. I am not happy 24 7. But what I am 24 7. Every week I'm getting this moment. You know what I'm doing right now? I'm talking to you. Nothing else. I'm talking to you. It's interesting to me. We have an interesting conversation. It's engaging. I hope something that one of us said is contagious. I hope some smile of a reaction makes somebody else smile. I hope somebody else says, ah, gosh, that's an interesting. Or learns one thing. I hope that would be really cool. I mean, what a way to live that is. I mean, I'm an exercise. On the COVID of my next book, they have fitness fanatic. You know, I exercise every single solitary day. I don't. I exercise because it makes me feel good. And I hope that other. I don't, you know, I'm not. I'm not obsessed with the way that I look. I am obsessed with the way that I feel. You know what? Endorphins, by the way, they're free too. All you gotta do is exercise. You want them? Can't buy them either. Go ahead, get some endorphins. Tomorrow morning, you can't buy them. You will not believe how it changes your perspective of a day. That's from just exercising a commitment to exercise that I hold myself accountable for. And I use. I use social media for that. And this is a big difference about social media. I use social. One particular platform, Instagram. On Instagram. I use Instagram to keep myself accountable. I'm not getting used by it. That's the big difference between so many people on social media. We're the product on social media, and we're free, by the way. We should be using social media. We should not be being used by it. And everybody's life isn't a vacation. Everybody's life isn't that meal that you're looking at a snapshot of. Everybody's life is not happy all the time. It sure looks that way on social media. And, you know, I worry a lot about, you know, the youth and, you know, kids who are growing up, you know, digitally, you know, born. Born digitally. How do they look at the world, Go outside and climb a tree, watch a sunset Just once or twice or every day if you want, you should. And be in the moment live presently. I mean, I pontificate about all this stuff every single place that I go, and it has nothing to do with what I do for a living. I'm very happy. I was with a client the other day, and I said, you know what? What we should be doing is promoting Hope. That's what we should be doing. And the client says, well, you know why? I said, you know, hope doesn't have an agency. If Hope could. I want to adopt Hope as my client. They don't have to pay me. I'd love to spread a little bit of that. And any brand who does that, you know, people. Positive. People with positive attitudes. Yeah, you know, it's. It's magnetic. I don't attract an audience by, you know, being doom and gloom. I attract an audience because I'm a hopeful guy. And I really. There was a Fred Rogers when he gave congressional testimony in 69. They're trying to raise money for PBS. PBS was like, you know, something that they were. They were literally shooting in the basement, you know, with a camera, and they had a show and they had no money. And Mr. Rogers goes before Congress and he's trying to raise money, and nobody knows who he is. And he basically said that in times of trouble, look for the helpers. If you see the helpers, you'll know there's hope. And that particular congressional testimony ended up raising all of the money that launched pbs. I mean, Congress was just awed by what this guy had to say. It's true. And, you know, we just, you know, we all recently went through a pandemic. Forget about all the other things that we go through. Every single solitary day, we went through a pandemic. All we need. We saw helpers. If we saw helpers, we were. We were hopeful. If we were hopeful, we got through the pandemic. And the irony of it all is everything that you ever worried about, you know, all of it. Anything you worried about, it already happened. So now what are you going to worry about? Stop worrying so much. Live life. Enjoy the moment.
- [37:53]
A
You wrote a book with your daughter. In some of the other appearances that you've made, it seems like family was a priority and important to you. Again, I mean, absolutely. What?
- [38:07]
B
There's not. I mean, for any parent who might be watching, there's nothing you'll ever do. I mean, it doesn't go to the build a rock and go to the moon. There's nothing you will do that's greater than raising children. Nothing.
- [38:26]
A
100%. Are there PR campaigns that you've admired over the years that maybe you wish you were a part of or somebody did a really great job on something that you could point out?
- [38:39]
B
I think that, you know, PR campaigns that, you know, changed the course of history, you know, fascinate me. It's the greatest honor of my career. I mean, I have like the Kissinger story that I started with. I have so many stories, you know, I feel a little Forrest Gump esque. I'm always present for these historical directional shifts. I am. So to me, I don't care. I don't know what anybody else thinks besides my mom, who thinks the same. But it's so cool to me that I've been inside of history when it's making a left turn or a right turn that I get to be participatory in. It's so cool to me that there's. I mean, forget about the books that I've written and will continue to write. I feel like I have a lot that I could teach people. The books that include me, that talk about me, that reference me, is so cool. Not that I'm in the books. It's just that my role and involvement in influencing perception and the way that people thought about things and, you know, look, when I was younger and, you know, no disrespect to Domino's pizzas, and one example, they were my first national account, I sold pizza, selling pizza didn't change the world, walk a mile in my shoes, which was a campaign that I did for caregivers, got legislation, increased funding for stem cell research passed. Pissed off George Bush at the time, which I thought, wow, that's so cool. Bush is pissed at me. How cool. Meanwhile, I ended up on the transition team years later that to be involved in that, it doesn't matter what I get paid, that's priceless. To be able to do things like that, to be able to influence the direction of a large group of people, to change history just a little bit in a different direction. When I was a kid and I didn't happen stance upon Kissinger, my uncle was very. He was very involved in with Nixon, was friends with everybody in the administration. That's how I met Kissinger. He smuggled weapons to Israel for the Six Day War. There's a book called the Pledge. They wrote all about him because he got caught. He got caught. He had to go before Congress. Congress ended up, you know, letting him off. But I thought my, my uncle Abe, he was involved in historical. Like, how cool. How can I do that? Because I don't have the money to smuggle weapons anywhere. All I have is the gift of getting people to listen to me. People will listen when I talk. People are. It's appealing to people to listen to a perspective. Like when we opened, we helped to open. I don't know whether you had the opportunity to go there while you were in Manhattan, but my agency was involved in something called Summit, which is in one Vanderbilt, one Vanderbilt opened. It's the building connected to Grand Central. It is the most expensive per square foot commercial real estate in Manhattan. And on the 92nd, 93rd and 94th floor they have an extraordinary immersive. I don't know how to describe it other than Central park in the sky, you'll never see Manhattan. Like you'll see it. A very famous artist named Kenzo Kenso Digital designed the entire space. When you talk about being present, you can't help yourself when you're inside of that space. When we were opening that, I looked at it as an inflection point for New York City that was hurting. I mean, if you lived here during the pandemic, there were some strange times and nobody could wait for the. I mean, the fact there's traffic again, that there's crowds in restaurants again that were we can all go out to play, that we're not all stuck inside of our, you know, homes, you know, for, I don't know, depending on how long you were Cautious for years, the world reopened. How great is that? I'm so happy to see traffic again. One Vanderbilt, to me was a inflection point, a tipping point for what was going to. Where was New York going? New York was hurting. New York's been hurting before. It's a resilient, you know, zip code. That's what I love so much about it. And a few other things like the Yankees and the Knicks.
- [43:17]
A
And the pizza.
- [43:19]
B
And the pizza. That's right. And the pizza. But to me, it was an inflection point in a pandemic. It was an inflection point where, I mean, it actually opened the second year of the pandemic. The buildings filled to capacity, the most expensive per square foot real estate. Doesn't make sense. Why is that? That building was the most hopeful project going on in Manhattan. Open during a pandemic, to me was an inflection point for the next direction, for New York City. And that's what they said about it. And New York City is coming back like we always do.
- [43:53]
A
Yeah.
- [43:54]
B
What an honor to have been associated with that project.
- [43:59]
A
As you look out in the world today, are there some issues or trends that you are interested in bringing your special skills and making an impact on that would perhaps be part of your legacy?
- [44:14]
B
Yeah, you know, it's. You know, I always say, google me, you'll read a lot of great stuff. I don't know anyone who's going to do that again besides my mom. But it's. I want to be wherever tomorrow is. I am an idiot still to this day. I was an idiot when I was a kid in the room. I'm an idiot all these years later in the room because I'm always before the fact. I'm always before it happens. I mean, it's not any great mystery that artificial intelligence is going to be changing the world. Nobody's going to be shocked to hear that statement. The thing about artificial intelligence is, again, just like social media, which I was all I was. I had social media magazines before social media was nobody. I had a Facebook magazine, I had a LinkedIn magazine, I had a Google magazine and one of my. And a Twitter magazine, nobody had them. Nobody thought what I thought about. I knew social media was going to change the way that we all socialized and communicated. And, you know, I flipped those magazines in under two. We had 14 million subscribers just like that. Two years business in, two years in and out, which is something that I've been doing my entire career. When I said we're being used by social media and we should be using it. I say the same thing about artificial intelligence, and that's where we're at right now. Whether you love artificial intelligence, whether you hate artificial intelligence, whether you fear artificial intelligence, whether you embrace artificial intelligence. Use it. Use it to do something good, because you can. And you know, the fact that technology is developing is not a surprise. It's not new for any of them. There's nobody alive today that won't say yes. Technology is evolving. The rate at which it's evolving, it's warp speed now. The intelligence is feeding upon itself. It's getting faster and faster and faster and faster. How do you use that? Embrace it and figure out a way to use it. And, you know, I'm fascinated with artificial intelligence and all of the uses that we don't even know about yet and we'll know about tomorrow. Now, no one's going to say I'm an idiot for saying that, but I definitely want to. I want to play there. That's where I want to be right now.
- [46:39]
A
Yeah, well, AI really shortens the time for people that do coding and all kind of the technical process management, the stuff that people went to school for, for a long time to learn how to do. And now it really plays back into the hands of the smart creatives because it's more about the question and it's more about being able to connect the dots across different technologies and different groups and different thoughts of, and ideas. And so people that have the creative thinking and they learn to adopt these tools are really going to be able to accelerate what they do. It's how Google built their. If you read how Google works. I mean, they just hired smart creatives at every position because they really were. They wanted people to be able to see around corners, to ask questions that hadn't been answered before, hadn't been asked before. And I mean, I, the, you know, for me having to go to a programmer now, you know what would take me three or four or five days to get something done? And now we can whip it up in an hour and get something to look at. It's. It's like juice, man. It's like steroids for creatives.
- [47:42]
B
Well, yeah, as it should be. It's, it's fun, it's exciting, it's exhilarating, it's not to be feared. I mean, I'm a writer. I write every day. Is. Is AI going to replace me or is AI going to be writing my books in the future? Is AI going to be writing my articles? Because most writers like more writers than Not. That's what they're worried about. I'm the opposite. I'm like, you got to be kidding me. Like, I can do my research in five minutes. Yeah. I don't. I don't need three people to do it and wait three weeks for it. I can do it in five minutes. That's. It's not writing my books, but it's doing. It can do research for me. Cool. I mean, everything about it, it's just. It's the wild, wild west. I wish I was around during the wild, wild west. I don't know why anybody wouldn't. That's what we're with. With AI it's just like we were with social media 20 years ago. That stuff is fun. You got to embrace it, though.
- [48:40]
A
Yeah. The only problem was you only live to 35. But, you know, that's true.
- [48:45]
B
That's true. That's why I exercise every. I'm all about the long game. I want to stick around for as long as I possibly can. Living is too much fun. Breathing is underrated.
- [48:54]
A
Awesome. Well, Eric, we're up against the clock here. This has been amazing. Really appreciate you coming on. It's been an honor to have you on and share with us today. Last question. If you had one sentence to make an impact in somebody's life, what would that be?
- [49:12]
B
Don't miss a moment. You don't get them back.
- [49:16]
A
Yeah. Awesome. Beautifully said. Eric Yeverbaum has been here with Jeff Duden, and we have been on the home front. Eric, thanks for being on.
- [49:27]
B
Thank you so much for having me. Been an honor.
- [49:29]
A
All right, take care, sir.
- [49:30]
B
Thank you. You too.