Should curiosity be a new metric for leadership?

at Landia. So one of the things Laura and I have always talked about is why don't people just ask more questions? Right? We are super obsessed with the why. And I think a lot of the work that we have focused on over the course of our time working together and UM, the things that we always point to and say, yes, that's the thing, has been what I

think bleeds into culture. And you can tell when people really take their time with wrapping content next um and putting work into the market that integrates seamlessly versus lives adjacent to And I think as marketers we forget to like kind of ask ourselves that question of like why what motivates me? What right? What excites me? And putting that into your work and actually asking questions about the work.

It's funny. I sit with a lot of people now who are writing a lot of like marketing copy, and I always ask, would you read this? Would you actually read this? Great simple questions, simple question? And you want the answer is how many times? No? They're like yeah, no,

I'm like, well, then we gotta go rewrite it. I mean, two of the key things that I think we've heard over the last few episodes, I think stemming back to Josh Sternberg being on the show, Um, you know somebody who's watching the market as as a reporter over ad week, to you know, Cody and Mike Tongue, to young guys

who left the agency world to build their own thing. There, there's these piecemeal signals right into the the biggest trends that I think we're seeing our the idea of like being able to bring your whole self to the table, allowing all of the inputs and influences in your life to affect your creativity and call that data by the way, right, and then the other the other is really about asking the simple questions, like questioning it, and I think what

we're going to hear from our next guest is allowing yourself to imagine and allowing yourself to kind of like go down the road where you start with a simple question actually can lead to bigger and cooler and smarter and more impactful work than it is. When we have something in a nice little clean box that we've put together, either whether it's a brief for a media plan or something, ask what isn't there? Yeah, the blue sky thinking. We can all talk about thinking this way, but it's really

about behavior. It's how we start training our brains. I think our next guest, Brad Grossman, who is the founder of zeit Guide, really has been training sea level executives to think like a Hollywood producer, to dream, to let their minds kind of go down and pull in a ton of data, but use their gut and their heart

to lead them to what really makes sense. And my hope is that that then trickles down through organizations because I think some of these young people making these decisions in the weeds are in search of those sorts of inputs that go far beyond an index or a data point or something. As Beth comp Stock has always said, they feel like permissions granted. On that note, we'll be right back and we're back in the studio with Brad Grossman,

the founder and CEO of Zeitguide, the oracle to the industry. Welcome. Wow, God, I don't know who is the oracle to you? So where? What is the zeit Guide and how did you become the zeck Guide to the Zeitgeist? Okay? Zeke Guide means guide to the Zeitgeist. Okay, Zeitgeist which many people don't know, um what the real meaning is of it. But Zeitgeist

means spirit of the times in German. What the Zieguide is is basically, we guide super busy executives on what they need to know so that they can lead themselves towards what's next. So you're the coach, the Zeitgeist coach. Yes, yes, we guide them through our constantly changing culture so they're best prepared for the future. Yeah. My brother is a business guy, so he makes me kind of say that stuff.

He's one of my partners. Tell us because it's it's an unlikely story about how Zeitguide and how you became the zeit Guide coach for the Zeitgeist, and it has to do with Hollywood. You were in Hollywood? Yes, Well, to tell you the truth. UM. I started this company after doing what I do now for other leaders and helping them understand what's outside their company walls. I did it for the Oscar Award winning and Emmy Award winning producer Brian Grazer, who's a really good friend of yours.

That's a very good friend of mine. Yes, he produces some stuff. And did you grow up together? How do you know? Brian? Oh god, you're you're even going further back. I actually was now that I'm like a tutor to C suites, UM, C suite executives. UM. I was a chemistry tutor to high school kids in Los Angeles and it started this little tutoring company called Institutor. And then one day I get a call from I feel like there was like some logo on like a geo tracker.

It's like you're jamming through l A like it's the tutor. It's so funny my logo that Yeah, well, I I modeled after Charles and Charles meets the Nanny, right. So, And I was a delight to you know, all the parents of my clients, UM, who were students UM, who happened to be from the Hollywood establishment. And yes, I had this little Volkswagen convertible and my logo had me and the convertible with sunglasses on with the horn honking and said too too seriously, Oh how about that? The

great marketing was it? Totally was? Oh my god, I so wanted that car in high school. But anyway, they don't make it. They called it a cabrio then, yeah, cabrio. Yeah. In what year was this? Two thousand two? I was tutoring some of the sons and daughters of Brian Grazer's friends and he heard about me. And after three years of building this company, I get this phone call from Brian Grazer's office and they're like, Hi, this is uh.

I think his assistant at that point was mc l Hi, this is Miguel from Brian Grazer's office, and uh, I'd love to set up a meeting between you and Brian Grazer. And I'm like really, and you know, does he want me to tutor his kid? And I said and and they said no, he just wants to meet you. He loves doing this thing, he loves meeting with interesting people who are outside his UM industry, and he heard that you're a great tutor and I'm like, wow, okay, well

I'll come in and see him. And so I walked into his office and he's like, there's Brad Grossman, the tutor to the stars. And I'm like, wow, that's that's that's generous. And he's like, I don't want you to tutor my daughter. I want you to tutor me. And I'm like, in what you know? He's like, whoa, what do you tutor? I'm like, I do calculus. I do chemistry.

He's like chemistry really, and he takes out this periodic table from behind his sofa and that Oliver Sacks gave him and I basically taught him with the oodic table. Was you know, Brian was really awesome in the sense that you know, he is a self proclaimed dyslexic and he said that, you know, the only thing he learned in school was that he couldn't learn in school, So he wanted this kind of what's called a curiosity tutor and just to kind of teach him about the world

and help him get outside the Hollywood bubble. Curiosity tutor. That is so cool. Yeah, and everyone should have or you should be your title for yeah, curiosity. How long did you work with Brian Grays or tutoring him, being the curiosity tutor the curiosity And was that like your solo gig? It was solo gig, it was like my life. I did it for five years. So how did you pivot? Like what was the sort of moment You're like, done

this thing for five years? Like amazing opportunity, but there's clearly something bigger that I could be doing here, Like did you have a moment? Was it a lot and drown out business plan? Like what was it? Two things? One um, I didn't want to be a movie producer, so and you know, so there was no reason for me to stay in that position. I realized that I've always had a career in terms of education, but educating

people in a way that inspires them. That's why I call myself as a guy's coach instead of a tutor, because like, I'm more of a coach, right, I didn't call myself a chemistry tutor. I called myself an academic coach because my job is to help you reach your full potential. And I just thought that what I did for Brian I could do for other people. At first, I was meeting with a lot of people and telling them what my idea was to work with people in

every single vertical so to speak. Um and they're like, what are you kidding me? Like, go back to Hollywood, that job doesn't exist. You went from and are going from just giving people information to actually teaching them how to think. Yes, right, so people are pulling you into their organizations and you're actually teaching sea level executives how to think and then how to train their teams to think.

They don't really have time to really sit and think and brainstorm with the person who is outside of the chaos let's I mean, let's you know, the chaos of their daily lives and the chaos of the industry or

how their companies are being disrupted. You know, it's it's they could strategize with the geniuses inside, and they could hire a bunch of consultants to kind of come in and advise them what to do, but very few of them have the time to just kind of like think like a science fiction writer with somebody who is very multidisciplinary like me and my team. So what is curious?

So that's really interesting, like thinking like a science fiction writer or a filmmaker creator, like I I got taught how to think like a movie a movie producer right in the movie business. And that's basically thinking in a way that is so blue sky that anything can happen from because they can't take. What we're realizing now is that anything can happen. I mean, and anything that happens now has more impact on the world and business than

anything that has ever happened before. It's any black swat event that you know, everything is happening so quickly, and we're so connected and at the core, media impacts culture, right, and now that social media is causing more media to be out there and connecting to more people, just more things are happening that you never really thought that would expect be expected at a much faster right. Right. So things you just said are on media impacting culture, right.

So obviously is the show talking to brand marketers and gency folk and creative types who are creating the messaging that's it's adjacent to that media using that pipe to disseminate you know, thoughts and provocations and and all the things that we do as marketers. Um, is it fair to say and and curious your take as as a zeitgeist coach tutor guru. UM. The brands nowadays have more or less influence in the market. We're seemingly consuming more and more and more, But at the same time it

feels that consumers are equally skeptic. I think, well, I think consumers have more power than ever before. Now more than ever. Uh, consumers are shaping businesses UM because they're just not gonna buy anything that you're you know that that you're that they're selling to you unless they actually

want it. And there's so much information out there that the brands don't have the direct Not only do they not have the direct line to them, they also UM their messaging is being crowded out by everything else that's worked at Goldman Sachs, I've worked with Unilever, Disney, worked with Fox, um Sony g E. S, beethcom Stock, I mean, Nickelodeon.

I've worked with What is the key to curiosity? Like, how does a curious person behave no where you go excited about learning, knowing that they don't know UM, not going to the most obvious source for the answer, UM, not even having direction sometimes and not even having a plan. I tell my clients that they should just like have one day, which is almost impossible. UM two, just go on a learning journey. You know, what would that look like for like Beth com Stock, Disney executive, what does

that look like? What I say that to them, is that right on a piece of paper, every single question that you've been having or been thinking about that you don't really know the answer to. Um. That's one part

of the process. The other part of the process is, you know, get all the material, all the emails, and basically just see like what your gut is really you know, connecting to Like I think we're all curious right now, subconsciously, right, but I think you have to be curious consciously as well. First of all, you have to admit that you don't know something, and if you don't know something, you shouldn't feel bad about it. You. I think we do a

lot in this industry. I think that we have a lot of questions that we don't actually allow ourselves to ask. Like you don't actually stop and say, I just I have a question about that. Why doesn't that make sense? I got this media plan? Like how many people have said, oh, I got this media plan and someone says, well, what about Dad? And they're like, I don't know. I don't ask why. Well, I think that that's a tremendous uh distinction in the marketplace of people focused on transactional media

versus creative media. And I think ultimately the end of the day, people are judging things on face value, and rate cards and things that have finite definitions are an understanding of the way the market works. And then I think the difference of other people's work is what you just said, pushing back and saying that actually isn't finite, like a rate card is the fucking finite, right, But but I do think that that is a distinct difference.

What I think is interesting too, and I think it is a sign of some of the leaders that I've enjoyed are the people who know are comfortable knowing what they don't know, and they surround themselves with people who can help input those answers so that they can come to a more informed decision. And I think seeing that offering,

it's it's interesting. Just as you're talking, I'm spending a lot of time right now looking at tools and resources and inputs that helped make us better marketers and specifically better media planners. And frustrating thing is so many of the tools and resources that are currently available do everything but provide context and culture. And so I'm wondering if

you're not onto something. We also had Pierce Fox on this show at PSFK, and you know, all of this different trend spotting and these signals and the fact that you know you're sort of contained right now in in the c suite, Like I want to see the Zeke coach unleashed to the area of the market where I think it's so desperately needed. And that's the people making some of these these daily decisions that companies are a mass a lot of data, a lot, a lot, a lot,

a lot of data. Um. You know that they're going to be starting to donate their data for good in the like the United Nations. Any buddy who's researching the impact of AIDS, of anything, frankly anything. I think it's more about solving big global problems and where corporations could use that data, um, not just to help their consumers, but to help their consumers that are just citizens of the world. So should we get into our game? Yes, Brad, it's time kill by d I Y. If you could

kill anything, what would it be? Bullying and hate? But I'm down with that. What would you buy if you could buy anything love and peace? And what would you do yourself that somebody else may be doing that? You want to build a yoga instructor? Nice? Um so, Brad. If people want to get in touch with you, ask you more about the zekegeist, how do they get in touch with you? They want to ask you about the zeke geist and get your coaching? Yeah, um, well they

could go to zeitgut dot com. Um again zeke does z e i t g u i d e um ze meaning time in German to help you remember guide like TV guide which you know doesn't existing or does it? Um so zegui dot com And uh, I'm also at bragg ro Well, Brad, thank you, thank you, thanks, This is really fun. So thank you to Rad Grossman, the CEO of Zagat. A big thanks to our family and friends, the Panoply, Matt Turk, Andy Bower's Jacob Weisberg. Will be

back in two weeks see you at Landia. Full disclosure our opinions are