Brian Worsley: From Hollywood to Minor League Marketing

Episode Description

In this episode of the Agency Side podcast, Justin Levinson speaks with Brian Worsley, a seasoned professional with experience at Warner Brothers and in minor league baseball. 

They discuss Brian's journey from the studio side to the agency world, the importance of collaboration and the revision process in creative work, and his current role in marketing for a minor league baseball team. 

Brian shares insights on the creative agency space, hiring practices, and his passion for both film and baseball, highlighting the interconnectedness of these industries.

Episode Outline and Highlights

[02:33] Journey from Studio to Agency

[05:51] The Revision Process in Creative Work

[09:11] Transitioning to the Agency World

[12:02] The Love for Baseball

[16:43] Outlook on the Creative Agency Space

[18:23] Hiring and Collaboration in Creative Teams

[19:49] Proud Projects and Collaborations

[21:16] Current Role in Minor League Baseball

Brian Worsley: From Hollywood to Minor League MarketingBrian Worsley: From Hollywood to Minor League Marketing

Today's Guest

Brian Worsley

Assistant GM of Marketing & Entertainment

Brian holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Communication and an MFA in Film Production from the University of Miami. His career began with a move to Los Angeles, where he spent 15 years at Warner Bros. Pictures, working in Theatrical Advertising on over 30 major film marketing campaigns, including The Meg, Detective Pikachu, and Judas and the Black Messiah. His expertise earned him multiple Clio Entertainment Awards and honed his skills in campaign strategy and creative storytelling. Returning to his hometown of Midland, MI, Brian now serves as the Assistant General Manager of Marketing & Entertainment for the Great Lakes Loons (High-A Affiliate of the Los Angeles Dodgers), where he leads marketing, content, promotions, and communications initiatives. In addition, he is an A/V consultant with Concept Arts, bringing his industry insights to creative media projects. Brian also shares his extensive knowledge of film and media as an adjunct professor at Delta College, teaching courses in Electronic Media and Film.

Episode transcript

Justin Levinson (00:00.846)

Hey guys, welcome to the agency side podcast where we dive into the minds of creative owner creative agency owners. I'm here today with Brian Dolan there who is the owner of catalytic creative. And they're a wonderful creative agency specializing in entertainment. Brian's been doing 360 campaigns for a spell now and I'm excited to have him here on the podcast. Thanks for being here, Brian.

Brian (00:28.404)

Thanks for the invite, Justin. I'm looking forward to chatting and catching up and talking agency stuff.

Justin Levinson (00:34.006)

Yeah, definitely man. why don't we just get into it? How did you get into this creative agency space?

Brian (00:44.151)

It was a long journey for me. I was always on the client side for years and years and years. I worked at Fox for 20 years with the creative team there. And so that was my first real exposure to agencies. And there were a lot of partners that I loved. And some of the folks I saw, you know, if I ever have an agency, I'm not going to run it that way or I'm not going to do it that way. And so that was that was wonderful to see it from the client side.

and sort of figure out the things to do, the things not to do, the games sometimes that agencies play, you know, we all know those little tricks. But anyway, so I was at Fox for 20 years. I then had the chance to launch original programming series at WGN America, where I ran marketing and creative. And in my career, Justin, I've always wanted to continue.

continue to learn, grow. Fox was an amazing place to work, but it was after 20 years, like what's next? And that's why I left to do that. Unfortunately, we all know the year that WGN America launched was 2013, and that was the same year that really streaming got off the ground with Netflix. And it was a parent who was gonna win that battle. So at the end of 2019, they shuttered the entertainment division.

at Tribune and I was left out, you know, with thinking, okay, career path, where are going? And I had done the broadcast, I had done the cable and it was like, okay, maybe this is time to do an agency. You know, it takes a lot of courage to start one. I didn't have that courage. I was lucky enough that I had my wonderful partner and the founder of Catalytic Creative, Heather Partner, reached out to me and she said,

Brian, have you ever thought about this, owning your own agency? I said, yes, I have. And she said, well, would you consider partnering with me? And she's like, you're the only person I never want to do this with. We had worked together off and on probably 10 to 15 years at Fox. So we knew each other's sensibilities well. You know, was one those people, creatives where you kind of finish each other's sentences and thoughts. And I always knew when she handed me a script, it was going to be exactly the way I was thinking about it.

Brian (03:08.311)

So I said in January of 2020, let's do it. And here we are all these years and months later and we're rolling. So it's a lot of fun.

Justin Levinson (03:17.634)

That's awesome. So yeah, you've had the experience on the other side, not on the agency side. Did you feel like, I mean, I guess it's an advantage being able to be working with the agencies and kind of knowing what worked and what didn't work. But as far as like starting your own thing from scratch, did you feel like there were some things that you weren't prepared for or that you didn't know going in?

Brian (03:46.423)

I think the creative is the easy part because that's what comes naturally for me. I love just digging into creative. When people talk about they've never worked a day in their life, when it comes to creative, that's the way I feel about it and I feel very lucky to do it. But then the business part of the job, yeah, that's some of those things.

Brian (04:15.991)

It's always building a team, finding the right team, the dynamics of that. We went originally, we were, so this was in 2020, and we were looking for office space where we could walk in every day and call it our office. And then right as we were looking, the pandemic happened. And...

I hate to say it, you know, the pandemic was terrible for so many reasons, but in the end, probably helped our business and that we've had to figure out how to do this remotely, how to do everything in the cloud. And then, you know, we've got through, we're like, why would we go get an office now? Our employees would never want to come to an office. They're all spoiled being at home. And I'm a little spoiled working out of the house as well. But.

So that was really probably the biggest challenge was figuring that out like everybody had to do. How do you pivot here and make this work? And I hear some people are three days back in the office, some are four. I've heard some announcing five and I feel for those folks. I do miss the office. I think that there's creative, that there's so many good things that come out of just walking into an office and.

Justin Levinson (05:21.325)

Yeah.

Brian (05:40.759)

Someone says, hey, will you take a look at this real fast? What are you thinking? I'm thinking about this or that. What do you think is best to go with? But then, you know, we've all gotten accustomed and everything goes fast on the internet. Well, I'll send you a link. It'll be there in 30 seconds. on. You so you adjust. I think that's probably the biggest thing. Other challenges.

Justin Levinson (05:59.821)

Yeah.

Brian (06:07.383)

You know, like starting any business, just making decisions for the future. How, you know, we've talked about how big do you want to be? Do we want to have a certain niche? Who's our audience? What's our best chance to, how do we stand out from our competition? There's all those sorts of questions.

Justin Levinson (06:26.008)

Yeah. Well, in terms of in terms of some of that stuff, we'd love to maybe you can explain to the listeners what exactly you guys are doing and what your specific niche has been at your agency.

Brian (06:40.745)

Sure. So we've done probably, like you said, in the reduction, primarily entertainment, everything from trailers, key art, episodic promotion for the very few who still do that. We do launches, brand campaigns, social campaigns, digital campaigns, ideation, original scripts for promo shoots.

So whatever it is they really need a partner needs help with, we're usually able to step in and help with that. We grew the agency, Heather started it before I came in, she started it in 2016 and she had three partners. And in the first year we grew, I believe we had over 20 and since then we've been like 40 to 50. And that's not people who routinely work with us.

we love, I think the sign of success is when they come back for a second, third and fourth job to me, you know, it's not just about trying to do a job for someone is building a relationship. Relationship building on this side is incredibly important. I'm so passionate about the work that I know what it's like, you know, from being on that client side, when you present that work and having someone sign off on it and how important that is that, you know, because

Our job is to make you as a client look better. that's really been fun to do that. And hopefully gotten people through some tough campaigns, because there's been some challenging ones, that's for sure.

Justin Levinson (08:21.144)

Yeah, that's interesting. Do you have any specific campaigns that you've enjoyed the most that you're maybe most proud of?

Brian (08:29.976)

Well, always with the agency, I always enjoy them for different reasons. Our industry is changing so much. When I was at WGN America, mean, we did for every show, we would do a full on print shoot, promo shoot. You know, we'd have a day or two with the cast just to get whatever we want. And I think a lot of people now in the current environment are challenged so much with, you know.

how much money they can spend on getting assets. And now instead of having always, you know, beautiful gallery, it's, hey, can you pull some screen grabs from the show and turn that into art? So some of those are sometimes the most fulfilling because it's like, it's a challenge. It's like, all right, how are we going to make this look like they spent a million dollars on a shoot, but they didn't. And I think for the most part, we've been successful in doing that.

I love our partners. a bit of a, you know, I love the emotional stuff. So we work with Hallmark, a great bunch with their Countdown to Christmas campaign. And there's always a bet whether Brian will cry at the end of the movie or not. I usually do, even if I try to hold back. And that's been so much fun.

certainly always put you in a wonderful mood, you know, working on Christmas. And they are some of the nicest people and so creative with what they do. And cause it's hard. mean, every year, do you make it feel brand new again and make people excited about it and not feel like the same old thing. And that goes back, that goes back to my network days where we'd have, you know, working on, I don't know, whatever show it might be, say 24 and there were 24 episodes. How do you make?

Justin Levinson (09:58.85)

Yeah.

Justin Levinson (10:11.948)

Yeah.

Brian (10:24.439)

each one unique, how do you make it feel like this is the episode you have to see? So you have to bring that sort of thinking into the future. And though they may not have 24 episodes, they have 24 movies. And with similar themes, and you have to find what's different about them and make it special.

Justin Levinson (10:44.76)

Do you work a lot with the in -house teams of your clients as well in terms of like their marketing departments as well? there sort of like a, what am I trying to look for? You kind of working together a little bit and how does that work if so?

Brian (11:02.419)

Not that much. think more what we do when we get the call, it's we need help. We need someone to think differently about this. could either we need someone to think differently about it. We need, you know, kind of a new spin on something or we haven't launched it or we haven't figured it out yet. We need help figuring that out. Or it could really be, hey, we need help because there's not enough people here anymore. Everyone's staffs are getting smaller and smaller and smaller.

And so there's still, you know, as many priorities at the streamers and the network. So they need help. And, know, that's thank goodness that they gave us a call because we're always ready.

Justin Levinson (11:43.244)

Yeah. Do you think part of the strength of the agency is that because your client has been involved from the inception of the product that maybe they don't necessarily have a fresh spin on it like you might have? Do you think that's an advantage of when agencies are able to take something and run with it?

Brian (12:08.097)

I think there's always burnout factor internally. It's hard not to have that burnout factor. I think what also from my time inside, I know that when we did hire agencies, the internal staff would always take it as a challenge and it would bring out their best work a lot of times because you want to be seen inside. don't want all the...

top tier projects going to an agency because you're like, wait, I'm here. Don't you think I do good work? You don't like my creative? Well, I'm going to show you with this one. so it creates, it's not a competition, but it certainly raises the bar, I think for everyone. And I think that's when agencies work well with internal teams. Now, how we work more with internal teams is certainly there are people who will, hey,

try and use this by, I'm like, where's that episode? We don't have that episode. So, you know, they work so hard on just, you know, we'll send that out to you. There's a lot of internal people on the operations side and creative who help us pull this whole thing together. It's always a big task, especially when you're working on some of the brand campaigns and they dump, you know, three seasons of a show or, you know, eight shows or 10 shows, whatever that might be to get through all that, it's a load.

Justin Levinson (13:35.31)

Cool. I read somewhere when I was just Googling you for the podcast was that when you, did you grow up in Ohio? Am I correct about that? Okay. And then you had mentioned that one of your main dreams was to make it to Hollywood. So you've filled that. Are you in Hollywood right now? Is that where you're at?

Brian (13:35.337)

on both sides.

Brian (13:48.951)

I did, yeah, 20 still have.

Brian (13:58.123)

Mm -hmm.

Brian (14:04.887)

I am not, I live nowhere close to Hollywood. tried to get far away as I could actually. I've lived in Thousand Oaks with my wife and kids since 1997. My wife and I, we loved LA, still love LA, but damn, it's expensive a house in LA. So we sort of just went out as far as we could get. We're like, we can afford that. Yeah, okay, that's good.

Justin Levinson (14:11.298)

You

Brian (14:34.313)

So it was a great community, fell in love with it, great place to raise children. The issue was I had to commute five days a week. So, you know, I missed out on a lot, but it was all I have just such a supportive family and and they've been great. And now I think back to spending two and a half, three hours in a car a day. And that's like, how did I do that? That's what I did, you know.

Justin Levinson (14:59.074)

You

Brian (15:01.783)

People on the East Coast, they've got those subways coming in from Jersey. I know I talked to them. They're like hour 45. They got long commutes.

Justin Levinson (15:10.008)

Yeah, man. I I actually live in Vermont, which some of our viewers might know because they're, you know, they see my LinkedIn as I'm on in Los Angeles and they are like, wait, I got this like East Coast phone number. What's going on? I was in LA for a long time with my wife as well. had, we in Echo Park. And then after we had our first, we realized that like the space was kind of small and

Brian (15:22.643)

I thought you were in LA. I had no idea.

Justin Levinson (15:36.8)

and our all of our family was on the East Coast and we sort of were like, you know, we were we didn't imagine we would ever leave LA. But then once we had the kid, it was like, we got to out here. We need help. And we went here, like right before the pandemic. And we found found a house here, which was definitely more affordable because we we we tried to to

Brian (15:48.679)

Hahaha

Justin Levinson (16:02.136)

tried to do the LA thing. I mean, we were looking at lot of like condos and like East Hollywood and like around Echo Park. We're just like, I just don't, you we're gonna fit here. And it like, I don't know if, you know, if this place is like, you know, it just wasn't quite as friendly of a place for us to, you know, for us to be to raise two kids now. So we're here in Vermont. Yeah.

Brian (16:23.567)

Yeah, well, congrats on the kids and congrats on the move. That's always big. For us, just moving to Thousand Oaks still is very LA based and I love the city of LA. I'm huge Clippers fan, grew up despising the Dodgers. I was a Reds fan, but now I've become a Dodgers fan. And so we love going out to the park and yeah, it's a great city.

Justin Levinson (16:28.706)

Thanks man.

Justin Levinson (16:34.081)

Yeah.

Justin Levinson (16:41.133)

You

Justin Levinson (16:49.174)

Yeah, man. What was what was Ohio like you were there all through your childhood?

Brian (16:54.679)

Yeah, I left in, I think I was 22 or 23. Ohio was wonderful. Very different than it is today. know, times have changed so much. It didn't have the diversity that we have here in California. I think that's changed now though, if you flew back to Columbus now, it would look completely different. But back then,

It was different. And I always felt like when you say it was a Hollywood dream, I had an internship. I was lucky to get one in my senior year of college. I went to a really small school in Ohio and I came and it was during an NBC. The engineers had gone on strike. So they brought all their editing facilities, all their editors into complete post, which is no longer around, but it was a finishing house.

And so the whole NBC promo team was working there. And so I got to see firsthand what it was like working, you know, how these network people did it. And I learned so much. Originally, I thought I was going to be a director or an editor. I do edit, but it's not obviously my main job. But then I went to set and I was like, my God, I'm so bored. Like, cause I'm just used to like to go fast, fast, fast, fast, fast.

And I can't wait 20 minutes for someone to relight something or someone has to get hair and makeup to come in. I I love going fast. I can do it, but we've got a promo shoot. I'm fine. I love that. Cause that's one day you got to get it done, right? But to be on a show for days on days that I couldn't do that.

Justin Levinson (18:41.326)

I can understand. kind of I like the fast pace of things myself. My only my only experience in in Ohio is I played when I was a I used to be a touring musician and I played once at I did I played once at the John Glenn High School. Actually, I performed there. I mean, I don't even really remember. I'd have to look it up. It was many years ago. But yeah, John Glenn High School was my one

Brian (18:59.563)

Where is that?

Brian (19:08.779)

Very cool. One time through Ohio. Yeah, I still have family there and we love going back, but California is home. California is definitely home and I think it always will be home.

Justin Levinson (19:09.452)

Yeah.

Justin Levinson (19:20.248)

Totally. Yeah, in terms of like, you know, what's next for you guys? What do you kind of see on the horizons, you know, at Catalytic Creative?

Brian (19:33.697)

Well, I think we've talked a lot about diversifying and going outside of entertainment. We've done a couple campaigns with the beverage industry. We've gone, done some other things that I can't talk about right now, but we've looked at, that's how I think that if we were to grow, we all know what's going on in entertainment and how challenging the environment is. Entertainment is my passion and my love, but

Justin Levinson (19:57.25)

Yeah.

Brian (20:03.179)

there's still a whole lot of fun in figuring out a brand campaign for whether it be clothing or makeup or a car or whatever that might be. There's so much creative thinking that happens. I also teach a class at, I'm an adjunct professor at Emerson College here. So we have the LA campus here and I run a class, it's called Agency of Record. And in that class,

Justin Levinson (20:22.788)

yeah, cool.

Brian (20:31.943)

It's basically we're set up as if we are a working agency. So there that's where you know I'm working across so many different type of brands outside of entertainment And wow, it is so fulfilling like working with these students. They're so smart So creative and it's like alright. I want to be working for you one day. I know that I will be

Justin Levinson (20:53.794)

Hahaha

Brian (20:56.363)

But you know, that just really opens your eyes to a different way of thinking than when I come back to Catalytic. It's like, hey, you know what the young people like? They really like this. Let's do some of that. And then some people groan. But yeah, it's wonderful how that's kind of opened my eyes to different marketing.

Justin Levinson (21:08.952)

That's awesome.

Justin Levinson (21:18.104)

Do you think that's the key for a lot of companies to sort of survive here in entertainment is to diversify their portfolio a bit and be working on brand and really kind of taking anything that comes to the door to keep the doors open?

Brian (21:33.259)

Well, I think that yes and no. You do have to decide when you say take anything. mean, there are some fits just that just aren't right. And I think I would look at it, Heather and I would both look at a potential campaign and, and we want to every project that we're involved in, we want to feel like we connect to it. And I don't want to say what those things I might not be able to to are, but I'm sure there's one or two things out in the world. Like, I just don't want to work on this, you know, like

Justin Levinson (22:01.166)

Totally.

Brian (22:02.217)

Yeah. And I think the client would see that and feel it and I wouldn't feel right about it. I think, you know, as far as like staying on the entertainment side for agencies, I think the biggest thing is how big or how small you can get. We are what would be considered one of the boutique agencies. We are not, you know, as large as the biggest boys out there. And anyway, we don't

ever pretend like we are. But I think that also makes us, you know, nimble and easy to react to some things. What I love about being Boutique is that I'm able to be involved in every single campaign that we work on. So I feel like that's important if, you know, if my name is on the website or on the sign, if you're coming to work with me, that you actually get to work with me instead of me handing you off to three other people who...

just started in the business. That said, you gotta be careful then that you're not so involved that you get lost in the weeds and everything, because you're touching a lot of different projects at the same time. I feel like that personal connection and just knowing it's like, hey, you've seen the creative I've done my whole life, and when you come to us, you know that you're gonna get that as compared to...

not someone else.

Justin Levinson (23:33.614)

How did you land that gig with Emerson? How did that all come to be?

Brian (23:38.583)

A former person I worked with, Brian Brissman, who owns B2 Studios, wonderful guy, does wonderful work. He, for years, we worked together while I was at Fox and then onto WGN America. He was teaching a class and then the class morphed a little bit, morphed sort of my world and he was like, hey, he's now living on the East Coast.

And he was like, you know, we eventually want to make this move. He was like, will you take it? And I had to go through the, you know, interview process and everything. I've always, I've done a lot of guest speaking at colleges and I always loved it. And I find it very fulfilling. And, but I wasn't sure if I could actually teach an entire class, you know, come up with a syllabus day in and day out, or not day in and day it's once a week, but week in and week out, you know, do that with the students.

Justin Levinson (24:35.245)

Yeah.

Brian (24:37.175)

is three hours and 45 minutes long. And it's a lot of talking, a lot of talking. But the fact the way the class is set up, that it's like an agency, it's basically like I just have a crew and like, guys, here's what we're trying to do. Here's our challenge. Here's our objective, our goals. Let's break it down. What sort of ideas do we have? So it's, I'm learning along with the students. But so the first semester to get back to saying.

Justin Levinson (24:42.498)

Yeah.

Brian (25:03.731)

answer the question. Brian said, will you teach it? I said, no, what if we co -teach it? So we co -taught it. And then once I did that, I said, okay, I'm good. And he said, thank you very much and wiped his hands of it. He was able to move.

Justin Levinson (25:17.24)

Nice man. Yeah, there's definitely a lot of creative creative minds at Emerson College. I went to Berklee College of Music right down the street when I was in Boston.

Brian (25:28.393)

I can see guitar going on back there. we going to break down the podcast for a little jam session break?

Justin Levinson (25:30.668)

Yeah, yep.

I've been thinking about at some point doing something Somewhat creative in here, but I haven't had the guts yet to pick up the guitar and play a diddy during a podcast

Brian (25:44.969)

I've got my drum set downstairs. can take the computer and we'll just on the fly have a jam session together. Yes.

Justin Levinson (25:50.316)

We can start the band here. This is where it begins. Yeah, I I ended up sort of like pivoting into, yeah, like creative recruitment that somehow kind of made this turn myself. But I still play, you know, I still write songs. I enjoy playing when I can. Little dad rocking over here, but not in the road anymore.

Brian (26:08.14)

Good.

Brian (26:11.945)

Yeah, that was, I know that I wanted to make it to Hollywood, but an even bigger dream was to be a rock star. That's what I really wanted to do. And then I realized how hard it is. I don't know if I could have toured out of a van and done all of that. I was in a band in Columbus and they weren't very happy. My route to Hollywood was I went from Columbus to Indianapolis for three years.

Justin Levinson (26:22.252)

Yeah.

Brian (26:43.044)

I love my peeps in Indiana, but I always say I did time in Indiana three years and then I made it to California. yeah, so I left Ohio, the dream of the band died and now it's just cover bands and you know, but that's still fun. It's a good time. Yeah.

Justin Levinson (26:46.795)

You

Justin Levinson (27:00.024)

Totally. I mean, didn't have the skin, know, I wasn't thick skin enough to do the touring life. I had a Sprinter van that my parents had helped me sort of deck out. was actually like a, it was meant for cargo, but we converted it into like a sleeper, camper type thing. And so you could fold down a bed and you could put your belongings in and, you know, it was diesel. was like a big one of those.

Brian (27:20.267)

Okay, cool.

Justin Levinson (27:27.842)

Mercedes Sprinters made a ton of noise. And I lived in that thing. I was an opening act for most of the tours that I was on. I never quite made it from the tour, the guy behind the bus following to the venue. I never sort of got the next level up to the bus. And so, you know, I would just be sleeping in and be hot and be uncomfortable. And then I'd be like, I can't do this. I'm just gonna go buy this hotel.

Brian (27:37.525)

That's great.

Brian (27:46.583)

Alright.

Justin Levinson (27:55.896)

then the hotel ended up costing me more money than I made for the gig. And then I was like, well, why am having this like gas guzzling thing? And like, at some point, it was kind of exhausting. And I sort of I think I aged out of the the rock and roll dream. But yeah, you got to have, you know, you got to that's that takes a personality to grind. And and it's also just really hard to, you know, it's hard to stand out, you got to be great, you know.

Brian (28:21.503)

Yeah, I mean, it's I think I want to say it's both easier and harder now to break. Obviously, you get your music out there on any of the streaming services and stuff. But to get someone to pay attention to it, that's you know, there's so many people, everyone has a Spotify or, you know, whatever up there and, know,

Justin Levinson (28:38.346)

Mm -hmm. And to convert that to a livable wage to have that be your thing, I think that's also a bit tricky. Yeah, think with my vintage, was like the MySpace thing was really the big boom. after CDs fell apart, I think I struggled transitioning into the streaming world and how

Brian (28:50.251)

Yeah.

Justin Levinson (29:06.338)

and how to be relevant in that space. I found that tricky. But a lot of people are doing all right with it.

Brian (29:13.983)

Yeah, yeah, I know. You just can't sell an album anymore though, you know? It's just, that's hard.

Justin Levinson (29:17.718)

Yeah, I know. And I love an album because I love listening like it's like a piece of work to me like going from the top to the bottom. You buy a Beatle album and you're like, man, every song on this record is great, you know, and it tells a story in a way. yeah, you know, whatever, I don't want to be an old cranky guy over here back in my day when they made records. But, you know, it's like sometimes just hearing the song on the radio doesn't really

Brian (29:24.939)

Mm -hmm.

Brian (29:29.952)

Yeah.

Justin Levinson (29:46.166)

the same feeling as like listening to a full record, you know?

Brian (29:49.525)

Yeah, I know. We could do another podcast on just our favorite albums of our youth. That would be a good one to go through.

Justin Levinson (29:54.568)

No, totally man. Well, you know, before we do end the podcast, you know, I would like to know, you know, I guess, what what are some of your hobbies? And what what what do you do to, you know, outside of I mean, obviously, you're a busy guy, you're doing the Emerson gig, you are running a co partner, I guess you call yourself with at tele creative. So you got a lot of things on your plate. What do you do to sort of, you know,

Brian (30:17.035)

Yeah.

Justin Levinson (30:24.248)

What do you enjoy to relax or unwind or what's your jam?

Brian (30:25.993)

Yeah, there's a lot. I love to travel. My wife and I definitely have the travel bug. That's a great thing. You know, it's like when you get home, right, where are we going next? I think we haven't signed the dotted line yet, but looks like we're getting an RV. So we're going to be even traveling more. So we're doing that. I really love

Justin Levinson (30:47.916)

Ooh, nice.

Brian (30:53.515)

So sports, I talked about Clippers. So I think that one day they'll still discover me on the court. I've been playing a lot of basketball. I play about three times a week, two hours in the morning. And that's one of the great things about working remotely too is so often people will get a response from me, an email, and they don't know that I'm actually at the basketball court. I can still see the creative, but yeah, I'm hooping it up. So I love doing that.

I have an end game goal. I really want to pour wine in a tasting room. Like, you know, whereas when I was a kid, I was like, want to be a Hollywood. Well, that's my next goal is I want to do that. I love talking to people. I love seeing people have a good time. And if they're, you know, enjoying a wine that I like and I'm able to pour for them, I find that, you know, just so much fun potentially.

Of course, I could get there and doing that years later and I'll be like, I miss being in a net at Bay. So we'll see. But so right now I'll just taste the wine. I'm not pouring it for anyone else. I'll taste it. I don't know. I lot of hobbies. I like staying busy. My my my kids, we have three kids or adult children. None of them live in the state of California, unfortunately, so love going and visiting them.

Justin Levinson (32:02.734)

Sure.

Brian (32:19.777)

They're all wonderful human beings. My son is professional soccer player. My wife believes that I think I'm on the team too, the way I root for them and talk about strategy and game plans and stuff. So I got a lot going on. Yeah, I can't complain about anything, Justin.

Justin Levinson (32:40.91)

That's awesome, man. Well, thanks, Brian, for being on the show and talking to us. It's really been a pleasure having a conversation with you. And yeah, let's do another podcast, and we'll talk about our favorite albums as a childhood. And I'd love to do it.

Brian (32:57.847)

I'd love to do that. And I wanted to say thank you for inviting me and to all my HC partners out there and friends, good luck to all of you. We all know how rough it is there right now and for everybody in the industry. Let's hope this thing turns around and just support each other. It's all we can do. So, yeah.

Justin Levinson (33:19.576)

Totally, yeah, I'm very hopeful that the scale will level out. But yeah, thanks, Brian, I really appreciate it and look forward to chatting with you again. All right, man, peace.

Brian (33:28.895)

All right. Have a great night. Thank you. Appreciate it.

Agency Side host Justin Levison

Agency Side host and the creative matchmaker extraordinaire at Coming Up Creative. Connecting top talent with leading agencies by day, uncovering industry secrets by night (well, whenever we record).

Justin Levinson

Entrepreneur & Podcaster