Latest / Frap Rap with GDogggggggg / Ep 16: Jan-Eric Anderson (jhyphene)

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Ep 16: Jan-Eric Anderson (jhyphene) · Frap Rap with GDogggggggg

• The Mediaocean Podcast Network: Welcome to Frap Rap. I'm your host, Aaron Goldman, aka G, and the artist formerly known on AOL Instant Messenger as G Dog with 8Gs. Yes, one through seven were taken. Twenty-five years ago, I was an A in an ad network called L90, and my biggest client was StarCom IP. Every Thursday, I'd invite everyone at 35 West Whacker to come to the cozy across the street for coffee. And for each person that came, I'd do a freestyle rap about them. Hence the name for Rap Rap. Each episode I track down another OGI peer to reminisce about the good old days and see what they're up to now. My guest today is Jan Eric Anderson. Jan Eric, welcome to Frap Rap. Hey, thanks for having me. I'm honored to be here. It's great to have you. ⁓ you came up, of course, on the last episode with ⁓ Jen Brady, so now we get to hear your version of events. ⁓ and that's kind of part of the magic, is how these things are sort of building ⁓ on each other. But I appreciate that you've been a loyal listener, and now I'm ⁓ thrilled to have you on. Thanks for having me. So So let's start with ⁓ where are you located? You got a beautiful background there. ⁓ where are you sitting? What's going on around you? So I am sitting in sitting in my backyard. This is our Lanai in our backyard. ⁓ it's been raining for about a week. And ⁓ today it's beautiful, it's sunny, it feels like fall, and I couldn't stand to be inside. So I decided to to come out back. And I'm in Lawrence, Kansas, which is my hometown. That's ⁓ where I live now. Rock chalk, ⁓ Jayhawk. So my daughter is now a freshman at Mizzou. ⁓ so there's a little bit of arrival. Her best friend is at Kansas and she was just there for when they played each other in football a few weeks ago. Yeah. ⁓ which the the Tigers pulled that out. ⁓ I'm sure you'll get us back in basketball. ⁓ but it's ⁓ yeah, it it yeah, well we'll catch up on what brought you out there and ⁓ what brought you back there, I guess. ⁓ and all that stuff as we kind of trace the arc of your career. But for now, we're teleporting back to Chicago, 35 West Whacker. When you first walked in the door, ⁓ what brought you in? And what was your role? Well, when I walked in the door at 35 West Whacker for the first time, I was an intern the summer before my between my junior year of college and senior year of college. And I had a a an internship in the media department at Leo Burnett. So that was ⁓ I'll date myself. That was the summer of ninety five. So that was the first time I ever walked in the doors. ⁓ that turned into a job offer. So I started my career there as a media buyer planner at StarCon. And then eventually landed into IP, which would have been probably about, I was probably about five years into my into my Starcom career, ⁓ when I eventually landed in IP. Yeah. So I think that makes you an outlier, at least as far as I think your guest number, well, this is episode 16, but there was one in there where it wasn't a guest and it was just a a mashup of of previous ones. So I think you're the 15th guest and we'll need our our Dear listeners to ⁓ fact check us on this, but I believe this is gonna be the person with the longest tenure ⁓ within the group that we've had on so far. Does that sound right to you? So, with one exception, I think, ⁓ Jeff Marshall was starting his career at Leo Burnett Media the same day that I was starting as an intern. So Jeff was one one summer ahead of me. of starting. And I remember that I was in there as a as a ⁓ as an intern and he was with a group of people that were starting and I would be in the exact same shoes he was in one year later. So so yeah, I I was there on Marshall's first day as at ⁓ Leo Burnett Media before Starcom even existed. That's wild. And and so it'll be interesting to get your perspective because for a lot of folks, IP was, you know, either their first job or they've been maybe with ⁓ starcom like maybe in in Aaron Petty's case, maybe it was like a year or two and and so, you know, ⁓ she talked about how kind of she got leveled out and by leveled out I mean leveled down moving into IP. So but ⁓ you had w ⁓ maybe b well when did you move into IP and and ⁓ what kind of brought what made you say, hey I this is the the group I want to get into? So ⁓ This is this'll be a trip down memory lane. I I love this because these I they're all such fond memories. I had ⁓ I had transferred from Chicago, StarCom in Chicago to StarCom in San Francisco. And I spent about a year in that office. ⁓ that office was relatively very small compared to what was going on in Chicago. ⁓ but there were a couple of key leaders in that office. one was Kurt Hecht and then and he oversaw all of the StarCom, ⁓ kind of old school Starcom staff and activities. And then there was a StarCom IP faction that was there that was being led by a new hire that Rashad had found, Andrew Swannand. And so Andrew is overseeing the IP group in that a small office and Kurt was overseeing ⁓ the StarCom group. ⁓ about after being out there about a year, my wife and I were kind of feeling like, well, it wouldn't be that bad to go back to Chicago. And ⁓ I remember I was back, I was actually back here in Lawrence visiting family. I was probably back for a basketball game or something. I feel like it was in February or something like that. I don't remember exactly. And Marshall, Jeff Marshall calls me. And was like, hey, we've got a new client. We're adding some staff. Would you be interested in in joining IP? And I was like, whoa, ⁓ yeah, yeah, probably. I mean, great people in in San Francisco in that group. I really, I really, I really appreciated Andrew and like what his ⁓ what he brought to the table. The guy's super smart. And it was, of course, that's a theme gonna be with theme within this group. ⁓ so I was definitely interested in it. And ⁓ my awareness of IP at that point, beyond just what I was seeing there, was say Tim Harris and I had been roommates ⁓ in back in Chicago before he left Starcom to go work for launch, I think, or he moved to LA. I can't remember exactly where he went, launch or something like that. And so I was kind of aware of when T because Tim had come back and was doing this IP thing, so I was aware of what they were doing. It was kind of like It seemed like it was wild, wild west. I don't know exactly what they're doing. I need Marshall's in the group, obviously. But I was fond of all these guys and it was like this this would be cool. So yeah, I'd do it. Yeah, Jeff, what do you think? It'd like ⁓ San Francisco? No, and no, it'd be back in Chicago. Are you cool with that? That works. Yeah. Well, what's like the timing? It's like, do what kind of clothes do you have with you right now, in on your trip home? Because I would like for you to fly from instead of going back to San Francisco, I'd like to for you to fly to rest in. ⁓ in the Dulles because we've got this new client, ⁓ Network Solutions, and we need people. We've got a meeting on Tuesday. And I was like, ⁓ shit. So I guess I'm like, do it is this happening? He's like, Yeah, Rashad will make it happen. And so that was like, ⁓ okay. Do I need to call, you know, do I need to call my boss in in San Francisco? He's like, No, it'll be taken care of. Just ⁓ just get ready. I'll Tanya will book you and we'll get you out to the d ⁓ into Dulles and what we've got a meeting. What do they do? You know, I don't know, we're gonna go learn. ⁓ well, what do you guys do? You'll figure it out. And that was kind of it. And it like literally two days later, I think I was on a flight to go to go to Network Solutions and I was in IP before I even knew it. It's crazy. It's crazy. So star stars aligned. ⁓ certainly being, you know, ⁓ o open to stepping into the unknown is is the recurring theme and figuring it out as you go. one thing I wanna ⁓ unpack in the story there. So you roommates with Tim Harris, did you guys meet? Through StarCom or did you know each other before? No. So Tim Tim and I we were part of the same pit ⁓ that came in. So we had our we we started in early June of of ninety six. We were all I mean, wet behind the ears, fresh, fresh out of graduation. Like, I mean, coming straight in and starting, ⁓ for me it was like three weeks after I I graduated from KU and so it was like, okay, we're here. So Tim was in that group. I did not know him before. He had not had an internship the summer before. Some of those people that I was starting with had, so I knew some of those folks. ⁓ but Tim I didn't know. And Tim and I hit it off on a personal level. ⁓ we have you know similar experiences and similar ⁓ I guess, sense of humor and and and we just hit it off. And so after that kind of that first year of being in Chicago where we both had already kind of were committed into leases, we thought It might be ⁓ it might be fun to live together. So our second year in Chicago after starting, we both we decided to move in together and we lived in an apartment right up on a like Sheffield Wrightwood or something like that. Amazing. I'm sure you've got some stories. We'll save those ⁓ for another time. I do hope to get Tim on. I'm kinda saving him for mid season. So we kind of kicked off with Jeff. We're saving Rashad for the end, so we'll have the caps and Tim feels like to guess it's gotta like fill in right in the middle. It would be But I like having sort of the Yeah, it wouldn't be complete without Harris. You have to have him. Yeah. But I like having the build up ⁓ a little bit and and of course he comes up often. ⁓ he's actually a neighbor of mine, so ⁓ hop hopefully it'll be an in-person one. ⁓ that's great. ⁓ and so, all right. So you're figuring out, okay, so there's this network solutions client. We got to figure out their business, I gotta figure out IP. ⁓ how did all that go down? ⁓ man, I've kind of had this imposter syndrome my whole life just trying to to to keep the facade going and have people convinced that I have any idea what I'm doing. ⁓ stepping into that world, I was I completely, completely fish out of water. but tried to keep up and I I think that ⁓ you know that that industry, that category, domain registration was like the name of the game with Netsall. ⁓ I kinda could grab my head wrap my head around okay what they do and kind of what they sell. ⁓ But then like the whole advertising and the media piece of it was really ⁓ the messaging I could get. But like, okay, so what are we doing exactly with like, you know, what are the ads going to look like? How do they run? Well how do we buy them? ⁓ and then of course, because it was so ⁓ response oriented, it really became ⁓ this became such a breeding ground for learning ⁓ and and sharpening your tools on reporting and understanding the math and how to optimize. That became like the key. the key takeaway at for me in that thing. So I these were concepts I could get and I was comfortable with the math and all that. ⁓ but the only reason why I survived was because of how good the people were that I was working with. and they, you know, they carried carried my ass. I I I guarantee you that. And that would be their recollection of it too. ⁓ but it was, man, it was amazing drinking from a fire hydrant and just going. So ⁓ y you're a humble guy and I think that's what I and and people appreciate about you. I'll just maybe hold the mirror back up and say that ⁓ the imposter syndrome works both ways, right? So you kind of came in from more of the traditional world trying to figure it out. The people who are sort of IP natives really appreciate it. And I on the rep side appreciated what you brought to the account in terms of like an understanding of media and process and how to run ⁓ campaigns at scale. How to manage teams and how to how to, you know, ⁓ package towards client objectives because those were not skills that were taught and bred ⁓ through the IP ranks. IP was just you get tossed in and figure it out. So you were able to come with that. And I remember meeting with you, and actually, of course, I've I've been hanging on to my Rolodex here. ⁓ and am I in there? I've got you ⁓ still with ⁓ StarCom Media Vest. This wasn't even an IP business card. Right. Yeah. ⁓ Associate director. So I don't know if that r can place you at all on the timeline, but I'm guessing this must have been, you know, ⁓ two, ⁓ three ish. ⁓ but I remember meeting with you and those were meetings like different from ones where I was talking about, you know, with with other people. A lot of it was just negotiating, you know, the rates on an RFP or trying to, you know, troubleshoot what's going on with the click tags. I remember having like actual strategic conversations with you, and I think that's what you were able to to bring to the business. ⁓ and so, you know, again, it it it's nice of you to say and and ⁓ but I but I feel like the you were what was needed for that account. This couldn't just be ⁓ yes, it was the DR est of of DR accounts you could possibly have, ⁓ but this was not a place where you could just, you know, sort of ⁓ move fast and and break things because breaking things would have millions of dollars of of daily consequences with how much they were spended. Yeah, well I appreciate you saying that. I mean it's You know, I think it's also then accolades back to you and everybody else to figure out how everybody can br what people can bring to the table and how do we you know, make everything ⁓ make everything better. ⁓ and and I think that was a that was a conscious thing on my part was staying out of the way of the team who was overly qualified and very capable of doing what they were doing. If anything, if I was jumping in to to to their area, ⁓ it was just for my own education to try to learn what they were doing. But man, when it came time to RFP somebody and evaluate what we should be doing, I would stay the hell out of the way because I mean they didn't need my input on it to figure it out. And ultimately I think ⁓ you know, I I wasn't the ultimate throat to choke, but I was pretty close to it. And so I needed to at least be comfortable with what was going on. ⁓ because if anything was wrong, it was gonna be my ass. And that which was fine. ⁓ but, you know, trusted those guys. They great. The team was amazing. ⁓ so yeah, it was great. And and were you all NetSoul all the time throughout your your time there or did you eventually take on other accounts? So I was no, I during my time in IP, I only worked on that account. ⁓ it was, and you know, I I've been thinking about this anticipating ⁓ you know, this conversation, when did I leave IP and I don't remember, but it was like a soft exit, a quiet exit, because ⁓ the aforementioned Andrew Swinand had also the San Francisco office closed. ⁓ probably it went to shit after I left, right? So then they couldn't keep it afloat. So eventually it closed, and that was a dot com, you know, dot bomb had happened and everything was slowing down. He was back in Chicago and Rashad and him were kind of scheming on trying to get this tech team together. tech team in the sense that we're going to go pitch tech clients. And we wanted to kind of create a group of people that could kind of straddle the fence of both digital media and traditional media and go pitch some clients and not go in saying, hey, we are an online agency or an this is the online group or the traditional group. We went in without labels. And that's probably where that ⁓ SMG card came from. Because we were we were trying to not label ourselves StarCom or Starcom IP. We took a we took a page out of Rashad's play play deck, ⁓ playbook ⁓ where he had he had fifteen business cards for whichever one he needed in the room that he was walking into. And that's where we started using that. And so I kind of I w I could be branded or or ⁓ marketed as someone who had the background on both sides. And that's what and Andrew was the exact same way. So ⁓ That that group started sort of started to form on its own and ⁓ with Rashad's support, Renetta McCann's support, and like if you guys think you can go do this, go figure it out. And then it was again jumping off onto another whole another deal and going figuring that out. Yeah. And and what well, I guess before we take the jump into what came next, ⁓ reflecting on network solutions and that time you know there was ⁓ Did they get bought by Verasign? There was some acquisition that that happened at some point Yeah, 'cause I 'cause I that client to me is Verasign and Network Solutions that I can't remember for the life of me. The two. I feel like ⁓ one might have been one might have been a bigger thing and then the other one was specific to domain registration or ⁓ Hosting and design and those types of things. I can't remember. I think that's what it was. I think, yeah, and and of course every you it was a Cheryl Wallets ⁓ sort of play trying to expand and that's probably where it went off the rails. I mean, this was also like it was probably GoDaddy was the big competitor, right? And you had them with their like, you know, ⁓ bombastic ⁓ Super Bowl spots and you know, here you are, ⁓ you know, trafficking banners and power eds. So ⁓ all right. So here we are now. ⁓ we're not quite sure the year. But what what what came next after you rolled off ⁓ Netshole? Yeah, so so I go into this this tech group, and I th I think that's what we were calling it. It wasn't really a form thing. It was really just we're gonna go try to pitch some clients. And we got ⁓ Sun Microsystems. We go and pitch that, had no business getting it. We didn't have any experience. We couldn't go in and say, look at all these things we've done for all these other clients. And we go in and we get sun, and ⁓ and now the next thing we're doing is we're we're we're putting together media media plans that are being ⁓ being developed and designed by a single hand or single pen that is allocating and determining online and traditional media at the same time. So it wasn't a thing of, hey, let's carve out ⁓ hey, we got eight hundred thousand bucks, we're gonna give that to IP. Now go tell Gov and his team that they need to make up the media plan the digital plan for that. And then the rest of the Starcom team's gonna put together the T V buy or whatever it is, right? That's kind of how it worked at that time. But then with this, like with Sun, which wasn't a huge client, but it was in a brand new category and we were able to kind of explore and stretch our legs a little bit on this. We were kind of making a single plan that was gonna include a lot of conference signage and sponsorships, ⁓ digital buys, and we were geotargeting digital buys around like attendees at the at these events. We were doing outdoor buys and trade publication buys and things like that. And we were kind of experimenting with what would become integrated planning ⁓ to bring digital and and ⁓ and traditional together. So B2B play. So yeah, yeah. I mean they started B2B, yeah. Yeah. And so what's it so so so ⁓ in closing the arc here both with with your story but also thinking about the the broader story and I so I P sort of started as this we need to have a sp a specialized capability. Because it's so different from the way traditional media was was bought and sold. We needed to, you know, understand and think and be able to activate completely differently. You then became the tip of the spear for converging it back together, where we said, all right, it's no longer about having this as a specialized thing with different people, different plans, different executions. We're now at the point where it's I don't ⁓ maybe overselling it to say it's, you know, mature, ⁓ but it's it's at least scaled enough where it makes sense to you know, the the efficiencies will come by bringing it back together. And maybe not efficiency so much as differentiation for StarCom and the group now at this point to be able to go back and no longer win business by saying we've got this amazing group that's at the frontier of digital. It's like now we've got the group that can do it all in one place. ⁓ is that is that a good capture? I think so. You know, w you you gain wisdom with age and experience. ⁓ I look back at that and I would imagine that probably somebody had an idea or a plan all along. It was not obvious to me at the time. It felt to me like we were just like, just run into this un un you know chartered these uncharted waters and try to figure it out. ⁓ but I would imagine that Rashad and Andrew knew that there was an opportunity to continue to push differentiation, continue to push the a narrative of innovation and go out and say, listen, we don't we don't separate the two anymore. You know, we've got them all together. But you go and you practice that in a small room where not that many people are watching, so you can screw it up and figure it out. But then once you've got sun microsystems, then you can take that and go get Oracle or get ⁓ BlackBerry and you get some larger accounts because now like wow, these guys over here, StarCom Media Vest, they don't have these two separate things. But then at the same time, you've still got StarCom IP kicking ass on Miller. as a digital brand and then you've got the the traditional Miller team still working on Miller because that works for a client like that. And it and so you've got those legacy clients. They could satisfy so many different kinds of scenarios. So it's really genius in terms of not ⁓ abandoning or or alienating the way you've been doing business, right? But also trying to to to blaze a new trail at the same time. And if I listen, th this this is like reflecting on that twenty five years later at the time I was clueless. I'm a pawn in the scheme and I'm just like trying to keep up and trying to convince people that I'm not a complete idiot. That I mean, that is all I was focused on, trying just trying to keep up with these guys that were just, I mean, l I seemingly light years ahead of me. Yeah. ⁓ all right. So then at what point did you ⁓ leave the group and where did you go from there? Yeah. So really really briefly, I left ⁓ I left that tech group and ⁓ ⁓ I took a a leap of faith to jump to the sales side. It was a hot minute. And I w ⁓ I went and worked with ⁓ Craig Schumacher at ESPN right at the time that ESPN Motion, which was their videos but their video product, was launching on the homepage at ESPN dot com. ⁓ and I was only there for about nine or ten months. I was there long enough to to probably learn that sales was probably not per f a a great fit for me. But I wasn't there long enough to learn everything I could have learned. I know that. ⁓ I enjoyed my time, I value my time there, but it wasn't it I was kind of sensing it's probably not for me. And then Rashad I do remember, by the way, you always had a love of sports. You you ran the sweet sixteen pool ⁓ in Stockholm, didn't you? Probably. Yeah. I I rem so 'cause Vogel would do the brackets and that was always like the, you know, I you can Two bucks a bracket, so you'd fill out a few of those. But yours was a little bigger money, if I remember. Well and it was against the spread. ⁓ you had to pick, you know, so it required, you know, not just ⁓ circling the favorite. ⁓ yeah. And so ⁓ yeah, I I I do remember, and I remember ⁓ I I I think as as ⁓ we we talked about this actually with the Brady ⁓ on on Jen Brady's episode on how like they at one point ATT was sponsoring March Madness and For a second they had the logo in the middle of the bracket, but then there was a lawsuit and said A N C A you can't touch the brackets. ⁓ but I remember offering to sponsor your pool as a rep. I had you know, I'd budget for such things. Right. And I remember you being, you know, a ⁓ a a person of high integrity we're like, Yeah, we just probably yeah we're already sort of, you know, ⁓ probably bending the rules a little bit on some, you know, inner office ⁓ gambling we probably should be sponsors into ⁓ from from the outside. So at any rate just a An anecdote I remember there. I've definitely I've definitely been known to lose some money on the tournament. ⁓ so I was at ESPN for a little bit. And ⁓ and so then and then I ended up ⁓ R Rashad played, met with me. He's like, Hey, we got a unique a unique need, an opportunity. Would you like to to come back into the full? And ⁓ so I did, and that was to kind of be a liaison to Media Vest in New York, who was working on Coca Cola at the time, and they needed some They didn't have a big IP type presence within their group. So he was looking for a kind of a liaison between StarCom, IP, and Media Vest, but it's Media Vest and StarCom are still kind of weird relationship. So I did that. A lot of commuting ⁓ between Chicago, New York, almost moved to New York. ⁓ with the we end up pitching all of Coke, consolidated pitch. One, I was gonna move, decided not to. And ⁓ everything kind of took off from there. As soon as I decided not to move, I got placed. I was back in the fold of StarCon, now overseeing larger kind of accounts, worked on US Army for a while, ⁓ was the director on that account. I was reporting to Andrew at that time. ⁓ and did you do the boot camp? I did. ⁓ Brady referenced, ⁓ referenced going to one. I actually was not on the account when we won it and they went on that trip. There was a second trip that was ⁓ that was offered for people who had joined the account since the beginning and had not had an opportunity. You know, when you work on something like Kellogg, you can sample the product by going and buying a box of cereal or a box of eggs or something, right? You can't really sample it on Army. And this was the closest thing. And I I'll tell you, it's ⁓ there's no question about it. It's not even close. Army was the f my favorite account I ever looked on. It felt like ⁓ more than anything we were doing something that really mattered. I know. It was it was amazing. It changed changed my life. I mean, it was a ma amazing experience. well we did get ⁓ from Jen after the episode, and I'll this will be the second time I'm gonna share a screen on the podcast here. ⁓ so if folks are watching on video, they'll be able to see this too. But we got a picture that she has sent in of her ⁓ cohort at ⁓ the the boot camp. ⁓ so folks go to fraprap dot com and you can see this ⁓ this picture. Thanks again for for sending that in. But yeah, to your point, this is you know. That's probably the only way ⁓ you're gonna or or want to experience the product. We we got they they were screaming at us. It was disorientation, it was chaos, but ⁓ yeah, it was it was pretty cool. So let me just I'm I'm being long-winded and I'm gonna I'm gonna jump to it really quick because ⁓ ultimately I ended up ⁓ leaving Chicago. ⁓ my my wife and I ⁓ we moved, we left Chicago and moved back here. ⁓ her and I are both from Lawrence. ⁓ we had ⁓ our oldest son was one at the time, or had just been yeah, he he he was born and we were we he was about one and we were like, let's move back. ⁓ family is all back here. So we moved back here. I took a job at an agency, an independent agency in Kansas City, Barkley, and ⁓ I worked at Barkley for several years. I came back and worked on their on the Sonic account, Sonic Drive In. It was a huge account, very familiar setting ⁓ to what I had been working on in Chicago. It was not a typical account for agency in in Kansas City, but it's something I was very familiar with, the budget size, the size of the team, the sophistication, level of the client, all those things were it was easy to slide in and I had credibility given my experience. So ⁓ came back, was working at Barclay for a while, worked at Barclay for about seven years, and then took another step another leap and left ⁓ left ⁓ Barclay to join the ownership team at a small agency that's based here in Lawrence called Callahan. It Callahan Creek at the time. And I was working at Callahan ⁓ in a variety of roles. Ultimately, my the last role I was in at Callahan was role of president. ⁓ they were I was one of four owners in the company. So that was a a again a progression of new experiences and ⁓ kind of in more of that like kind of agency leadership role as opposed to doing the actual trade, doing the actual work for clients. ⁓ and three years ago, a little over three years ago, ⁓ decided to ⁓ to stop and I've and and I left advertising ⁓ in the summer of twenty three. And ⁓ my wife ⁓ she my so the wife that I had in c in Chicago, well we ended up divorcing af ⁓ about a couple of years after we moved back to the area. ⁓ I remarried six years ago and ⁓ my wife ⁓ was also in advertising she was a project manager And we ⁓ as we went through COVID, we kinda decided let's let's change things up and do something different. And so we left our ⁓ we left advertising and ⁓ maybe you want to jump into this now. I don't know if it's later in the in the segue or in the in the deal. We can s we can loop back. I know you're flexible. ⁓ we started a seasonal business and we ⁓ have our own. We we manage a pop up, ⁓ holiday pop up that we go into restaurants and decorate over the top for Christmas and the Christmas holiday and through that season. And ⁓ so we're super busy for about three months of the year. And then the other nine months we're ⁓ we're pretty chill. So that's been ⁓ the the last transition. But it we've been out of advertising for a little over three years now. Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah. So we've ⁓ between Schreiber, who went into real estate, or like Jen, who's now ⁓ in, you know, ⁓ I guess we call it retail. ⁓ there's you know, it's interesting to see the trajectories, and everyone's kind of had their own take on like what their career in advertising and media sort of prepared them for where they are now. So how would you kind of characterize that? What what have you sort of taken with you ⁓ and what are you ⁓ happy to not have to do anymore? ⁓ well I'm really happy to not have to do time sheets. ⁓ that's that's super great. ⁓ you know ⁓ soft skills have always been a thing ⁓ I've always thought were really, really important. Things I've that's always the things I was always happy to be to focus on whenever I was giving a performance review or receiving one. Those are the transferable skills that you're gonna be able to use anywhere. And and advertising for my almost thirty years of of the and being in advertising was a perfect training ground for developing soft skills. Critical thinking and problem solving, interpersonal skills, the ability to communicate, ⁓ thinking strategically, thinking creatively to solve problems. Those are all apply in so many different things in life. And so today I manage clients, I communicate effectively with them. I'm responsive and take and, you know, address issues or concerns that they have. I have to get out and I have to sell. ⁓ I hold myself and my team to a high standard of things that we're delivering. These are all these are all themes, right? That that we've been doing forever. And so while we're applying these skills, my wife and I are applying these skills right now in a completely different world, it really doesn't feel that foreign because I feel like we're just being who we are. And we'll t you know, people will use terms like pivot and huge change in career, life change and things like that. I'll tell you, it feels a lot more familiar than it does than it does foreign because it's still just us. It's just me. I'm just doing what I do or what I try to do. Right. ⁓ so it's been it's been great and it's allowed us ⁓ it's allowed us some some more freedom with our own time. And ⁓ so yeah, it's been it's been great. No no regrets at all. That's awesome. Yeah. Well let's raise a glass to that to ⁓ advertising ⁓ preparing you for any anything and everything in life. I think that's our segue into the cooler round. ⁓ you do have a solo cup. I do, I do, I do. ⁓ cheers to that. So ⁓ you know the drill here. This is just gonna be the speed round. ⁓ so quick answers, first thing that comes to mind. ⁓ we always start with ⁓ aim handle, AOL Instant Messenger. ⁓ what was your handle? All right, I'm pretty sure it was Jen E and the hyphen is spelled out. So it's J-E H Y P H E N E. I'm pretty sure that's what it was. I love it. Yeah, that was definitely one of the like ⁓ hacks that you had to do with you know whether it was adding a bunch of G's in my case or spelling out the hyphen. Yeah, there's like no no no special characters, you know. So okay, well we'll just spell it out. That was the solve. Yeah. All right. ⁓ first boss at let's do IP. Shelby Sibill. Favorite client? I guess you only had one, but I only had one. That's easy for me. Yeah All right. So network solutions. If you had ⁓ been able to work on any other account, what was your FOMA? What account would you love to work on? I probably would have said I'd probably say ⁓ probably Kellogg. ⁓ and I and the reason why I say Kellogg because that was the first account I worked on at StarCon, ⁓ at Leo Burnett Media. I was in the Musinski group and it was it was Kellogg and I had like Fruit Loops and Frosted Flakes, ⁓ were my brands. ⁓ it would have been fun to to be able to work on that in a completely different world. Yeah. Yeah. Right on. ⁓ present company excluded, who was your favorite vendor? ⁓ well, man, between L ninety, I mean, you and Maddie, we probably did the most business with. So I would definitely say throw Maddie in there. You know, Rob Goldberg was a was a client ⁓ that I really I probably didn't do as much business with him. ⁓ but such a great human being. ⁓ and Schumacher also was a absolute stud. There's so many there were a lot of lot of great partners on the on the sales side. ⁓ but yeah, happy to great shout outs there. And yes, with the budgets that you guys spent, ⁓ you you got everybody's ⁓ best ⁓ best ⁓ attention on the rep side. so ⁓ we covered family, so you've got your wife, ⁓ I heard There was at least one kid, in the picture. ⁓ any others? Any pets? What do you want to share there? So my my my wife has two daughters, so I've got two sub stepdaughters that are in their late twenties. And then my sons are ⁓ twenty and seventeen. ⁓ we have two dogs, Jimmy and Maddie. And we have a granddaughter. I bet nobody else on who's been on the podcast has a granddaughter. ⁓ one of Amy's daughters has a has a daughter who's just turned three. And ⁓ And she is a she's a terror. She's awesome. ⁓ so yeah. Yeah. Yeah. ⁓ and did you breed any Jayhawks? Yeah. The older ⁓ guys. Yeah. Yeah. When ⁓ went in, my my older son is a he's a junior at ⁓ at KU. Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. He must be loving that. Yeah. ⁓ what are you most looking forward to in the coming year? We are moving. I'm I'm gonna keep a positive attitude about this. ⁓ we're moving to Lee Summit, Missouri. which is suburb ⁓ suburban Kansas City. It's it's ⁓ on the southeast side of the KC metro area. And ⁓ that's where Amy's daughters are and ⁓ and a lot of her extended family are over there. So she made the leap to move out here ⁓ several years ago and it was never gonna you know it was never under the pretense that it was forever. And ⁓ so we've sold our house. We're renting we're renting it back to the people we sold it to. And ⁓ we're ⁓ we're in the process of building a house over in Lee Summit. So we're gonna move over there. ⁓ hopefully at some point ⁓ in the next ⁓ probably nine to ten months. All right. Cool. Well good luck with that. and ⁓ when we do have the IRL ⁓ IP Frap Rap Reunion in Chicago, hopefully you can scoot on over ⁓ for that. It'll be great to have you in the mix. ⁓ it's time now for the closing Frap Rap freestyle round. ⁓ so this is ⁓ where I need from you some suggestions, keywords, props, ⁓ anything that'll inspire My rap here, ⁓ back in the day at Cozy, you know, we just go off of like what you were wearing or anything that was ⁓ happening with your account. So we gotta try a little harder ⁓ in this virtual setup here. But ⁓ you got some stuff, you got some fodder for me? I've I've got some ⁓ I've got some index cards I've written words on, so I'm just gonna I'll hold them up on the camera once you get going. I won't leave you. I won't leave you hanging. I won't leave you hanging. I'll keep I'll keep going. Appreciate it. All right. So producer Rob's gonna come in with the beat now and post and we'll slide right into it. So here we go. AG and the place to be. We got the rock chalk jayhawk for the century. They got lots of titles. They got lots of shots. You know, they do it up. When they step back and hit the pops, they pop them up, they pop them under. Power ad. Yo, we did it with the thunder. We bring the lightning and we'd spend a lot of money on network solutions. You know it wasn't funny. Hey, what I do, it was all about the domain that I would buy from them or the go-daddy people. It didn't matter because they were a little crazy, a little racy. Their ads were right and razy. And I would break it down on the 14th floor where I'd get a little more. And I'd climb through the door. And when I'd see old Ava at reception, I would say, I'm here for Jan Eric. Can I get a little blessing? She'd say, Let me talk with him. ⁓ no, he's busy. Have a little seat and we'll get to you in a tizzy. Ten minutes later. Jan Eric would call me up. I would raise my cup and put my feet up on his desk. And then before we get down to business, we would talk about the sweet 16 or whatever's clever. I don't know why. I never thought of that before, but it's been great exploring and going more and more and more with you today. Jan Eric, thanks for coming my way. Great to see you dude. Appreciate you. Thank you to everyone for tuning in. And we'll see you next week on For Rap Rap. Cheers. You're listening to the Media Ocean Podcast Network. For more of our shows, visit www.mediocean.comslash podcasts.