Mastering Demand Generation: The Key to Effective B2B Event Marketing

Mar 23

Featuring Jack Kosakowski, CEO OF Creation Agency

Jack Kosakowski is the CEO of Creation Agency and has been running the US division for over six years now and grew it to over seven figures ARR. Their clients range from startups to enterprises. Creation Agency acts as an extension of your team and fills the demand-gen gaps for companies looking to execute on social, email, and paid media.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

Jack’s career transition into marketing from sales
How Jack leverages events to propel demand generation for his clients
Why he considers the engagement rate of an event to be the biggest marker of success
Hubspot as the center of all marketing and sales initiatives
The components of successful demand generation
The skill sets needed to create webinars that convert

In this episode…

Marketing is essential for businesses to create brand awareness, generate leads, and drive sales. As the market becomes more and more desensitized to promotional materials, companies are finding it increasingly challenging to stand out. This is where demand generation comes in.

Demand generation involves identifying and engaging with potential customers who are likely to be interested in your product or service. Building an audience, understanding their needs, creating a compelling email marketing strategy, and delivering valuable content are all crucial components of demand generation. By providing valuable information and positioning themselves as the "purveyor of truth," companies can bring potential customers into their funnel and introduce them to their brand in a more meaningful way. This approach is not just about selling a product, but providing value and building trust with the audience, which can ultimately lead to conversions.

In this episode, Paige Buck hosts Jack Kosakowski, CEO of Creation Agency, to discuss creating a compelling B2B demand generation strategy using events to bring potential customers into the funnel ultimately leading to more meaningful and effective conversions.

Resources Mentioned in this episode

Sponsor for this episode…

This episode is brought to you by Kennedy Events.

Kennedy Events creates stress-free conferences and events, providing expert management and design for all your corporate event needs — from in-person to hybrid and virtual events.

To learn more about our services, visit our website at www.kennedyevents.com and schedule a consultation today to find out how we can guide you in making your event successful.

Transcript

Paige Buck 00:03

Welcome to the Kennedy events podcast. I'm your host, Paige Buck. Past guests include Carol Gale of special de events, Missy Goldberg of Similar Web, and Julie Liu of F point. And today, I'm joined by Jack Kosakowski. Jack is the CEO of Creation agency and has been running the US division for over six years now and has grown it to over seven figures. Their clients range from startups to enterprises. Creation agency acts as an extension of your team and fills the demand-gen gaps for companies looking to execute on social, email, and paid media. Today's episode is brought to you by Kennedy Events; Kennedy Events creates stress-free conferences and events, providing expert management and design for all your corporate event needs, from in-person to hybrid and virtual. You can learn more about us at Kennedy events.com. So welcome, Jack.

Jack Kosakowski 0:57 Well, thanks for having me.

Paige Buck 0:58 [I’m] very happy to be catching up with you. After all this time, just for our audience, we have had the pleasure of sharing a client for a number of years. And that's where I first got, I don't know, sparked by all that. Even just the term demand gen was like a big eye-opener for me. I was like, wow, here's a whole world I don't begin to understand, that can be a make-or-break piece of the puzzle for a successful event. How did you get started in this?

Jack Kosakowski 1:31 Oh, you know, it's weird. Like I worked for a marketing automation platform, like a competitor to HubSpot, they're called Axon. And I was actually in sales there. And I sold to so many agency owners in the marketing world that I kind of like had to learn, like, marketing because I didn't understand what they did. Like it was really hard to sell the product that I had at the time or thought so. So, then I just kind of, like made it into marketing somehow. Then it kind of evolved from there, like my business partner was actually my biggest client at that company. And then he was like, hey, you know, I want to open up the US division, you know, in kind of a thriving European market. And I want to kind of transfer over. And so I was like, Hey, I've never done this before, but I think I can be good at it. And then here we are, almost seven years later.

Paige Buck 2:20

Wow. Well, always grab the good salespeople. You must, even if sales weren’t gonna be your full-time gig when you see an awesome salesperson. steal them if you can.

Jack Kosakowski 2:30 Yeah, I mean, I think it helps that I came from sales over to marketing. Actually, I think, like, it makes made me a better marketer, it makes me a better marketer, I don't know. But it also helps, you know, keep the agency alive, right? Because I can sell and then execute on the marketing side.

Paige Buck: 2:49 So yeah. Both sides of it. Yeah.

Jack Kosakowski: 2:50 Yeah. You know, I lived in one world, and now I live in the other world. I do miss selling, as you know, I don't do like I used to sell. But that's a whole different conversation.

Paige Buck 03:00

Nothing wrong with that. And so when you got into this, were events a big part of the mix of what you were trying to sell, or was that a later discovery?

Jack Kosakowski 03:11

So, one of my first big my first client was my, honestly, it's not my first client, like my second or third. And they were community sales called Sales Hacker. And so, they were a community for salespeople. And essentially, you know, when we came on, they were doing one or two webinars a month. I can't remember how many, but anyways, we had to execute on that. So, we had to figure out, like, how to get people to these webinars because that was kind of how the community paid for itself, because people would, you know, SaaS companies would come in and sponsor the webinars. So, we had to, like, take, you know, he'd sell a webinar. His name is Max Altschuler. He was head of marketing at Outreach after he left Sales Hacker and sold it to them. But like he, you know, he taught us a lot about this because he would sell sponsorships to a webinar, and then we'd have to, like, execute on it to make sure we hit the right numbers of signups for the sponsors. And that kind of evolved. Yeah, that's how we kind of like learned at webinars.

But I think the biggest challenge for a lot of companies is, like, we kind of live in this new world where it's like, don’t gate anything, you know, nobody wants to gate anything. Which is a very interesting route that we're going. Not to say that I agree or disagree with it. I'm kind of like neutral on it. But you do have to have something at some point when you invest all this time and money into social media like you do have to figure out how to get somebody on your email list, right? So, you can communicate with them. And I think, you know, good events, good webinars, or in-person events are like the go-to like, they'll that'll never go away. Because, you know, when you're giving people like really good information for free, and especially on topics that are very, very relevant, you know, timely, for example, you know, one of our clients does compensation, and there's this new thing called transparency. All the HR executives in certain states are trying to figure this thing out, like; how are they going to figure that out? Right? Like, there's not a lot of information on out there. So, you know, this company went, and they did a series of webinars on it, and like, they get, you know, 1000 people to these virtual events, to hear about this. And it just so happens that they're, you know, platform kind of supports this too. But that wasn't what they led with, right? They lead with the idea that, hey, come here for this information that you can't get anywhere else. And I don't think we'll ever get away from that. Right? Seminars to get that information. Right?

Paige Buck 5:30 So you're demonstrating it sounds like, first of all, an easy hook is people have a thirst for knowledge in their field, or they have a serious pain point, like, oh, my God, new HR compliance, new tax compliance, what the heck do we do help, and they go seeking information. And when you can provide that, you are positioning yourself as a trusted adviser. And then, your agency skill set and, like, your unique sweet spot, is I finding those people who are expressing that pain point? Like, yeah, through all sorts of different web demand gen tactics, that feel, I think, like they are very intangible to people who don’t do it or haven’t cracked it the way you have?

Jack Kosakowski 6:20 Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, if you just look at marketing, in general, like most b2b companies suck at marketing. I mean, they just scream at you about how awesome their product is. And like, we're just kind of desensitized to that.

Paige Buck: 6:30 Yes.

Jack Kosakowski 6:31You know, if you want to get the attention of somebody that could potentially, down the road, be a customer. How do you do that? Right? I mean, if you are, you know, allowing them to come to listen to a conversation and get some information that's going to make them better at their job, you know, some, you know, depends on what your product is, can be, make you better personally, like if your life coach, for example. Yeah. But you know, in most circumstances, the clients that we're working with their B2B SaaS companies, and they have to come at things at a different angle, like they have to bring people into the funnel and introduce their brand in a different way than just like, hey, here's like, some promotional video, here's some blog to read about how cool we are like, it's just doesn't work like that anymore. So, you know, when you can be the purveyor of truth on a subject that people are really hungry to learn about. And you do that in a way that's not just like saying, hey, buy my product, it's like more like, hey, come in and listen to our executives tell you how to fix your problem that you have. That's the way that marketing has always been done, but in different ways, like seminars and people used to have to buy a ticket to a conference. You know, now you can do that virtually. Yeah, right. The problem is just a lot of companies just don't know how to do it. Right. And that's typically when they come in and hire a company like ours.

Paige Buck 7:49 So it sounds like you've got HubSpot at the center of many of your clients, tech stacks. What else do you add to that to help deliver on your promises on what you're trying to do for our client?

Jack Kosakowski 8:03 Well, typically, you know, the reason we like HubSpot is just because it's like it's got all the tools in one place, right? So, for example, like if you want to do a webinar like you've got to, you know, have a service like Zoom, in most cases, that's one of our clients use. And then you've got to plug that into HubSpot. And then you've got to be able to get all the data because one of the things that we measure for a successful event is not how many people sign up; it’s great to have 500 people sign up. But it's actually how many of them showed up, you know, what's our show rate? And then the second, the biggest thing is the engagement rate, like, you know, if we got 100 people to a webinar or 1000 people to a webinar, if not one of them answered a poll or engaged in the chat or something like that would be a failure. It's a failure of the event, right? So, you know, online events really are driven by one thing and one thing only anymore; it’s like, not only do you gotta get people to sign up, then you got to get them to show up. But then you got to actually keep them engaged because there's got to be an endpoint that to that webinar virtual event, or whatever that is that endpoint is typically, hey, what's your CTA and the only people from a data-driven standpoint that actually come to the finish line of whatever your outcome is. Whether that's to book a demo or to get them to, download something else. Right after they've attended. You got it. It all correlates with the engagement rate? Right?

Paige Buck: 9:27 And so, you have to have the data. I mean, you have to have the tech on the back end, to capture that engagement data.

Jack Kosakowski 9:34 Correct because, you know, the ultimate goal is like, if you're building out a virtual event, just like if you're building out an in-person event, you know, the data around, like who signs up because, like, you want to keep those people coming back, you know, if you've, I can't quote it verbatim because it changes but like, you know, it takes 19 touches to get somebody to convert into a demo, for example of your SaaS company or to get them to convert it takes 19 trial signups to get them to convert into a paying customer like, you have to touch those people a certain amount of times. So like, they just came in through a webinar or, like, you still have a lot of work to do on the marketing side, which HubSpot allows them to do, right like, which is keep in front of those people in a variety of different ways to keep them engaged enough to finally say, one point, ah, a light bulb goes off, like, I need to talk to you guys about what you have to offer.

Paige Buck: 10:26 Mm-hmm. Yeah. And I think if I, if I make an analog between this and live events, we're often making the case, and I know you are too, with a live event, like it is one piece of the total mix. And if everybody has an amazing experience, that day got so much out of everything that you offered at that conference, and then they do nothing else was the authentic success. Like was it? like, what else do you need from them? What else are you hoping they're doing with you? And for you? Are they buying the next piece of your product? Have they extended their lifecycle? Have they, you know?

Jack Kosakowski 11:03 Are they gonna come to the next event? I mean, I think that's the big thing. Right? Yeah. Which if you're a paid event company, like,

Paige Buck: 11:10 well, if that event is a revenue generator for you exactly, yeah.

Paige Buck Right. Right. Well, yeah. So you were telling me, you have a really great story of somebody who went from like, a webinar a month to a webinar a day, but how? How could you have that much? Yeah, what does it look like to scale that?

Jack Kosakowski Yeah, so we, you know, we work with a company called Sell Better. So, John Barrows is kind of like one of the most recognized sales trainers. I would say, in the world, he works with the largest tech companies, and he has built something special. And so when we came in, they were doing one webinar a month, they didn't have sponsors, and then we decided that, hey, like, you guys are driving thousands of people to this one webinar I'm on, why not do two and get sponsors for it. And then the sponsors get the leads because, essentially, they had all the right people coming to these webinars that the tech companies were looking to sell to the tech companies, you know, couldn't find a webinar that would drive those kinds of numbers, you know, engagement wise, and then, you know, now they've gone from over the past three years, you know, went from one webinar a month, two webinars a month to four webinars a month. Now, it's one, we call them live events, but there's one live event a day, which is 20 a month. So that's sponsors that sponsor all of these. And, you know, we find guests for them, we have to execute on, you know, what is the what's the hook, who's what's going to drive people to these events. Now they have a team we work with, Sell Betters marketing team, that great marketing team. And then we’re kind of an extension of them. So, we help you kind of run the day-to-day stuff in the weeds, make sure that everything is clicking that, you know, they also have hosts that are full-time. So, we have to like work with the hosts, and make sure that they have all the information that they need. I mean, there's just a lot of like prep. And then also, we have to hit the numbers, right? So you're they're hitting over 500 people signing up for it every day, right? That's you're averaging over 500 people.

Paige Buck: 13:13 So, it's doing that over and over again.

Jack Kosakowski 13:14 You got to keep every day.

Paige Buck: 13:16 Yeah, if you've got the content, and the format, and the host, and sponsors all locked in. Outside of that, that that's the event itself. Tell us a little bit more about what, like demand gen. components? Like what are some of the success ingredients there?

Jack Kosakowski 13:33

Um, you know, topics, understanding the audience, building the audience, having a big email list, you know, over time, and just having the right guest topics. Mm hmm. Guests, topics email list. And then process right? The process behind all of that. And then the right email marketing strategy, because, you know, social media only gets you so far. Right. So, there's a, you know, different elements to that, which is like, how do we get new people a certain amount of new people to come to these events? And then how do we get the, you know, the right amount of all the people that have been there before back, but then you have this other element of, like, we need to get director and above titles to certain events, like, there's so many different kinds of moving parts for each event. But at the end of the day, if it's good content, people will come back.

Paige Buck: 14:27 So that drives engagement that drives like a desire to show up. You were talking about being, I mean, that I think we both know this phrase intrinsically but to unpack it a little bit. When you act as an extension of somebody's marketing team. And you've got a SaaS company with a team of five or an entrepreneur with this team of one and a half--driving marketing. They might think there's no reason I can't do this myself. This is not rocket science. This is not brain surgery, but you maybe they're seeing one of you or two of you, but you have like a whole suite of amazing minds and skill sets behind you. What are some of those? What are some of those skill sets?

Jack Kosakowski 15:19 Well, I think there's, I mean, overall, you could do webinars at different levels, right? And most people are just doing a simple webinar; they’re not really getting that good of results. But when you really do and build out a good virtual process, like there's a lot of people behind the scenes, right, like you have somebody like doing copy, you have somebody doing design, you have somebody doing research, for topics, and then you ask somebody that's doing the promotional side on social media, whether that's paid and organic, or both. And then you have somebody doing the email marketing side of things and looking at the data to be able to tell you, like, here are the people that we should be sending this to building out subs. I mean, there are so many different people with different skill sets that are kind of doing the behind-the-scenes stuff. And then you have other people that are just managing the relationships that because if you're doing, you know, especially doing one show a day, you have a lot of people that you're asking to, for their time to come on to the show, you know, just like if you book podcast guests like somebody has to make that commitment of 45 minutes, like, you're asking five to 10 people a week, to make a commitment to you to come on a webinar. And to give you their knowledge like this a lot of work just in that aspect of well, just like if it was an in-person event.

Paige Buck: 16:23 That process component gets real important, or you're going to be dropping balls left and right.

Jack Kosakowski: 16:25 Yeah, and so a lot of people still go, Well, that's pretty simple. Like, I could do that on my own. Well, maybe you could. I’m not gonna say that there are not some marketers out there that can, um, but it's just very rare to me where I see what we can do. And then they come in and internally try to replace us.

Paige Buck 16:45

You're like, good luck with that.

Jack Kosakowski 16:49 Yeah, and I mean, you know, the agency world, I think if you write with work with the right agency, like, that understands the market and the pricing, that agencies should actually be cheaper, on what they deliver on. And I think, you know, a lot of clients don't see that, like, oh, well, I'm paying X amount of dollars, and the only people I interact with are Paige, and Jack. well Yeah, but what you don't realize is that Paige and Jack have a payroll, multiple people that they've essentially turned into experts, because they've done such a great job on the process side, that like, you have to pay for them to have a really successful event. So, you know, I think that's the hard part for clients is they don't really understand how many people it takes to make something successful. And then really, if you break down the dollar amount of like, how many people were paying behind the scenes, like, it's way cheaper for you? Or it should be? I'm not gonna say that because there are agencies that are just like, outlandishly expensive. But for us, like I just say, like, listen, we're the price of one San Francisco salary. And you're gonna get five people with that.

Paige Buck 17:58: Yeah, that's a really strong value proposition. Yeah, they've been they've got a whole team of people holding, but this process and all of the little pieces on their behalf

Jack Kosakowski 18:08 You know, you get these a lot of clients that are like, well, I'm scared, like, I don't want an agency to be owning our internal processes, like if I want to sell someday, and I'm like, Listen, if you're gonna sell someday, that's great. Like, right before you're going to sell, I'll help you like, I'm a good enough agency owner that, like, if you're really at that point, like, I'll help, I'll help you three months before, build an internal team so that it looks like whatever we need to do, we'll get, we'll get you built like, but most clients, they say that and, yeah, we need to build the internal team just for like self-scalability, well, I don't necessarily know if I even agree that company that comes in, and they know, an agency is doing a really good job. But you know, that that's just part of this game.

Paige Buck 18:53: That can be part of the existing engine, having a really great resource like your agency. I'm curious for, where you see this work going on and how you stay on top of trends.

Jack Kosakowski: 19:05 You know, that's a tough one, because I'm not like a huge fan of trends. You know, I see like, Oh, my client, all of our clients like, well, we need to be on tick tock, we need to be, you know, we need to do all these things. And I'm like, Well, you're not even doing like the basics, the fundamentals the right way. Why would you want to add something more to you know, like YouTube, YouTube is a dark hole for 99% of b2b businesses. Like they don't need to be on YouTube. You just don't like, like, when's the last time you went to YouTube to, like, fix a technology problem? Like you just don't, right?

You go to YouTube to watch a podcast or, like, you know, get a review on something like you just we're just not at that place yet. So I think that's where I try to hold back is to be like, Okay, what's working? You know, I don't want to lose sight of, like, new things that are coming, but at the same point, like, I'd rather get you to a point where we got the basic fundamentals down working so good that we're at a point where like, Okay, well, we need to expand our horizons, but like most companies are just not there yet. So that's more of the time. I'm veering away from like the shiny stuff and saying, do the fundamentals correct. And then we'll have that conversation.

Paige Buck 20:19: You sound exactly like many business coaches, to entrepreneurs that I know which like, put that down, put that down, come back here, sit focus, dial in the fundamentals before you go off, like shiny object, shiny object.

Jack Kosakowski 20:36: Yeah, like, if you can. If you're a company that fits the virtual events model, but you have a product that you should be educating people about, like, if you can't even run a successful webinar with over 500 people attending on a regular basis. Why would you want to go do YouTube? Like, you can't even like execute on a fundamental basic campaign? YouTube is you're gonna have a hell of a time at YouTube, like, if you can, you know, yeah, that's where I'm at is like, get down the basic fundamentals of what works now, not events, live events, or live events or virtual events, they don't work for every client. That's not most clients aren't even at a stage where, you know, in person, like, You got to be at a certain point, you know, virtual events. I don't even think some early-stage startups, like, it's not even worth it. They don't even have people to follow up on the leads, even if they had them, right? So, just depending on where you are in the cycle, but gotta be smart. That sounds like because of the companies we work with, they have limited resources, right?

Paige Buck: 21:41 So well, and ultimately, when few people don't, most people have limited resources most businesses have to choose. So it sounds like you can see that like a pitfall for some of your clients is like shiny object syndrome. Like, what's the next thing? What's the next thing? And you'd counsel, dial in the fundamentals focus on focus on nailing this? What are some of the other pitfalls you see your clients facing? And you're trying what holes are you trying to keep them from stepping in?

Jack Kosakowski 22:10

I mean, I think we're in a really tough place when it comes to marketing right now. Like, nobody can argue with me on this. And if they do, like, they're nuts, but like, it's really hard, like paid media used to be able to crush paid media for like a decent cost. Paid media prices are insane right now, like, you know, used to get one or $2 downloads for something, now it's like nine or $10. Like, wow, so there's no way to do things. Cheap anymore. I mean, there just really isn't. So that's why you just got to be so smart about, like, where you spend your time and your money and your resources. And I think the biggest pitfall is just companies spend a lot of money on shitty content like they just stuff that they've done no, like true research on like, they haven’t really thought it through. They're just like, well, we need to do content marketing, we need to put up content, we need to do a webinar, it's like, but they're not thinking through, like what webinar, like, why are they doing this webinar? Who's it going to attend? Is it going to actually, you know, is it going to get us to the outcome that we're looking to achieve? They're just, like, checking boxes? I think that's the hardest part.

Paige Buck: 23:18 Getting like, how do you really hone in on-- do you start? I mean, we often counsel our clients with an event to start from why, like, Why hold this? Why would they want to be? Why? Why, like, why a live event and on a webinar? Or it's sort of in that same vein of like this meeting could have been an email, they know, why put all this effort into gathering people? Make sure you're crystal clear on that. How do you help them uncover what that piece of content could be? And then how to frame it so that folks will want to show up?

Jack Kosakowski: 23:54 Well, I mean, typically, we just know, because we have data to kind of back it up. That's why we stick with, like, kind of the same you know, industries and clients, you know because we can say that this works. And this does not work. We've just tested it so many times. I think that's where, why we've had so much success as an agencies, keeping clients and retaining them is just because we tick to the same industries, we just kind of know what works and what doesn't. But the other thing is, you know, testing and so forth. And then, you know, just to be fair, there's a lot of marketers that just have no idea how to word something. Well, that's just awful. Like, what? Nobody’s gonna sign up for that. Right?

So I mean, there's some testing, and we don't know everything, you know, we're not the agency that will come in and tell you that we know everything, but I can just say that we've done so many of these virtual events that we can just kind of tell you like, hey, just by a search, easy search on Twitter, is anybody talking about this, like Twitter, for example, you know, like, is anybody talking about this on LinkedIn? Like I have a great post on LinkedIn and what people are talking about and the certain industries that we work with. I just know what works and what doesn't. A lot of times, and if I don't know, we do enough research to at least give our opinion.

Paige Buck: 25:01 Mm hmm. So, they can trust you to give them really quality, quality feedback. Don't do this, don't do this. And then it sounds like once you're getting like your client who's able to spin up a webinar a day effectively, they probably have built in their built-in research tool right there. If they're engaging those attendees, what are your biggest problems? What are you guys trying to solve?

Jack Kosakowski: 25:33 Exactly? 100%.

Paige Buck: 25:35 The vendor base machine for getting new ideas for what they could be teaching? What they could be sharing?

Jack Kosakowski: 25:38 Yeah, I mean, like when we used to work with you guys, as soon as the event was over the live event, like a survey went out, hey, what were the topics you were…

Paige Buck: 25:46 While you are still having a beer on the show floor, They're filling out that.

Jack So? Who was your favorite speaker? What was your favorite topic? I mean, all of that you just honed that in virtual events, it's a lot easier to do that. Right? Because you can, you know, Zoom has got that built into the platform now. But I, yeah, I mean, you a lot of times you just have that. Enough of those surveys, like you start to get it.

And also, like, I think the other thing is, you have to keep your own polls, right? You have to like watch what people are talking about on LinkedIn, like, as an agency owner, like that's, I spent hours, you know, people Oh, my God, you spent so much time on social media, it's like, well, but I'm not. I don't even like social media. Or like, I’m just there because I know I have to be here.

Paige Buck:But it's like your I mean, it's your everything. It's your it would be your Gartner Group data. And the New York Times for you.

Jack Kosakowski 26:47

I'm annoyed by half the people I follow up, but I just, you know,

you know, I'm doing that because I understand that these people have like, got the voice of a lot of the customers that our clients are looking for it. So like, do I follow them on LinkedIn? Because I want to hear that their r stories? No, I don't want I don't actually want to hear it. But I just know that, like, that's a big piece. Because a lot of our clients aren't, you know, not they don't have that time, or I don't know, if that's a time, they probably do have the time they just don't want to make time for that's just not like on their radar. So, they're kind of just relying on us for that.

Paige Buck: 27:18 That's super valuable, too. Okay, I have I have, you're making me split apart by my final question here. So I'm gonna ask it in two phases. Since you're like, I spend a lot of time on LinkedIn. Sounds like you don't like, like, I'm just, I'm just there even if it's like, aggravate me.

Jack Kosakowski I still love it. I think I've just been doing this so long. It's exhausting. It's all exact. I mean, you're you're also like you are suffering, the same as, as the folks that you're trying to reach?

Paige Buck:

As you said, there's so much noise, it's hard out there to like, separate out?

Jack Kosakowski: Well, I think that's to your point earlier, like, I think that's the hardest part now is to be completely honest with clients, and say it's hard. Yes, I have no magic wand, I have no, you don't have a lot of experience. I have a lot of clients under my belt whom we've had success with. But like, it gets harder every day, like to build a brand to get people to sign up for something. And so you just, you know, they have they get excitement, especially new time, new founders, like they're really excited. They think they've got something that's so special that everybody's gonna want and like, you kind of have to just say, like, what you have what 50 Other people have already are already selling. Not to say that this can't work. But you almost just have to. It’s hard to like dial people back to reality.

Paige Buck: Well, it sounds to me like in five or six short years of which the pandemic has been a big part, the space all our spaces, like in bed, especially online, have just become so saturated with noise and very little signal. So, to do something. You mentioned Max ALTSCHULER earlier, who had built something incredible, you know, in a relatively short period of time, was able to hone that message and deliver something that like people went to over and over and over again. Could he be successful doing that if you were starting today?

Jack Kosakowski: Great point. I mean, I don't know. I don't think you'd have the success that he had when he did. Did you work with Max, too? Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's where like, oh, small world, right? We knew each other from Max. . Yeah, that's funny. Yeah. I have a ton of admiration for him and what he built and love when it kind of comes back around when he comes up. I so I was gonna say, and Max comes to mind, of course, but like somebody whose message you actually admire on LinkedIn, if you can think of anybody? Because they all suck.

Jack Kosakowski: That's a great question. Um, I like, I kind of like following people like Noah Kagan. He has Sumo.

Paige Buck: App Sumo?

Jack Kosakowski: App Sumo. Yeah. App Sumo. I kinda admire guys like him in a weird way because they are founders, and then they are content creators. Like Patrick Betke. he has something Value Entertainment. I like these entrepreneurial guys that are kinda turned into content creators where they just have intriguing conversations with other entrepreneurs. I find that to be kinda interesting. Less about the tactical stuff that used to be. Because I find it all kinda regurgitated. I kinda like more of the high-level founders talking about bigger-picture stuff.

Paige Buck: Inspiration or thought leadership stuff or industry, and I don’t want to say trends, Industry outlook. As opposed to like three tips for “dut, dut da.” How about somebody just in your broader professional interactions that you admire offline, an offline admiration?

Jack Kosakowski: You know, I worked with a founder who’s very intriguing. He started an NFT sports company with college athletics.

Paige Buck: Oh my God, NFT is going to be a dirty word soon.

So, what I’ll say is that he’s been fun to work with because I’ve watched him pivot the business. I’ve seen a young founder take a really hot industry and then watch it change, and then, involve it into something else. And I think that’s really cool. Which is something I’m sure you had to do with COVID when in-person events went away.

Paige Buck: Watching somebody be elastic and nimble enough and then get traction with the next thing is super compelling.

Jack Kosakowski: It’s interesting because entrepreneurism is scary. You were doing in-person, and then COVID hit, and the government essentially took away your right to do business one day. Granted, it could be the pandemic’s fault too. It doesn’t matter at the end of the day; it was your business.

Paige Buck: At the end of the day, in-person was not happening, not happening.

Jack Kosakowski: It was just not happening. And you had two options. You could stop, or you could evolve and change. I always admire that. That’s happening in the world around us.

Paige Buck: In the event industry, if you speak to anybody who ran an agency like ours or any of our vendors, there were truly two paths. Hide, or if you had the resources or the personal or professional cushion, go dormant. I’m going offline for a while.

I know somebody who ran an incredibly successful business here in the Bay area, and after a few weeks of we’re going to shift, we’re going to expand, we’re going to shift, we’re going to expand was like, I will be mountain biking for a few weeks, and then I’ll be spending a lot of time with my children.

There were many times when I was like, can I just go to sleep, and somebody wake me up when this is over? And say that out loud and then be like, no, no, I can’t actually do that. Okay, we will instead expand and explore, and I hate the word pivot; after all that, shift into new territory.

And I think it’s really encouraging, admirable, or reassuring when you can see somebody else do that even if it’s not in, like, a global emergency, but just “NFTs are changing, will they be viable or were they a flash in the pan?” And what will you do? That’s a really nice example. I like it a lot.

Jack Kosakowski: What are you going to you do? When the market takes something away from you. A lot of times, you can’t control things that happen really fast. But you have livelihoods, and you have people’s salaries. My wife and I both work in this business, so if something happens in business, you lose an entire thing…

Paige Buck: It hits both of you. Yeah, it turns out we are living in the real world. We can neither hibernate nor opt-out.

Jack Kosakowski It would be easier if I were in a financial position to do that. But I’m not quite there yet.

Paige Buck: No, but I think you gave me a lot of really good insight. I want to end on a high note here. Something you are looking forward to heading into the holiday or the new year. Something bright and shiny. Your children, for instance.

Jack Kosakowski Yeah, this is the first year we’re going to be home and have all of our family come here. So that will be fun. Usually, we travel to our family.

I’m just looking forward to not thinking about marketing for four or five days.

Paige Buck: A small breather and a chance to recharge and reset.

Jack Kosakowski: Unfortunately, my clients are not taking their feet off the gas right now.

Paige Buck: There just going to drive right through the goalposts that mark the end of the year.

Jack Kosakowski But that’s okay. I’m just thankful we have clients, right now.

Paige Buck: Well, thanks so much, Jack. It’s been a pleasure talking to you.

Jack Kosakowski Thanks for having me.

Paige Buck: This has been Jack Kosakowski CEO of Creation Agency.

Ready to Learn More About What the Kennedy Events Team Can Bring to Your Event?

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PAIGE BUCK

Paige Buck is the co-owner of Kennedy Events, a large-scale event management company based in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York City. Our team creates stress-free conferences and events with a positive impact, which allows our clients to resonate with their audience. Kennedy Events specializes in producing flawless product launches, award ceremonies, fundraisers, and multi-day conferences while keeping our eye on retention and engagement goals.

About Kennedy Events

Kennedy Events began with one goal in mind—to produce high-level corporate events with just as much strategy as style. Maggie founded the company in 2000, found her match in Paige, and in 2011 the two became official partners. Since then, these two resourceful and brilliant creatives have pooled their strengths to build one one of the most the most sought after corporate event companies in San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles.