Paths in Progress
Paths in Progress
Jeffery Keilholtz: Senior VP Marketing, Broadway Licensing Global, Actor, Political Campaign Manager; Degrees in Psychology & Sociology, Harvard Executive Education in Business of Entertainment, Media, & Sports
Many students find a home in the Arts in high school. Some students build their education and career dreams from that experience, and sometimes those dreams don’t initially work out. When he didn’t get into his dream school, Jeff made some different choices to not only become a better actor, but to become the person he wanted to be. Life circumstances gave him reason to take some unexpected turns along his career path (political campaigns?), but everything came together in the career he has today–in Broadway Licensing! Who knew he would end up in a space with such historical significance to the acting field? Check out Jeff’s story to hear how everything came together into the incredible career he has today.
Jeff’s TedEx talk that we reference in our conversation:
How To Make A Lasting Impression | Jeffery Keilholtz | TEDxRockville
Thank you for joining us today on Paths in Progress. I'm your host, Carrie Young. On this podcast, people in a variety of career fields, talk about their journey from choosing their college, deciding which majors and minors to pursue, their first jobs out of college, and all of the hurdles, detours and victories along their path through today. Our goal is to help students hear about a variety of exciting opportunities out there and understand what day-to-day life is like in these careers. I hope you enjoy and learn from our story today. Thanks for listening. Hi, everyone. Thanks for joining us today. We are here today with Jeff, who is an SVP of marketing for Broadway Licensing Global. He has an associate's degree in psychology and sociology. He has a bachelor's degree in psychology, and he's done some executive education through Harvard Business School for the Business of Entertainment, Media, and Sports. Jeff, thanks so much for joining us today.
Jeff:Carrie, thank you so much for having me.
Carrie:Jeff, I'm so glad you're here. And if you could start out by taking us back to your high school days and telling us a little bit about perhaps how you were either planning for college or what you were envisioning for your future.
Jeff:Yeah, so high school days. Well, my parents got divorced when I was very young and that really sort of shook my life and the life of my sisters. I was a parentified kid in a lot of ways, and I had to grow up really fast. And through that journey, I was alone a lot. And it really, it triggered me to go into my imagination. That's where I found a wealth of possibilities. I found safety there and I found self confidence. And through that, I really at an early age, found a North star for me as an actor. I focused very singularly on that. Like I said, from an early age. And when I got into High school, ninth grade, I didn't have a very nice stepfather, right? He wasn't very good to my sisters and my mom and me. I felt like I had to be very protective of the women and girls in my family. And I say that because it was a court battle and I couldn't audition that year for the high school stage, right? For the fall play or spring musical. And I so admired what was going on there. But by the time I got to 10th grade I had a real passion for it, but I was very nervous. But I had some folks start to encourage me to say, you know, go ahead and audition. And I auditioned in 10th grade for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. And I got cast. I got cast as Billy Bibbitt. That experience changed my life. I met our director, who would become my mentor, Bill Toscano. The high school you went to Carrie was, it's an arts feeder school, as they called it. A lot of county high schools would come to our high school to try and audition for the shows. It functioned very much as a pre professional environment. And Bill ran it as a professional theater. And that was tremendously helpful to me. And it really aligned with my values as someone who is taking themselves and their work really seriously and really looking to grow as an actor. And I found a life there on this stage throughout the rest of my high school years. I played snare drum as well. It was very serious and immersed in that, but it was on this stage that I felt at home. I would read I read all of Stanislavski's books. I read all of Boleslavski I read all these different books to try and soak up a wealth of knowledge to improve. And then I said, okay I'm gonna go audition for Juilliard and i'm gonna get into Juilliard and i'll be on broadway and win an oscar And that will be that. So I go to Juilliard and I got my ass handed to me Right. I didn't make it through one callback and it was really defeating. I went back again to audition and I didn't get in either. So I auditioned twice for Juilliard and didn't get in. I ended up going to a state college, Frostburg State University. And at the time, I was really bitter. And I thought, I'm not here to make friends. I just want to continue to my growth as an actor and get going in New York, et cetera. That experience though, really humbled me. Because I learned, well, a lot about myself, but I found another mentor, her name was Mirzy Yost. She had just come to the theater department from New York, and she took me under her wing. Taught me a lot about the business, introduced me to method acting, which changed my life. And also introduced me to black box theater, where I really learned about intimacy on the stage. Really started to learn about craft.
Carrie:There's so much of what you're saying that I know a lot of people can relate to. And first of All, you know a huge thing a lot of us can relate to is finding a place in the arts whether that's a place for expression or a place for community or a place in In a way to escape some other things going on in our lives or to find your confidence or like all of the above, right? A lot of people can really relate to, that having a huge impact on our lives personally, not just, you know, like a career path, and something we pursue, although it certainly can lead to that, but I think a lot of students, in middle school and high school can really relate to that in particular. And then also, a lot of people can relate to having this dream school, you know, that they really want to go to, or perhaps a dream city they want to live in, or a dream company they want to work for and having that not work out and ending up somewhere else and having a lot of feelings about that, right? A lot of different kinds of feelings about what that can be. And, that's something I talk to students about a lot is that you can be successful and you can find your place no matter where you end up, even if it's the last place you wanted to be. There's still so much opportunity for growth and success and fun too, right? That you can do that from anywhere, even though it doesn't feel like that going in.
Jeff:Yes, yes, bingo. I think you, you really hit the bullseye there. I think to your first point, Carrie, I've always believed that the drama department of a high school or college, it functions sort of like an island of misfit toys. And I really believe that it can save people's lives, right? You find there's so much acceptance of just who you are as a human being in an environment like that. It's just a wonderful place to be. And I think to your other point, what I was starting to learn was about adaptation, about adapting to situations that I didn't plan for, that I couldn't control that. I didn't want. Yeah. Right. At first anyway. Whether it was my home life growing up or it was being rejected from Juilliard or was trying to adapt at a state school. And so, I ended up staying one year at FSU, I abandoned the theater degree and I said, I want to become the best actor I can be, to me that means learning more about human beings and the way we function. And so I pursued degrees in psych and soc. I got a couple of associates degrees, but then I went to New York and I got accepted to the Actors Conservatory, which was founded by Elaine Aiken and Lily Lodge. They were prodigies of Lee Strasberg, and I studied at the conservatory. And that was a wake up call for me, too. I thought, you know, my instrument or my craft, it was at one place. And I realized, hold on a second. It's totally not. Then I found a mentor in a man named Sergei Dryden, who was from the Moscow art theater. I ended up going back to school later to finish my bachelor's degree. I was, I was. Gosh, I was around 30 and then, I hit pause on performing when I had my daughter and I leaned into this corporate side of life. And I really resisted that for a while, but I found through my years in the grind of trying to make it as an artist, I ended up with a career in politics, running campaigns. I ended up with a corporate career and that's how I got to BLG. And in retrospect, I realized all these experiences of adaptation and functioning in high pressure moments, et cetera, et cetera, has, I think, helped me at this moment in my life and career. Of course we don't have that perspective necessarily when we're going through it. Yeah. Right. But looking back, I think those are some things that helped me. That journey while it was winding for sure. And there was a lot of uncertainty for me, a lot of emotional complications. And looking back, I was like, Oh, well, that's helped build some scar tissue for me. That's helped, help me learn about endurance. Which is a really big value for me.
Carrie:I want to back up and kind of break some of this down. I want to start with you mentioned how you kind of abandoned the theater degree and decided you wanted to learn about humans. And I love that because I think it's a great reminder for students that there's not one path to each career choice, right? There. We're kind of given this prescription to follow a lot of times where if you want to be this, you have to do that. And if you want to be this, you have to get this degree. And of course, there's some things, you know, obviously, if you want to be a doctor, you need to go to medical school. There's certain things that there's just no way around it. Right. But it doesn't mean you have to get your undergrad in biology. Like there's a lot you can get any undergrad you want and go to medical school, you can get any undergrad you want and go to law school. So you don't have to take the same path that everyone else does to get to where you want to go. So I love that you approached it that way and really looked at learning about people. And you recognize that that would be of value.
Jeff:Yeah, you know, and like you said, That was just my journey, right? That might not be someone else's journey. And that seemed right for me. And I think one of the things I was helped by Sergei, my mentor. He talked to me about valuing the independence of my imagination. And I think as we're growing, look, there is a 100 percent certainty that life will not stay the same. 100%. Right. Thank goodness. Right. Yeah. Yeah. No, you're exactly right. Because we do need that variety. We need life to shake us up sometimes. So this idea of the independence of your own imagination, one thing I feel like I learned early through some of my influences in books or on screen, or just as human beings, that was a value to me, early on was, yeah, I was really focused on wanting to be an actor and single minded there, but for one reason or another, I was lucky that I was always really trying to think about the man I wanted to be over what it is I wanted to do. And even though what, yeah, what I wanted to do was very, very personal to me and important. I've always tried my best, failed a lot, but I've always tried and continue to try my best to be a good man and letting that be a guiding point, too. And looking back to be able to say, was I honest with who I was about myself and what the best version of myself I hope to become. You know, and I think that helped me make some tough choices or maybe veer off the beaten path, perhaps, maybe when, others may have chosen differently. That's just been my journey.
Carrie:Yeah, absolutely. When we think about the kind of person we want to be, or, the type of person we want to become, perhaps, you know, whatever age you are and however you want to frame that, that really can be a guiding force that impacts our career, often in unexpected ways, right? You may have an opportunity that's like, wow, I never thought about that, but that's totally in line with the person I want to become and the type of place I would see myself and how I can make that kind of impact on other people or how that could really fulfill me in a certain way. Or making decisions that are really difficult to leave something that we thought we really wanted, but it's just not aligning with the person we want to be and the environment we want to be in, and that can be really tough. But if you have that guide, like you're talking about, it can make a lot of that more clear.
Jeff:Yeah. You know, you reminded me of this metaphor, this is a psychology note, but, Rollo Mayne, who was an American psychologist, he had this metaphor about the human condition and a pendulum. Right. And if you swing too far to one side, it's subject to much subjectivity and swing to the other side too far. It's objectivity, right? And what we're trying to do as human beings is trying to keep it in stasis, trying to keep it at center. But the thing is, it can't ever stop, right? You're always sort of swinging back and forth. And I think that there's also a thing, if I could go back and talk to myself, as a college student in particular, I would say, okay, you know there's self confidence that if it swings too far, it goes into ego and arrogance. Don't want that. But then the other side is there's humility as well, right? And if you could swing too far over there, then you're just sort of lacking the fire to take a step forward or maybe step out in a direction that you're unsure of. And so if you can find some harmony there between self confidence and humility, I think that's a good place to be to ferment your spirit and allow it to talk to you and allow it to say, okay, this may be different. And it may be unsure, but something about it feels right. So I'm going to step out. Or maybe you're going down a path and saying, I'm pushing, I'm pushing, I'm pushing because I feel like I have to push and if I stop, I'm weak, or if I make a different decision, then I've proven that I've been wrong all along. And we have that battle, or at least I've had that in my life, you know, in my head, but then to have the humility and say, no, you know what, I'm going to pivot. I can adapt. And put those same values of focus and discipline and endurance in this direction, see what happens. And as long as I feel like you're putting out a good vibration, and really, I just think good things can happen that way and unexpected things. Right, Carrie? I mean, how many times? How many times, like in Frostburg, I didn't want to go to Frostburg, and then I went to Frostburg and I met Merzi, and Merzi really impacted my life. You know, I went to New York, and I worked with Lily, and then I saw the movie Russian Ark, and it flipped my brain apart, and I spent three days trying to find Sergei in Moscow, and I connected with him. And he helped me see things differently too. And it's like, man, the journey is not linear. It's just not. No, it's filled with curves and sometimes right angles. You know what I mean? Yeah.. Or U turns or all kinds of things. Right. Yeah. I mean, that's really important too. I've been in plenty of positions where, I felt stalled or stuck or didn't know what to do, or I've taken steps backwards. I remember once I'm Carrie, I was in New York and progressing, and for set of personal reasons, I had to leave New York and come back to Maryland where I'm from. And I ended up going back to serve tables at the restaurant. I left years ago to go pursue my dreams in New York. And here I am. Back in my late twenties, early thirties serving tables at this restaurant. And I felt ashamed, you know, I've seen people that I went to high school with and I just felt ashamed and I was dealing with a lot of conflict and it was my younger brother, who was in high school at the time who woke me up. We were in my mom's kitchen and I ended up being vulnerable. I was like, you know, man, I'm feeling a some kind of way. I'm here. I am pursuing this and felt like I was going in the right direction. I get this big U turn. I'm back here serving tables, blah, blah, blah. And he listened to my sob story. And then he paused. And he said, and I'm just verbatim quoting, you got to stop being a bitch. And I just stopped, you know, I stopped me my tracks and said, listen, man, he said, the people who love you are going to love you and the people who don't, they won't. But you got to figure that out for yourself. You have to understand and learn and move forward from that. And it was that a moment for me, man. And it just triggered something like it turned a switch back on like, Oh yeah, okay. And then I was able to say, all right, I'm going to give myself 90 days to, and I got back to New York within like three months, but if it wasn't for him sort of shaking me and saying, stop crying, take a breath. Right. Yeah. And at the end of the day, another thing I think we, we forget Carrie. Especially when we're in those formative years in high school and college and early professional life, I think, wrongly think too often, everyone is thinking about us. No one's thinking about you, everyone's focused on themselves and trying to figure their shit out. It's hard, man. It's hard now, especially with social media and us being sort of every Instagram post you put out is more or less a press release. You know, it's like we, we have different elements where we feel like we're being seen and heard 24 hours a day, but still that comes back to this place of you know, what kind of person do you want to be? And let that be a guiding force and take a breath. Just take a breath. Things are going to be good. Just move in the direction of the person that you want to be and things are going to work out, things will work out.
Carrie:Yeah. And I think people also can relate to that going home time. You know, a lot of people leave home and go back at some point and have very mixed feelings about that. Because I just think in society, a lot of people label that as failure of some kind, you know, like if you leave to do something and then you come back. But I think that sometimes coming home is the place you need to be to reevaluate or wake up or have somebody shake you or tell it to you straight or whatever, you know, have different types of experiences. But sometimes home is the best place and the safest place for that to happen to help you move forward.
Jeff:I agree, I think you hit on a really wonderful description there, is to re evaluate. You know, there are moments we really need to re evaluate. I think that value of re evaluation is always important because it gives you clear headedness too, you know. And I think we put too much pressure on ourselves. A lot of times I've like, we have to have everything figured out. I always wanted a little girl and I have a beautiful little girl now. So my dream came true in a lot of ways, but I think about her all the time and am I doing the right things for her? Am I setting her up for success? I have to have this, this, this in line for her. And I just, sometimes I have to hit pause and breathe. And I heard some great advice once. From a wonderful older woman in her eighties, she was the coolest person right before I had my baby. And I was concerned. I wanted to be a good dad. I didn't know what I was getting into. I didn't know what I was doing. And she said, honey, kids only need three things. So you need to feed them. You need to change them. You need to love them. Yeah. And those types of moments, I think that's with kids, but in life, sometimes we just need to take a step back, breathe and just Distill down to being grounded. Here I am. Okay, take a breath and let something come to you.
Carrie:Think that a lot of people listening have, or can relate and have had the experience of having like a dream school that they apply to and they don't get in. That's true. A lot more common than we would think, you know, looking at Instagram, it looks like everybody gets into what they want and they have a coordinating bedroom with their school colors and they have a photo shoot for it. And, you know, it's just gotten kind of crazy on the social media side with college acceptances, but, and good for them, by the way, if you get into your dream school, that is. That's incredible. It's an incredible accomplishment. But I think what we don't see is probably a larger volume of people who are not getting in right to the, to the, you don't do a photo shoot for that. But when you didn't get into Juilliard, did you have like a re evaluation of what you wanted? Did you did it make you question everything or did it motivate you more to find something else? Like what was your process for students who may be going through that right now and may be heading somewhere in the fall that's not where they want to go, How did you work through that?
Jeff:It's a really good question When I didn't get into Juilliard, and this is just my experience, when I didn't get into Juilliard, I felt like I did something wrong. I didn't question what it is I was pursuing, but for some reason, I felt like, I'm still at a loss for words for it, I was lost. I was just lost. I didn't know what to do next. And I got into FSU, I was fortunate enough, I had an in state scholarship. Which was great because I had a single mom and really couldn't afford college except for that. So that helped us greatly. And I said, okay, I'm going to go here for the time being. But one decision I made that I thought was, I was grateful that I made it when I did. And I recommend anyone who is not getting into their dream school and about to go to a place they're unsure of or maybe Privately embarrassed by or whatever it is that they're privately dealing with. So lean in to the fire. What I did, I wasn't a great student in high school, but I decided I made a decision to say, okay, I'm just going to go here and kill it. And I was never a straight A student. I just started getting straight A's. I'm going to go. I'm going to lean in. I'm going to go. And that really helped me control what I can control. I couldn't control not getting into Juilliard. I couldn't control those decision makers. And frankly, I couldn't control not going to a state school because it's the only thing we could afford because of a scholarship. But what I could control was my decision to give it my all. And what that did was help me regain some self confidence that I lost when I was wandering after the Juilliard debacle. That's what I would recommend. It doesn't have to be forever, Carrie. Just decide to control what you can control and what you can control is effort and attention. That's what you can control.
Carrie:And that can be even outside of the classroom to like, it doesn't have to just be in the classroom. That could be like, I'm going to focus on meeting new people and strengthening my network. And I'm going to focus on trying something new outside of the classroom. And I'm going to focus on. This thing that I've always loved to do on the side, whether that's working out or a sport or photography or whatever that is, I'm going to spend some time on that cause that will help me heal. And that helps me refocus on everything else. Or I've really struggled with public speaking. And so I'm going to put myself out there and how, whatever that is, like that can be so many different things that you can throw yourself into because going out Going to a new place and especially if you feel like you're kind of paused or you're starting over or you're finding yourself in an unexpected environment, or just maybe not what you had planned or hoped for, we, of course, we go straight to focusing on classes and our academics, which is important. I don't want to say that's not important, but. There are a lot of ways that you can really take advantage of starting over in a new place, and you have to kind of discern what those, you know, are for you and what would be best, but there's a lot of ways that you can approach that.
Jeff:Yeah, to your point, I don't know much in life, but I do know this, and this has come from starts and stumbles and reevaluation, two things that i think are very helpful that i wish i could tell to the told my younger self the first is we get what we tolerate and what i mean is if we're gonna tolerate negative self talk if we're gonna sit there and just keep kicking the dirt if we're gonna sit there and blame everyone else or blah blah blah blah blah and live in that space. Nothing's going to change until you stop tolerating that and say, you know what, I'm going to make a different decision. I'm going to take a different perspective and I'm going to do something different with my mind and my body, and make an adjustment. We get what we tolerate. And the other part of that is the second thing is so much about our life and our destination and where we're going and how we get there and where we end up is about the story we tell ourselves. It's about can I achieve this or you know what, stop focusing on what I fear and focus on where I want to go. And sometimes that's not totally clear where I want to go, but I think again, if you reconfigure it, get close to the person that you want to be. Yeah, there's a voice that's telling you a direction at least to go. Right. And I think those two things are critical. And I wish I could have instilled those lessons into the mind and heart and spirit of my younger self.
Carrie:Yeah, that's really good. So you said you were at that school temporarily. So can you explain kind of how you dove in and then what led you to leave and pursue something different?
Jeff:Yeah, so there were three different stages at FSU, and I was fortunate enough to arrive at a time when they had just built this beautiful brand new performing arts center that had three different stages on it. I didn't know what a black box theater was. I learned that that was my favorite type of stage to express myself, right? There was a big proscenium, there was a concert hall, etc. And I dove in to working on the stage as much as I could, taking as many classes as much as I could. And as I decided to not tolerate the self talk and to lean in and to tell myself the story of I'm going to improve, I'm going to work on improving and getting better at my craft. That helped clarify for me. What I wanted to do next and what I wanted to do next. I decided was boy. I really like this acting thing and for me, I want to learn more about the human condition. And so I'm going to leave my pursuit of a theater degree, and learn about psychology. And I want to go to New York and I want to study.
Carrie:Was that scary? Or was that like energizing for you?
Jeff:That was energizing for me, to be honest. I was encouraged by the challenge and I thought I was up to the task and it gave me a North star. And so for me, it was energizing. And what was really. Lovely was I didn't tell really anybody at the time that I was planning to leave, but I did tell Marzie and she didn't judge me. And she actually encouraged me. And she was positive in her response and really helped give me some ideas of how to do this because she lived through it. Mm-Hmm. And that was really, really helpful. The other piece, Carrie, that is really important is that had I not gone to Frostburg, I would've never ended up where I am now at BLG. cause at the time, when I was a freshman, senior was the former president of the company who would become the president of the company. And he and I met.
Carrie:Oh wow. Oh my gosh.
Jeff:What we liked about each other then is that we were both passionate guys, and pretty, you know, serious guys. And we respected each other in terms of our sort of dedication to what it was we were doing. Throughout our years then growing professionally, we always sort of wanted to work together and it never panned out until 2020 during the pandemic. When I was running an arts organization outside of DC, and the pandemic happened, and Broadway licensing at the time, the whole theater industry were shut down globally and they were going to pivot and start Broadway on demand and that had to do with film and TV and this and that and I had some experience with that. And I got a call saying, Hey man, do you want to help me stand this thing up? And I said, let's go. And that was another moment. So again, like had I not gone to Frostburg, right? Yeah, exact. So you'd never know.
Carrie:Yeah. When I used to work with students at freshman orientation and we would talk about, you know, you're about to start at this new art school, of course, there's going to be competition, but we hope you're making lifelong friends and keep in mind that you never know who you're going to be auditioning for later in life, who's going to be auditioning for you, who you're going to work with, who your boss is going to be, who your colleagues are going to be, because you never know. So I love that you just brought up a real life example of that. Cause I bring that up all the time. Especially in the arts, right? It's not this encapsulated space where you're never going to see these people again. You very, very likely will run into these people again.
Jeff:You very, very likely will run into these people again. And the bonds in relationships that you form that are genuine, they tend to last. Yeah, right if it's a transactional thing or you're trying to bullshit somebody or them you like your instrument is going to see through that and that's living on borrowed time that relationship, right? That'll be for a moment. But if you're a genuine person yes, it's important to take your work seriously, but truly not yourself. You know, you want to really build bonds with people. I'm telling you, people want to work with who they like. And once you get out into the professional space, whether it's in the arts or in corporate land or whatever it is, and now I work at the intersection of art and commerce, right? I work in this at the moment in this very interesting place in the professional landscape. People don't care where you went to school. They care if you can deliver and if you are a good person, I'm telling you, those are the two main values. Right. No one has ever asked me, where did you go to undergraduate? I mean clearly you have to give references and transcripts sometimes, et cetera, but no one ever said, wait a minute. I heard you went to Frostburg. Is that true? You're fired. Or is that true? It's not you. But no one gives a shit. No one cares. They care if you can deliver and they care if you're a good person. That's really important. And so even in the arts, yeah, you're talented, great, but no one wants to work with an asshole. Exactly. No one wants to, you know, people want to work with just good people. Life's too short. Don't treat people like garbage. Truly, especially if you're in a leadership position and you're leading a team. You never know, you never know that someone could leapfrog you and then they're your boss one day or maybe down to 10 years down the road you're reaching out to someone who you thought was an underling and now all of a sudden they've looped around you and you need something from them. The point is, is if you can just be genuine about yourself and the connections you're trying to make with other people. That type of authenticity is really, really important and that is what creates longevity. People with want to work for people who can deliver and that are just good people, whether you're in the arts or whatever industry you are pursuing.
Carrie:Yeah, absolutely. Well, in another part of your story, I think a lot of people can relate to is that you made a decision to leave the pursuit of acting to kind of go into another space. Even if it's an adjacent space, it's a different space. And as we know in the arts, that happens all the time, for a wide variety of reasons, whether you're a musician or an actor or a dancer, or just across the performing arts, there's a lot of people making a decision to leave. That space or perhaps that role in that space to do something different. And there's so many stories out there about why people do that. Sometimes you're forced to do it. Sometimes it's a personal choice. Sometimes it's a choice based on things completely outside of your craft, that are just influencing your life. So can you talk about what that was for you? And I wonder, a lot of people talk about. Leaving their craft as their job with kind of a grieving period attached to it, especially if it's something you pursued for so long. And that can be because it's so much a part of our identity as artists. It's often the first thing we say when you describe yourself or introduce yourself. So all this to say, can you talk about how that. Decision or how that transition affected you and why you made that decision for yourself?
Jeff:Yes, it was really complicated for me, Carrie, I totally wrapped up my identity with what I was doing. I lost that perspective of the man I wanted to be versus the thing I wanted to do. Right. And I felt as if I stopped pursuing this, I have failed, or I am weak.
Carrie:And it's just so common, unfortunately, right? That is such a common sentiment and it's all a lie, but so many of us have that feeling and go through that struggle.
Jeff:And I know it's getting a little personal, but that's totally fine, which is in my nervous system. It took a long time, a lot of therapy. My growing up, as I mentioned before, and I didn't have such a nice stepfather, he sort of instilled those negative values in me that I think got into my subconscious. Realizing sometimes you're being motivated by ghosts that are haunting you versus, you know, sometimes it's important to really try and be honest and evaluate, like, what is motivating me? Yeah. I'm not saying that was all that was motivating me, but I was being influenced by that. And when I decided to hit pause as an actor, it was at a time my wife and I just had our little girl. And I decided to do a play. The way I worked was pretty immersive. The play I chose to do was the worst play I probably could have chosen. I was in a great euphoric moment in my personal life and this play that I was doing, you know, the character I was exploring was not in a great place. Long story short, I realized it was just putting a bad taste in my mouth. And I never thought about myself as an actor, as a dad. And I said, you know what? I'm going to make the choice to hit pause. I'm going to do this and make this choice. I'm going to make this choice on my own terms, and I'm going to hit pause and I'm going to pivot and adjust and put my talent and skills And my ability to focus in this other direction and the other direction was producing. I ended up running political campaigns in New York and outside of DC, for good many years when I was trying to, I wasn't making money as an actor. And I had to make money somehow. And what I learned through that experience was you're a forged in the fire. I was working on some big campaigns and this will make sense in a minute. I learned about grace under pressure. I learned about clutch mentality. I learned about building alliances and partnerships. I learned about big stakes and delivering big things are on the line and all those things. I took those values and those learnings. Along with my passion for the arts, and went in this direction of producing. And so I started this organization where we were going to create big arts events, and it was starting to work and then COVID happened. And then I came to BLG, and took all that previous experience and that has helped us, Scale, you know, over the last four years, but if I hadn't had that experience and decided on my terms to pivot and pivot consciously, I think I would be living with bitterness right now. So I would encourage folks. Make decisions the best they can on their own terms. Sometimes that's not possible and we have to just pivot and adjust right in the moment, but it's okay to say I'm going to hit pause. I'm going to go in this direction again. Doesn't have to be a total 90 degree angle and a left turn, right? It can be. I'm going to sort of just adjust it by 10 degrees and just go that way for a while. It's in the general direction. And some good things have happened from that. That's what I can say about my decision making process in deciding to hit pause and pivot.
Carrie:Yeah. The political campaign piece, depending on how you're listening to your story, can kind of sound out of left field a little bit. But I think it is a good example of an opportunity that came your way that, may not have been on your road map, let's say, to becoming an actor, right? Right. It's great for students to hear that sometimes those opportunities that may be on the surface seem disconnected or seem like, Oh, no, I shouldn't do that because that's not working toward my goal, but sometimes those things will work toward a goal that you have later or can benefit you in a way you just don't see yet. So can you talk a little bit about how, first of all, how that opportunity came to be, and then also how you manage that. You said you were doing that kind of while you were still working on being an actor. Can you just talk about that whole picture and then how that did lead to what you did next?
Jeff:Absolutely. When I first got to New York, I was focused on acting, and then I had a big wake up call about what it was really like in the professional space. In that city, there are way too many people trying to do the same thing. And they're what we're called and still are like cattle calls. Where hundreds and hundreds of performers, actors will show up on one day, try and do a 30 second monologue, and hopefully, somehow, they'll be picked out of the litter. And for me, I was like, no, I'm not gonna, I don't wanna do that. So, what am I gonna do? Well, maybe I'll create my own work. And so I started to write. And the writing took off for me. I was acting in the thing as I was writing, but my writing also then started to take off and I got a play that was workshopped off Broadway and then it got optioned into a movie and all this stuff was happening. And it was going in a direction like, oh, my God, like something's going to break for me here in a very positive way. And then the economic collapse happened in 2007 and financing for independent film dried up and the projects that I were working on, especially one was lost. And I was devastated. I did not know what to do next. And I was petrified and for me at those lowest valleys, when I look back, I find what always picks me up or had picked me up is my goal is not necessarily something professional. My goal is to be inspired. To find something that inspires my spirit. And at that time it was Barack Obama. I was broke. I went into community organizing because of him. In Brownsville, Brooklyn, where Mike Tyson grew up. Right. That was an eyeopening experience too. And I learned a ton about organizing in very challenging, high stakes environments in the middle of New York city. At that time, that's how I then got into politics. I was picked up by a congressional campaign and long story short, I ended up in a matter of a couple of months getting to a place where I was running that campaign and I had no business running it. I didn't know what I was doing, but it was this major congressional race. It was during the time when Obama was running, I had worked for the Obama. I worked for the campaign for Brooklyn, for Barack that helped win him a handful of delegates during the primary in New York. And I got to go see Senator Obama at Cooper union. It was really great watching him give this the speech on finance and it was just a lovely thing, but then I got into politics and working on campaigns and then running a campaign and I know what I was doing and I was scared to death and I wanted to quit every day. And something in me told myself, don't quit, get through, you're already in pain, just get a reward for it. And that campaign in particular, I knew we were going to lose and we were going to lose huge amounts of money. But I stayed with it and I came out on the other end and when I look back, I learned about endurance in a way that I could have never understood with my body had I not gone through that and this was a major race. I've been able to take those values now into business environments and situations. Where there's a lot on the line and I've just been through so many major experiences, particularly in crisis management and alliance building, public relations, all these things.
Carrie:And I think there's something about being in theater as well. People who've been in theater have this very different understanding about running a big production. Whether that's in business, you know, a lot of different environments, right? Because when you're backstage, you see, and you're going through tech and you're going through rehearsals, like you're seeing the process and you're seeing all the people and you're seeing all these different things, all these different people are doing and how some of them may seem just, the costume designer may seem disconnected from the lighting person, may seem disconnected from the stage manager, from the, you know, all of these different pieces, but you see how all of that comes together and how everybody contributes and works together and stays up late and all the things that you do. It's just an experience that I think helps people be successful in the types of settings you're describing.
Jeff:You are exactly right and I'm so glad you brought that up, Carrie. Because the major thing I learned during that time. One of our big advisors, his name was Chris Owens. He was the son of Major Owens, who was a very revered congressman for a long time, and Chris was a political expert and political junkie. He took me under his wing and he taught me on the fly about leadership at the highest level in management of disparate things all happening at once. And he said, Jeff, I'm going to instill in you the understanding that your job as the leader is not necessarily to do every job it's to find people and put them the best people in those positions to do those jobs and make sure those jobs get done. And that helped me build my arts organization that's helped us build BLG. As quickly as we have, frankly, and that's helped me gain a bit of self confidence to know how to juggle seven different things that are all high priority at the same time and keep my cool. And that's the same thing in the arts, like you said, the exact same thing. If you're going through something right now in your own personal life, right, and you have, this going on and that going on, right, I'm in school and I have exams, I'm trying to get into another college or my dream school, right, da da da da, all these things are happening, remember, that's, that's the production of your life. Yeah. And, you know, it really is. Sometimes you are the one doing all the things. But it's really, really important to, again, you get what you tolerate, if you're going to be in a place when you're going to tolerate some sort of negative thinking, like, Oh, this is terrible. This is going to fall apart. It will, right? And you're going to stay in that place until you don't tolerate it anymore. So you got to tell yourself a different story and say, okay, I'm going to take this a step at a time. I'm going to control what I can control. And then I'm going to go from there. There's a great metaphor that I heard before, which is if I'm in New York and I want to drive to California and I'm driving at night I can't see California, right. I should only see as far as my headlights will go. Okay. So go as far as your headlights will go. And then your headlights are going to show you how to go a little further and go a little further. And eventually you'll get to California. We have to learn how to chunk our lives a little bit, whether you're a high school student or a college student, or an executive in your dream industry. We have to learn how to sometimes break things down and chunk what it is we're doing and what we're focused on.
Carrie:I love that visualization with the headlights. So you mentioned that you went back to school a little bit later than a traditional college student would be going, which again, super common and for a lot of people that can be difficult to try to figure out how to do that. And people have a lot of different reasons to do that. So can you talk a little bit about what prompted you to do that? And what you gained from that experience at that point in your life that perhaps was different from if you would have stayed in school, at the traditional college student age?
Jeff:Yeah, sure. So, I'd gone through New York as an actor and a writer, and then I worked in politics, and I was still working in politics. I'd gotten back to Maryland. I was running campaigns. I had thought about opening up a political consultation firm outside of D. C. for a moment when I was like, I don't know what's going on with my artistic career. And I remember where I was when I made the decision to go back to school. I was standing on a concrete pavement out back at my then girlfriend's house talking to a dear friend of mine in the political world in New York, and I said, you know what, it's time for me to make a change. I want to continue to grow. I need to take control of my own financial situation, my own personal professional growth. I got to finish my degree. And by the time when I walked inside, I would just set up my laptop and started looking at schools. And that's what I did. I did everything I could to expedite that process, but at the time it's like, okay, I can't go back and yeah, I can wish I would have done this earlier. But when I look back, I don't really regret doing what I did and leaving when I did. That was my journey. I don't regret that. It was just my journey, but I'm like, okay, I'm going to make the decision now to do this. And I did it.
Carrie:Was that more because you felt like doors wouldn't be open to you without the degree or what was kind of the motivating piece?
Jeff:Yes. Yes. That's right.
Carrie:Which is a reality in a lot of settings. Right?
Jeff:That's right. The fact still holds, Carrie. Once you get out and into the quote unquote real world, As long as you can deliver, people don't give a shit where you went to school. They don't care. And it's true, it is true, sometimes it can help you, it can help open doors for better or worse, it absolutely can, but, you make the best out of every situation you're in.
Carrie:So once you finished your degree, you had said that you had started an arts organization and then that eventually during the pandemic or after the pandemic took you to BLG. So can you talk about that chapter as far as, the things you learned, first of all, with starting your own organization? And then, what I love about the Broadway licensing is, it's hard to see when we're starting to plan our education and career. You know, a lot of paths in our experience can merge into something later, right? And a lot of the people I've interviewed are sitting in positions now where so many pieces of themselves and their experience and their background just have come together into the position they're in now. And, Hearing your story and what you've said so far, it sounds like that's what's happened in your current position, that you have all of these different experiences, your desire to be an actor, being in New York, like all of these things have really come together into what you're doing now. So can you kind of lead us up to that and explain how that happened for you?
Jeff:Yeah, absolutely. I think you're exactly right. In retrospect, all those experiences, those starts and stops and hills and mountaintops and valleys have led me to this point. And I was working as a director of communications for a company while I was running the nonprofit, getting that going. When COVID hit, everything stopped, everyone stopped, right? In particular, the entertainment industry. At the time at Broadway licensing, it was a really small outfit. To their credit, they said, all right, we have to pivot somehow into this landscape, the landscape of streaming, if we're going to stay alive. And I got a call from the then president who was at Frostberg, right? Yeah. 15 years, whatever it was before. And he said, can you help me stand this up? Broadway on demand. And I said, let's go. For a while at the start, I was still working my director of communications role. If they're listening, they don't know that until now. And then I was working on B O D. Everyone was remote. I was still outside of DC. I got tasked essentially with creating all this content and started to do all of these deals with talent and agents and this and that at the time, this is all brave, new world, no one knew what the hell was going on. The media agreement hadn't been even set up with actors equity. Like everything was beat. We were kind of part of helping shape this. Broadway and theater had never been really streamed before. I mean, there were some organizations that had captured stuff, but not to the level we were trying to do it. From March to August. of 2020. I worked seven days a week, day to night. Ended up executive producing 40 series during COVID. Wow. Most of them were not perfect. Very zoomy, but one of them got nominated for an Emmy. And it was like, okay, all of this experience of me working in high stakes environments, dealing with large personalities. In New York, right? Through my political experience. And then I had my business experience and I had my psychology degree. So you're able to sort of navigate personalities. And then of course I had my arts. So all that came together in sort of a three point shot all net way. That was just lucky, and you just made the most out of this opportunity. And it was really hard and scary, and BOD helped us stay alive. And then that helped us identify Dramatist Play Service, which became available, and we bought it. This wonderful, historic imprint, and BLG now represents the canon of the American theater. We represent the likes of Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams, Lynn Nottage and Paula Vogel and Eugene O'Neill and on and on. That's a tremendous privilege. Yeah. And we were able to do that acquisition. And I was the guy who was triage. Like I would paratroop into different roles in the company and help stabilize them, grow them. Then I would go over here and do the same thing. And so I had this unique experience of doing many of the roles that the company needed and touching many of the aspects of the company that have helped us get to where we are today.
Carrie:When I hear that, I just think about the acting and the Broadway dream, and you're so deeply connected to that today. Like, you're still, you're part of that. Right. And I think one thing I talked to students about is there's often still a way to be connected to that initial dream or that initial thing that you love, but it may be a different role than what you initially visualized for yourself. A lot of times I use the example of, you know, most of the people who work at NASA are not astronauts. Right. But when you're a kid or when you're a young person, you think, Oh, you know, Oh yeah, I want to be an astronaut to be so cool. And then if you let that go, somehow you let NASA go with it when it doesn't have to be that way.
Jeff:That's exactly right.
Carrie:But there's so many ways where you can still be part of the ecosystem of the thing that you love and play a role in that and have a career in that. But it doesn't mean like, for instance, if it's Broadway, it doesn't mean that you have to be: starring in a Broadway show. There's so many other ways to be plugged into that.
Jeff:That's exactly right. You're spot on. I didn't even understand the magnitude of that until I ended up in this position, right? When I was a younger man, it was all about the performance piece. And like you said, then life throws different opportunities at you and you gain different experiences. And then here you are, and you're able to then contribute in a way that you couldn't have even, one, imagined, but two, didn't know was possible because you, you didn't have a full perspective of what all those opportunities were. Yeah. You know, NASA is a great example of that, a really, really good example of that. That's an encouraging place to be in your head saying, no, there are a lot of opportunities. There are a lot of ways to skin this cat, right? What my passions are and what my values are, right? They can align in a lot of different places. From different directions than maybe you even realize right now. So just don't be so hard on yourself. Just keep moving forward.
Carrie:Yeah. The way that we've talked about your role, with Broadway Licensing Global, just for people listening, could you give a synopsis of what your job is just so they have an idea? You talked a lot about when you first started there, and how you got plugged into it, but sitting in your chair today, what is your average kind of week look like, or what is your average kind of season look like in your position? What are you doing?
Jeff:Yeah, sure. So I'm currently Senior Vice President of Marketing for Broadway Licensing Global. I've been Vice President of Original Programming for Broadway On Demand. I've been Vice President of Licensing and Business Development. I've overseen our acquisitions process for a hot second, done a lot of different things, but right now I'm focused on leading our marketing or comms and PR division. I still also oversee Broadway on Demand. So my day to day is very, very busy. We represent over 8, 000 titles. We just acquired Harry Potter and the Cursed Child last September. Congratulations. Y'all thank you. We just went to market with that in May. So we're dealing with very large global brands. We just opened our London office. My day to day is leading our marketing team with the various go to market campaigns that we have, leading our PR strategy or com strategy. I lead our product management meeting. All of our book sales and other products that we sell to. So responsible in a lot of ways for profitability for the company, et cetera. So I'm in a place now where I'm looking at spreadsheets a lot, planning out, quarters in a year in advance where my director might be looking at a month to quarter ahead. Right. And. Then his direct reports are looking at the week to month ahead type of thing. And so my job is to balance all that. I'm part of the executive team. So we work with our exec team and our board to make decisions for company growth. And we're also in a really cool place where we're growing pretty quickly. Like I mentioned, we opened up our London office. I'm traveling back and forth, over to London. We do business in over 74 different countries. It's busy all the time. For my, my team for sure. And our company. We're great. I'm grateful that we're in a really positive place of growth and momentum right now.
Carrie:Can you talk a little bit about the executive education you did at Harvard? Because like a student listening to you right now and be like, okay, wait a second. He said he has a degree in psychology, political campaigns, and we've made a lot of connections here, which is important. Describing your job as a student, you'd sit there and think, well, I need an MBA or I have to major in marketing, because that's what we're prescribed to think, right? But can you talk about how this executive education, like what that means and why you pursued it and how you felt like it helped your career or at least just helped inform you for what you need to do?
Jeff:Yeah, sure. So I've always considered myself a lifelong learner. I tell my team members all the time, nobody has a monopoly on good ideas. And there are no bad ideas in a brainstorm. And I'm very, very serious about surrounding myself with people who are more talented than I am. For example, we have digital marketing experts that we hire, they're much better at that than I am. In this comes through my political days, I'm pretty adept at identifying talent, bringing them in and then putting them into positions to be the best versions of themselves. And so given all those values, Carrie, I've considered myself a lifelong learner of always trying to get better and learn from people who I report to and people who report to me. But I want to keep growing myself and how can I continue to contribute to this industry, to our company, and to my own personal professional growth. Harvard started this program, it's an executive education program called the business of entertainment, media, and sports. Anita Albers, who's a famed professor at Harvard, runs that program. And it's a challenge to get into. It's hard to get into. I found out about it through an acquaintance of mine. I was like, Oh, wow, this sounds just ideal for me, but it's at Harvard and it's hard to get into and blah, blah, blah. But to my company's credit at the time, I said, I want to pursue this. And they were supportive of it. I applied and I got accepted, got lucky, got accepted. And I was supposed to attend in 2022, but My best friend and brother got diagnosed with colon cancer and had a rapid onset of that horrible disease and died a very quick and ugly death. I'm so sorry. I appreciate it. I was tied up with that loss. To Harvard's credit, they gave me a grace period. They said, we understand we're going to hold your position or hold your spot and let you come in 2023 if you want to. Wow. I was very grateful. I was surrounded by just so many inspiring people, some of the best people in the industry. You know, the. President of Mr. Beast, Mark Hutzfeld, I met him and Francis Ngannou and Markel Martin and all these wonderful people at these major companies, major sports figures. But they're all were just really cool people and we were all there just trying to learn and get better in. Again, continue to instill self confidence in ourselves. It was a wonderful experience. What that also did was help me understand and reinforce that what I've also been learning about the business of entertainment is real and is working. And yeah, it was a great experience for me. But I will say, Carrie, that I've always partly personally been a little timid and I'm ashamed to sort of talk about, myself or my journey because it is so, Non linear, right? And like, wait, what have you done? Like, you know what? You know, I love it. You were here, then you went there, and then you were ehhh. These are the stories I love. I love them. I really do. Sort of a gypsy, yeah.
Carrie:But that's how so many people are, and there's so many people out there who feel like they've done something wrong because of that. And that was one of my reasons to want to do this podcast and tell a lot of these stories to show these students or to show people wherever they are in their journey. Like all of these other people had that, too. And then this is what happened. And then this is what they did. And, you know, just to encourage people that this is normal, like the non linear path is normal. And for some reason, that's not what we teach to younger students where we say, like, you know, and it's so unfortunate because it's, I think a lot of us would feel different about our nonlinear path, different in a better way, in a positive way, in a more encouraging way, if that messaging, you know, wasn't so ingrained in us.
Jeff:Yeah. You know, it's certainly ingrained in me. You know, I've always wanted a Mr. Miyagi, someone who is right there by my side, you know, teaching me how to do the crane kick. And, as I mentioned, I've been very blessed to have people along my journey be very inspirational to me and been mentors to me for certain times when I most needed it, that has been a godsend, right? But I've always, it's hard, you know, we're conditioned to think about this linear trajectory of infinite growth. And I'm a huge tennis fan and one of the reasons I love tennis so much is because at it's purest form, there are two people out there. It's like chess on your feet at 120 miles an hour. And it's, you're watching an existential crisis. On each side of the net in real time. You can't talk to your coach. You don't have a team. It's a war of attrition and you look at, say, Roger Federer or Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic, arguably the three greatest male tennis players of all time who played in the same generation and you, if you look at all the majors they've won, you think, no one has ever come close to these guys. And if you look at that one stat, you're right. But if you look at the total points that they've all collectively won in the various matches that they've played, it's less than 60 percent of the points. It's something like 52 to 56 percent of the points. They've won me. If Roger Federer is playing or Rafi and Adele's plane or Novak Djokovic is playing an opponent, they're almost losing half the points every time they play. But the difference, the difference is playing the point the best that they can at the most crucial moments in the match. And that's to me, a metaphor for life, right? We are going to stop and stumble and things are going to be linear and you're going to be down and out. Rafael Nadal gave one of the most impressive, inspiring performances, I think, in modern sport. When he won the Australian Open in 2022, playing Daniel Medvedev, who was at, arguably, that time, he had just rolled over Djokovic, a few months before was the best player on the planet. Rafael Nadal didn't even know if he was going to be able to play again after hip injuries and he comes in and he's in the final match. And if he wins this match, he's going to have won the most slams of any man of all time. So talk about pressure and his health and he was behind, Carrie. That match was somewhere around five hours ish. He did not take the lead in that match until four hours and 40 minutes into the match. Wow. He was playing from behind the entire time, but he focused on the moment. He focused on controlling what he could control. I win a point. I lose a point. I lose more points than my guy. Okay, back to the service line, back to the baseline, back to return to serve. And that is life, man. Yeah. You know, we are constantly having to pivot and we're going to lose almost as much as we win. It's part of the journey. It's just part. And the quicker we can all just sort of like shrug and be like, yeah, you know, sometimes like things go sideways. You're like, damn, I had plans. All right. Now what? Yeah. No. And that's just the way it is. Unfortunately. Like it or not. And I think the quicker we can accept that with sort of a smile and a shrug, I'm like, all right, let's go. Let's go try and kill it. That's the best place you can be.
Carrie:And sometimes that new direction that you're forced to go in, away from your plans, is far better than your plans ever could have been.
Jeff:Totally agree. It's cheesy as it sounds, but it's true for so many people. It's totally, it's totally true. And also, when we look back and I look back, I've had lots of downs and lots of ups in my career so far. But the things I think about aren't things, they're people. Yeah. I think about Bill. I think about Marzie or Lily or Sergei. Or Steve who who passed away 38. Those are the faces, those are the relationships the people i think about you know and it's like damn let's not lose sight of that to a lot of this is about the relationships we're building. We get caught up in bills we have to pay and financial growth and investments and that, that, that, that, that, that, that, but you know, I look at my little girl and like the best thing I look forward to every day. It's coming home and hearing her run down the stairs and jumping in my arms. And I know that's going to go away, when she gets older, but to be present in that moment every day, it's nothing better than that.
Carrie:So, I did want to bring up your TEDx talk. When did you actually give that? How recently was it? It was July of 23. Okay. Okay. Can you talk a little bit about how that came to be? And then tell everyone, just a little bit. We want them to go watch it, of course. So we'll put the link to that in the show notes for this episode. But can you Tell us about how that opportunity presented itself and then how you decided what to talk about?
Jeff:Yeah, sure, sure. So, so grateful for that opportunity. I wasn't expecting it. How that happened. Well, first of all, that wouldn't have happened if I hadn't started my non profit arts organization was called Phenomenology outside DC because the folks who are running TEDx Rockville, which is where I gave that speech, we crossed paths tangentially. I think during that time they became aware of me, I became aware of them. And that was really that. Like there was no real relationship, but I think we just knew of each other. And then I started to grow with VOD and VLG and et cetera. I guess they were following my career a bit and they reached out and said, Hey, we would love you to participate in this TEDx event. And I was like, wow, I would be honored. And so what I didn't realize were, a lot of rules. A lot of rules, Carrie, and I guess that's probably necessary. Yeah. No, for sure. Right. For sure. But I was like, I want to talk about method acting and why I think I believe that method acting is important and indispensable to the past, present, and future of dramatic art as jazz is to music. And they said, great, that's way too niche. No one's going to listen to that talk. And I said, okay. And they said, we need something a little more universal, right? So people can access it, right? People don't even necessarily know what that, that means. Okay, fine. So I was talking about, psychology and performance and blah, blah, blah, too niche, too niche, too niche. And they got to the point where they're like, Hey buddy, are you going to come up with something that normal people are going to want to listen to? And I thought, alright, well, what is something pretty universal that is applicable to both my artistic experience, Right. As a performer, but then on one side of the table as a performer, but on the other side of the table as a producer, and now as an executive in the industry. So as a business person, and I thought how to make a lasting impression. And they said, great. Now you have to write the speech and we have to vet it. And I thought, oh, okay. Well, I was about to go to Harvard. And I needed to come up with the TEDx talk and I couldn't do both things at once. And so I focused on Harvard and literally the day that I completed and I was leaving Boston, we went through the ceremony and I got to the airport, opened up my laptop, started the document, went to a hotel in New York. And that next morning, I started working on the Ted talk. And so my other fellow presenters had been months working on theirs and I was way behind the curve. I drafted this thing and they were all great. Mine was, I think fine, but I'm like, Oh boy, I hope it doesn't tell that I had to kind of put the thing together last minute, but they were very gracious. They vetted it, they gave me notes, et cetera. Then you have rehearsals for it. Right. Then you have to go through all, you know, it's like putting on a show and then it happens. You have your 18 minutes and you have to have it within this certain timeframe. And I did the talk in July of 23 outside of DC in Rockville, and it was just a lovely, lovely experience. And it was so inspiring to be around so many amazing other presenters. I was very humble for sure.
Carrie:Well, congratulations. I really, I loved it and I think it does. Thank you. It really is something that applies to everyone. That people can insert it into their own context. And I loved the story about, was it Ms. Connor? Was that her name? Ms. Connor. I loved that. The best story. Yeah. Best. And that really spoke to me.'cause I think we all have a miss Connor or two or three, you know, that we've witnessed or have in our lives. And so it's just a great reminder that we need to be paying attention to those opportunities and I'm purposely being vague so people will go listen to it. We don't want to give it all away right here, But it was, yeah, it was great. I loved it.
Jeff:Thank you, Carrie. It's, it's very sweet. Thank you so much.
Carrie:So you've had a really interesting path. And one thing that's pretty universal with a lot of people is that we all have unexpected things happen along our path. So did you have any unexpected things happen or any moments that really caught you off guard that made a lasting impression or really taught you a lesson?
Jeff:So yeah, yeah, there was a time. When I was getting my associates degree, I left FSU, I was getting my degrees in psych and soc, and then I was gonna hightail it to New York, and I had to take health class, right, one of those sort of perfunctory mandated courses, and you're just sort of going through the motions, at least I was. But this professor, she was so inspiring in the sort of least expected way, and she would talk about health, but then she would use that as a tool to talk about life in general. And I remember clearly in one class, when she said, I want you to remember this. Life is about do you enjoy the getting there. And that just hit me like a bolt of lightning. I don't even remember her name, but it was a God send. And I think about that more often than I could have ever imagined. When there are moments where I'm too focused on an outcome. Remembering that question brings me back and grounds me. Do I enjoy the getting there? Do you enjoy the getting there? Life is a series of moments and once we hit certain outcomes, we just want something else. It's part of our human nature. Life really is about the journey and there are milestones along the way, but we have one shot at this. And we really need to think about, especially if you're a college student, think about the joy and the possibilities That are awaiting you and all of the things that are in your heart, focus on the person that you want to be, let that guide what you want to do, lean into the fire, endure, keep your expectations measured, and just keep believing.
Carrie:That's such great advice. I think so many young people are not stopping to enjoy the journey, because they're so stressed to get to wherever they think it is that they're supposed to go. So that's such a great reminder. It's a great reminder for all of us, really.
Jeff:Yeah, I think so.
Carrie:Well, Jeff, thank you so much for joining us today and sharing your story. This has been such a great conversation. We've covered. So much, so much ground here today. Yeah, I've really enjoyed it. And I really appreciate your time and sharing your guidance and your wisdom and your advice for students listening. Thank you.
Jeff:Hey, listen, you're doing a wonderful, wonderful thing, and you are bringing a lot of joy and inspiration to a lot of people. I can't thank you enough for the opportunity to talk to you today. You're an inspiration to me and, you know, so many others. So keep going yourself. Okay.
Carrie:Thank you. Thank you so much.
Jeff:You got it. Thank you.
Carrie:Do you know someone I should interview? Please DM me on Instagram@pathsinprogresspodcast and let me know who I should talk to. I would love to hear about how these stories are impacting your journey. Please follow Paths in Progress wherever you download your podcasts and leave a review to let me know what you think. You can also follow us on Facebook and LinkedIn at Paths in Progress Podcast. Our music is by John Grimmett and the artwork is by Edgar Alanis. Thanks again for joining me today.
