Jeff Krauss
speaker
129 appearances
2 recordings
2 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard Feb 2025
Jeff Krauss’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
I was more of the guy that was organizing that part. And I started to network, though, with different PR people and agents and all that kind of stuff because I wanted to get those people to come to the parties. I wanted to expand my network. But it was more by phone call and by email, not necessarily as much in person. I wasn't going to the networking parties or I wasn't.
going to the hot club and hanging out till four in the morning to try to meet a celebrity and get their number. I wasn't doing any of that kind of stuff, which in retrospect, probably maybe would have been a little bit easier for most people, but it wasn't easier for me because that's just not who I am. So I put the hard work in by emailing, by calling, by trying to
set up more intimate stuff, offering happy hours for the PR companies and all that kind of stuff. And I started to work with restaurants. I met my business partner, Mitch Faulkner, who is a booking agent for Comic-Cons and stuff like that. And his whole thing was he wanted to be able to book the celebrities for paid appearances. I
wanted to get them into the restaurants and into any parties that I was organizing. So even if, say, for example, I am more in the background, doesn't mean that there's not a couple of VIP tables that I brought in that I'm catering to, if that makes sense. I could still cater to them. I don't necessarily have to be sitting at my own table and being the life of the party, so to speak.
So that was my angle was more try to do things on a higher level of what my skill actually is and showing them a good time and making sure they're well taken care of. whether it be at the restaurant or if they're coming to an event, and build my relationships and my network off of trust, my partner was building his trust
business as far as getting celebrities to go to the conventions and all this stuff that are more paid. But what happened was I would get in a photo with somebody, let's just say, right? And that photo would be posted.
And then all of a sudden, publicists that I'm friends with that work with brands or are planning an event, they would reach out and say, hey, Jeff, I saw you did this event with so-and-so. I actually need a celebrity host for my party. I have a budget. Can you help me? I see what you guys are doing.
So now after that started to happen, me and my business partner looked at it and we were like, this might be a lot better of two versus me just doing this and you just doing this. If we combine forces, we can do a whole lot more than what we're doing.
Yes, but I do want to say one thing. I have failed many times in my career, fallen flat on my face. The only difference between me and maybe somebody else is that I always just got back on the horse. I just wouldn't stay down and I would just keep going. There's been plenty of knockdowns. You might see online and you might see of what I'm doing.
Yes, it is glamorous to the eye, so to speak, but there's a lot of stuff that goes on in the background that's hard work. So I just want to point that out that I have had my setbacks and my failures in a sense, but I just never let them get to me.
There's been plenty, but there was at one point, maybe 10, 15 years ago, I don't know, but I had just... finished running or being the promotional operator of a lounge, that there was a lot of setbacks with that because the owners never actually had any money when they opened the venue.
There were a lot of things that were going on that were not of my control and things were great, but they weren't so great once you had a slow month because they never had any operating capital. So then I went on to open up another lounge, similar thing. And it just got to the point where I just said, I'm going to take a little break, focus on just doing events.
And there were some months in between where it was slow or it was winter. It was a bad winter or whatever the case. And I was having to work harder. than what I necessarily normally maybe would have because I didn't have as much infrastructure around me.
So I had to work all that much harder and lean on my connections that were close to me all that much more to try to get events, to try to get me indoors. And it was very hard. I just never gave up. I just kept going. And eventually things picked back up and I started doing stuff again.
Here's the thing about that. When it comes to celebrities, they have a team. They have agents, they have managers, they have publicists, they have assistants, lawyers, stylists. They have a whole massive, massive team. Once you gain trust, with anybody on their team, pretty much.
Even if it's for a client that isn't necessarily the person that you're aiming for, you gain that trust and now they're open to at least exploring what you have to say. So when you're asking me about George Clooney, I had a relationship with his publicist that had been built up for many years. Publicist introduced me to his personal assistant, happened to be. It was great timing.
They were in New York. It was Amal's birthday. Jeff's got a couple of spots that he might be able to do something at. And now we have a great relationship. But if I were to tell you that that was the first time I reached out to them for George Clooney,
No, for years I reached out, but I also was building that relationship with them on other clients that they had, but they also were seeing other things that I was doing that, okay, this isn't just some random person hitting me up. It's Jeff.
Patience can be a dream killer. If you don't have patience and you're an entrepreneur, that's really bad. Listen, you have to have patience because here's what you have to look at. The person that you're reaching out to, for whatever the reason, or even if you met them in person, there's a whole line of people trying to get to them.
No matter what, anybody that has any kind of value, regardless of what it is, there is a whole line of people trying to get to them that maybe they do know them a little bit, maybe they don't, maybe they have a product that they're pitching that could be of value to them, and they might not look at it because they don't know you, or they might look at it because the product is so good.
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