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
When the pandemic happened, we're all just sitting in our houses, bored out of our minds. And my business partner, as I told you, he works with wrestlers, he works with football players, he works with baseball players, basketball players, and a lot of them have become friends of ours. So he calls me up and he says, Jeff, I got an idea. We're sitting at home. Everybody's bored out of our minds.
Why don't we get our athlete and wrestler friends online to teach classes, meet their fans? Maybe we raise some money for charity. So I said, well, I like the idea of them meeting their fans. and raising money for charity, but we can also do that with celebrities as well. Oh, what a great idea. Let's make some calls. So we called our good friend, Cedric the Entertainer.
Now, when we called him, we basically gave a very skeleton idea. We want to do some events, get celebrities online, meet their fans, raise some money for charities. Loves the idea, but says, I think there could be way more to this than what you're thinking. We could develop a brand out of it. It could be something long-term. Even past the pandemic, digital's not going away.
So I said, okay, that's great. We ended up partnering with Cedric. We started brainstorming ideas, concepts, formats, the whole thing. And we ended up creating Fan Room Live. Then we brought on Jay Benjamin, who's a brilliant actor, by the way, producer, very funny guy, very charismatic. He's our executive producer and host. And it's a formatted show.
meet and greet virtual series where celebrities meet their fans, town hall style, but it's engaging. It's up close and personal. Every celebrity that's done it has come away and said, this was more fun than what I anticipated because it's not like being in a nightclub where you're
fan comes up and they're trying to get to them and it's a whole thing or you're online at a comic con and you know you're being like pushed away by security you get your one on one time to hang out with a celebrity and then you get to watch everybody else and it's this really just beautiful experience that we have created and we get to raise money for charities
I have a few different stories. One story that I always love to go back to is the story with Paul White, the big show, and the Sick Kids. We arranged Paul White to come on to Fandom Live, and we ended up connecting with a charity that brings sick children to wrestling shows. Well, it turns out that one of the kids that was with this charity happens to be a very big fan of Paul White Big Show.
So we bring on a bunch of the kids onto Fandom Live to meet Paul White. And the one kid that is in the UK Very sick. It just made his day. He was just so over the moon meeting him. He even had his action figures laid out. And Paul says something to him like, wow, you're a great salesman. You even got your action figures all lined up.
So they're having this great interaction, and somehow it came up. Paul took his shirt that he was wearing off his back, signed it, and gave it to the charity. And they hung out for about 15 minutes. It was beautiful. But We had that recorded, we posted it a few days later, and something very, very interesting happened. A friend of mine that's a wrestling podcaster named Rob Wilds.
He saw the video and he said, Jeff, I saw what you did for that kid. I saw what you did for the charity. I have something for you. I have two signed world title belts, one from The Undertaker and one from The Rock. I'll send the Rock's world title belt to the kid in the UK, and I'll send the Undertaker's world title belt that's signed to the charity. The charity was able to auction off
The Undertaker's belt and Paul White's signed shirt for a lot of money. And it turns out that the kid in the UK, it was his birthday coming up. So the parents took the belt, held on to it, waited for his birthday to come and gave it to him on his birthday. The Rock's world title belt signed. The kid was so excited. Over the moon, it made his day.
And so that to me is literally one of my favorite stories because no one's tougher than a kid who's fighting an illness that's 7, 8, 9, 10 years old. All of our problems on a daily basis are nothing compared to what these warriors, so to speak, are going through.
One thing I will say is that I did make... a decision a couple of years ago that at least for the time being, I'm not going to do as much nightlife. I'll work with restaurants. That's enjoyable, but I'm not really doing as much on the nightlife side. Don't get me wrong. If a nightclub wants to book a music artist, that's one thing. If a talent is in town, I'll bring them to the hottest spot.
That's fine. For the time being, I am not going to run a lounge or nightclub simply because the things that I'm doing during the day working on charity events, booking celebrities for conventions. We just got two clients in Kentucky by referrals for us to book their music and comedy acts. One is an arena that holds 7,000 people, and the other one is a theater. So that side of things is building.
And I would rather be building that on that side of it and really focused in and focused on fan room, focused on quote notes, which I could tell a little bit about, focused on my event planning and production and marketing company, focused on those things versus whether people come to a bar and spend money on drinks and bottle service.
But it also, it's weighing your, what makes sense. Don't get me wrong. I will still do one-off parties for clients and whatnot. That's doesn't change, but I won't for the time being put my foot in the ground, so to speak into a bar and lounge or restaurant, or I should say bar lounge or nightclub Because I want to put my good energy, my peaceful energy into what makes sense.
Ignore the noise. Whatever's happening today or whatever you're feeling today, doesn't matter. Six months, doesn't matter the next day. Just ignore the noise because at the end of the day, People who thrive, they have to jump over hurdles to get where they are. So just ignore the noise.
Take yourself a little bit more seriously in the sense that prioritizing what is important, not just professionally, but also personally. Know your strengths and weaknesses and think outside the box. and actually push on those strengths and weaknesses and realize what can be done, what can't be done, and just keep it moving. That's what I would tell my younger self. It'll all be okay.
Just get to tomorrow.
Well, it's not just that. I don't look at things going on in society or celebrity stuff and all that. I look at that as it's a business. I do have friends in the business. I do love what I do. But I'm not... Coming home and putting up a picture on my wall of the celebrity with me and all that kind of stuff.
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