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My first job in Hollywood was as the assistant to Jeff Rohrer.

A candidate for Most Interesting Man In The World, Jeff was a Yale-graduate former Dallas Cowboys linebacker who, after retiring, became one of the top TV commercial producers working with superstar directors as big as Michael Bay (Transformers, Armageddon, The Rock).

Many years after I worked for him, he also became the first NFL player to enter a same-sex marriage, and was profiled by People for his very Modern Family life…but that’s another story.

I learned quite a bit from Jeff, but my biggest takeaway was how to treat clients.

Jeff was the Executive Producer at a commercial production company called Bandito Brothers. His main job was to sell big brands like Audi, Mountain Dew, and the US Navy on the firm’s creative vision and ability to execute their ads.

Of course, he would work with the team to pitch incredible ideas like jumping a Corvette into a bullfighting ring for Mountain Dew, or recreating Evil Knievel’s Snake River Jump for Audi.

That was table stakes - great creative was the product we were selling.

However…

He also spent a ton of time building personal relationships with the clients.

He went to breakfasts, lunches, dinners, and drinks every day. He hosted brand agencies at roundtable meals at his house in Venice. He flew in brand execs for private screenings of cuts.

He didn’t just make prospective and existing clients feel like the product was important and great.

He made them feel like they were important and great - as people.

When you make someone feel important, they will reciprocate. Respect begets respect.

This is how strong relationships form! And strong relationships are as important in business as they are in life.

In the Creator Economy today, I see a lot of transactionalism.

For example, when I led Creator Partnerships at Patreon, I was writing million-dollar checks to top Creators…and yet, while everyone wanted to get a deal, no one wanted to get a meal.

They just wanted to transact - “You give me the money, I give you the content, we both move on.”

Would you write a million-dollar check and commit to years-long partnerships off of a few phone calls, to someone who refused to simply drive across town for an hour?

The counterexample is a former boss of mine from Wheelhouse, Dan Sanborn. He was an SVP at Diageo before I worked for him, leading their liquor partnerships with top celebs including Jimmy Kimmel.

Dan and Kimmel spent a ton of time together, and ended up building such a strong bond that Dan would stay at Kimmel’s house whenever he visited LA from New York. Kimmel is who pushed Dan to join Wheelhouse, and today, Dan runs Kimmel’s brand agency.

You want long term partnerships?

That’s a long-term partnership.

It only exists because they both made an effort to build a personal relationship.

If you want to get long-term clients of any kind, what are you doing to make that happen?

Are you just hopping on calls and sending decks? Or are you putting in the effort to build a human-to-human relationship?

If it’s just the former, it might be time to rethink your approach to be more like Jeff’s and Dan’s.

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Written by Avi Gandhi, edited by Melody Song,
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