Jeff Krauss
Appearances
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
From LA Dodgers to George Clooney’s Cocktail Hour: How Jeff Krauss Plans Iconic Events
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.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
From LA Dodgers to George Clooney’s Cocktail Hour: How Jeff Krauss Plans Iconic Events
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.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
From LA Dodgers to George Clooney’s Cocktail Hour: How Jeff Krauss Plans Iconic Events
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.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
From LA Dodgers to George Clooney’s Cocktail Hour: How Jeff Krauss Plans Iconic Events
There's so many different variables to that. But if you're just patient and you're persistent, but not annoyingly persistent, if you're just persistent enough, doors will open.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
From LA Dodgers to George Clooney’s Cocktail Hour: How Jeff Krauss Plans Iconic Events
Well, first and foremost, thank you for having me on today. It's great to be here. To give you a little bit of a snippet, I did grow up in Long Island, Was and still am a very introverted, shy person, I guess you could say. And when I was in college, my friends and I would always go to nightclubs. And I would drink a little bit, but not too much, enough to drive home kind of thing.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
From LA Dodgers to George Clooney’s Cocktail Hour: How Jeff Krauss Plans Iconic Events
Sure. This is a very big case in point of being patient and understanding and just going with the flow. Well, I should say going with the flow after you realize what you're dealing with. The way I got Saturday Night Live as a client, I ended up connecting with Chris Rock's assistant and becoming friends with him. Now, I want to backtrack that for a second.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
From LA Dodgers to George Clooney’s Cocktail Hour: How Jeff Krauss Plans Iconic Events
I met him through a New York assistant group for celebrity assistants, which, by the way, took me a while to even get to meet them. And I met them through dinners of one of their bosses, which is a whole other story. So I met Chris Rot's assistant. We became friends. And he said, hey, Jeff, listen, I should introduce you to my friend that's the head of talent at SNL.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
From LA Dodgers to George Clooney’s Cocktail Hour: How Jeff Krauss Plans Iconic Events
Maybe you guys could do some events together or work together in some capacity. Okay, great. So he makes the light introduction. At the time, I was running the programming for a lounge called Troy Liquor Bar in New York City, which is right below Dos Caminos. So I said to him, hey, why don't you come down and have a drink and we can meet? Cool. Hung out for a while. He invited me to SNL.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
From LA Dodgers to George Clooney’s Cocktail Hour: How Jeff Krauss Plans Iconic Events
I went to SNL. It was great. And we spoke about potentially doing some events, some of the after parties or parties for the writers or whatnot. And I ended up doing one party for them. It went great. And then I said to them, look, I know you guys, I know we're talking about the after party, which is a dinner about doing some of those. But what about these secret after after parties?
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
From LA Dodgers to George Clooney’s Cocktail Hour: How Jeff Krauss Plans Iconic Events
Who does that? And they said, oh, that's a whole different thing. We'll have to introduce you to the people that deal with it on the production side. That's more of like a hush-hush thing. That's not something that's out in the open, pressed and all this stuff. That's more of like... Down low kind of stuff. Okay, cool.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
From LA Dodgers to George Clooney’s Cocktail Hour: How Jeff Krauss Plans Iconic Events
Well, because they're not public. It's not like NBC is putting out a press release about this. They just go somewhere after, basically. So they connected me with the guy that handles it. And the guy says to me, listen, I will give you a couple of parties where you could find the location and do your thing.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
From LA Dodgers to George Clooney’s Cocktail Hour: How Jeff Krauss Plans Iconic Events
If everything goes well, chances are I'm probably just going to give you the reins because I want to not really deal with this anymore. Said, oh, okay, great. So we did a couple of parties. It went great. But I didn't realize how they operate. So I would be, at the beginning of every week, whatever, I'd be texting them nonstop. So finally, he just texted me back and says, hey, don't call us.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
From LA Dodgers to George Clooney’s Cocktail Hour: How Jeff Krauss Plans Iconic Events
We'll call you, essentially, in layman's words. So I said, oh, OK. I was kind of a little bit sad about it. But I said, you know, it is what it is. Six months later, my friend calls me.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
From LA Dodgers to George Clooney’s Cocktail Hour: How Jeff Krauss Plans Iconic Events
that used to work for the Mets, that used to bring the owner of the lounge that I used to run the marketing and promotions for back in the day, used to bring him Mets tickets, calls me up and he says, hey, Jeff, do you want to work with SNL for their after after parties? I said, well, yeah, of course. But then I told him the story. He goes, listen, I don't think that you understand.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
From LA Dodgers to George Clooney’s Cocktail Hour: How Jeff Krauss Plans Iconic Events
There's several people that are direct or indirect with SNL that are in the family, so to speak, that handle these parties each week. So I'm going to introduce you to my friends that do them, and you guys can take it from there. So I said, come down to the bar and let's hang out, have a drink. They came down. We were talking, we hit it off. And I told him the story about what happened previously.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
From LA Dodgers to George Clooney’s Cocktail Hour: How Jeff Krauss Plans Iconic Events
So we would be online at a club, you know, and it's just me and my guy friends and we're just pay to get in, whatever. And one day we're just standing there and this promoter that we knew from back home walks up, cuts the line, walks in with all these women. And my friend just says to me, who's more extroverted, Jeff. We got to do that. I go, do what? He says, we have to promote parties.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
From LA Dodgers to George Clooney’s Cocktail Hour: How Jeff Krauss Plans Iconic Events
And he said, okay, Jeff, let me just give you the lay of the land here. There's several people that choose this party each week. I happen to be one of them. I will give you a couple parties. If it goes well, you can have my end of the parties. I just want to show up and have fun and hang out. Great. Everything went well. He gave me his end of the parties. It's great, right?
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
From LA Dodgers to George Clooney’s Cocktail Hour: How Jeff Krauss Plans Iconic Events
Well, the guy that in the beginning that I was dealing with, one of the reasons why he wasn't texting me back as much is because I didn't realize that he was moving out of state. Again, you never know what people are going through or dealing with.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
From LA Dodgers to George Clooney’s Cocktail Hour: How Jeff Krauss Plans Iconic Events
So now, because he moved, I, by default and hard work and a little bit of timing, have now been given most of the parties at that point because there's only a few people to choose And they kind of just went back to me to rely on.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
From LA Dodgers to George Clooney’s Cocktail Hour: How Jeff Krauss Plans Iconic Events
And I just want to say something also to that. A lot of times when people get rejected in whatever the case, You don't know what's going on on the other end. You don't. So if you just take things with the pure thought of, hey, you know what? I really don't know what's happening on the other end. I'm going to breathe. Try again in a month or two months or whatever the case.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
From LA Dodgers to George Clooney’s Cocktail Hour: How Jeff Krauss Plans Iconic Events
People have a lot of things going on that you probably don't know. That's the truth. And even in this case situation, by the way, What ended up happening is they would call me on Friday night at eight o'clock and say, where are we going? Now, I had been texting all week. I might be in the middle of an event and I have to step outside the event to start calling owners of venues.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
From LA Dodgers to George Clooney’s Cocktail Hour: How Jeff Krauss Plans Iconic Events
frantically, because all week I heard nothing. I don't know what's going on. And the guy that I'm now dealing with is the real deal. This just isn't a priority to them all week. So I said to them, hey, look, is there any way of kind of moving this up a little bit? He says to me, Jeff, I'm going to just give you a little bit of a piece of advice as a friend.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
From LA Dodgers to George Clooney’s Cocktail Hour: How Jeff Krauss Plans Iconic Events
If you want to work with them, this is how they operate. Party is not their top of mind. The show is their top of mind. This stuff is not their priority. I'm telling you this because I've tried to change it for years. It's not gonna happen. Just go with the flow, do whatever you gotta do. If you wanna continue working with them as whatever, This is what you have to do. So I said, OK, noted.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
From LA Dodgers to George Clooney’s Cocktail Hour: How Jeff Krauss Plans Iconic Events
So what I did was every week now, now that I know that they are going to call me, I know that call is coming in. I would at the beginning of the week call a whole bunch of venues and say, just letting you know, I'll be calling you on Friday at eight. staff up, because the worst that could happen is you have to take staff off. That's a lot easier than putting staff on.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
From LA Dodgers to George Clooney’s Cocktail Hour: How Jeff Krauss Plans Iconic Events
So every week, I would call on Monday or Tuesday, have a few venues in play. And if they didn't get it that week, chances are they got it the following. I just reverse engineered the whole thing.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
From LA Dodgers to George Clooney’s Cocktail Hour: How Jeff Krauss Plans Iconic Events
I said, no, I'm not. No, that's that's just not not for me. So week after week, we would just hang out having dinner or whatever. And he would just say to me, Jeff, when are we doing it? Do what? We got to promote. We got to promote parties. It would just be ongoing week after week. So finally, I said to him, OK, I will call my sister and ask her if she knows any promoters. I'm sure she does.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
From LA Dodgers to George Clooney’s Cocktail Hour: How Jeff Krauss Plans Iconic Events
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.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
From LA Dodgers to George Clooney’s Cocktail Hour: How Jeff Krauss Plans Iconic Events
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.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
From LA Dodgers to George Clooney’s Cocktail Hour: How Jeff Krauss Plans Iconic Events
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.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
From LA Dodgers to George Clooney’s Cocktail Hour: How Jeff Krauss Plans Iconic Events
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.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
From LA Dodgers to George Clooney’s Cocktail Hour: How Jeff Krauss Plans Iconic Events
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
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
From LA Dodgers to George Clooney’s Cocktail Hour: How Jeff Krauss Plans Iconic Events
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
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
From LA Dodgers to George Clooney’s Cocktail Hour: How Jeff Krauss Plans Iconic Events
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.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
From LA Dodgers to George Clooney’s Cocktail Hour: How Jeff Krauss Plans Iconic Events
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.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
From LA Dodgers to George Clooney’s Cocktail Hour: How Jeff Krauss Plans Iconic Events
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.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
From LA Dodgers to George Clooney’s Cocktail Hour: How Jeff Krauss Plans Iconic Events
I will try this once. If it goes well, I'm open to doing it again. So he says, OK, fine. We'll try it once. But I'm telling you, this is going to be big. You'll see. We're going to get a lot of women. And we're going to make all this money. Blah, blah, blah, whatever. Okay, fine. So I said, just settle down. We'll try it. So we start calling our phone book.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
From LA Dodgers to George Clooney’s Cocktail Hour: How Jeff Krauss Plans Iconic Events
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
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
From LA Dodgers to George Clooney’s Cocktail Hour: How Jeff Krauss Plans Iconic Events
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.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
From LA Dodgers to George Clooney’s Cocktail Hour: How Jeff Krauss Plans Iconic Events
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.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
From LA Dodgers to George Clooney’s Cocktail Hour: How Jeff Krauss Plans Iconic Events
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.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
From LA Dodgers to George Clooney’s Cocktail Hour: How Jeff Krauss Plans Iconic Events
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.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
From LA Dodgers to George Clooney’s Cocktail Hour: How Jeff Krauss Plans Iconic Events
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.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
From LA Dodgers to George Clooney’s Cocktail Hour: How Jeff Krauss Plans Iconic Events
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.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
From LA Dodgers to George Clooney’s Cocktail Hour: How Jeff Krauss Plans Iconic Events
My sister actually did introduce me to a promoter. We threw a party. It just so happened that that venue was like the hottest place in New York at the time. So we're calling our entire phone book. And my friend is calling people from tennis camp he hadn't spoken to in 10 years. I'm calling people from high school and everybody. We're throwing a party.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
From LA Dodgers to George Clooney’s Cocktail Hour: How Jeff Krauss Plans Iconic Events
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.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
From LA Dodgers to George Clooney’s Cocktail Hour: How Jeff Krauss Plans Iconic Events
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.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
From LA Dodgers to George Clooney’s Cocktail Hour: How Jeff Krauss Plans Iconic Events
Just get to tomorrow.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
From LA Dodgers to George Clooney’s Cocktail Hour: How Jeff Krauss Plans Iconic Events
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.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
From LA Dodgers to George Clooney’s Cocktail Hour: How Jeff Krauss Plans Iconic Events
Yeah, you'll see it on my Instagram, but that's more because I want to show what I'm doing. I want to show the work that I'm doing. I'm not doing that because I'm looking to myself as, oh, I'm this... big shot and blah, blah, blah. All that doesn't matter.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
From LA Dodgers to George Clooney’s Cocktail Hour: How Jeff Krauss Plans Iconic Events
If you can stay humble and still do your thing with confidence, and that's the key, humility, humbleness, but still be very confident in yourself and lean into your strengths and turn your weaknesses into strengths, you'll be great. That's my biggest advice.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
From LA Dodgers to George Clooney’s Cocktail Hour: How Jeff Krauss Plans Iconic Events
Just to give everybody just a little bit of piece of information that I think you'd find interesting. Just before the pandemic, a few years prior, I didn't even have an Instagram setup. I didn't care. When I would bring these celebrities to the restaurants, I wasn't asking them for photos. I wasn't taking photos with them because I just didn't care.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
From LA Dodgers to George Clooney’s Cocktail Hour: How Jeff Krauss Plans Iconic Events
But one of my friends, Steven Grossman, who's a celebrity manager, said to me, why don't you have an Instagram? I said, nah, what's the point? I have Facebook. He says, Jeff, how am I supposed to remember to send you my clients Instagram? if I'm not seeing your posts. So I'm recommending set up an Instagram so that it would remind me to text you, hey, so-and-so's in town.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
From LA Dodgers to George Clooney’s Cocktail Hour: How Jeff Krauss Plans Iconic Events
We're throwing the party, the biggest party ever. Well, I show up to the door and the bouncer says to me, okay, let me see your ID. I show an ID. Now I'm underage. I always get into nightclubs. Never a problem. The bouncer looks at it and says, this isn't you. So I'm now standing outside freaking out because we have all these people coming and My friend is over 21.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
From LA Dodgers to George Clooney’s Cocktail Hour: How Jeff Krauss Plans Iconic Events
Can you set them up for something? So I said, okay, but you're on my Facebook. He's like, Jeff, it's completely different. Just trust me. Set up an Instagram. So I set the Instagram up and he actually let me plan his 40th birthday party in LA just off the cuff of a conversation. What if I never set up my Instagram?
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
From LA Dodgers to George Clooney’s Cocktail Hour: How Jeff Krauss Plans Iconic Events
Then I was like, oh, I guess it is kind of important for me to take photos with people and share them because... It reminds people of what I do.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
From LA Dodgers to George Clooney’s Cocktail Hour: How Jeff Krauss Plans Iconic Events
No, thank you for having me. And look, I love giving any kind of inspiration I can. One little thing, I actually did co-create a platform called Quote Notes. which is all about sharing love and inspiration on social media through inspiring quotes and stories. So that is one of my passion projects. If you want to check it out on Instagram, it's at Quote Notes Official.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
From LA Dodgers to George Clooney’s Cocktail Hour: How Jeff Krauss Plans Iconic Events
That project keeps me mentally, creatively going too, because we're giving back to just in a way of like, hey, you know what? There are brighter days ahead for anybody that has any kind of problem, so to speak.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
From LA Dodgers to George Clooney’s Cocktail Hour: How Jeff Krauss Plans Iconic Events
Thank you for having me. This was fun.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
From LA Dodgers to George Clooney’s Cocktail Hour: How Jeff Krauss Plans Iconic Events
He gets into the club and he starts raising hell. Starts screaming, me and my partner busted our asses to fill this venue and blah, blah, blah. And he's going crazy. The guy that was running the place said, listen, I will let him in, but he cannot drink. Okay, fine. So I get in. There's hundreds of people trying to get in.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
From LA Dodgers to George Clooney’s Cocktail Hour: How Jeff Krauss Plans Iconic Events
I have failed many times in my career. The only difference between me and maybe somebody else is that I always got back on the horse. Ignore the noise because people who thrive, they have to jump over hurdles to get where they are. If you can stay humble and still do your thing with confidence, you'll be great.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
From LA Dodgers to George Clooney’s Cocktail Hour: How Jeff Krauss Plans Iconic Events
A lot of our friends are outside or people that we haven't even seen in a while. And some of them didn't get in. We didn't get paid because they didn't count a lot of the people. My sister's friend knew the door person. So anybody that she brought, they counted for them or whatever. And yes, it used to go by a tally system.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
From LA Dodgers to George Clooney’s Cocktail Hour: How Jeff Krauss Plans Iconic Events
That's how it would go, is how promoters would get paid if you weren't the top promoter that has the venue. And we got into an argument with the promoter. We wanted to get paid. We worked very hard. And he wouldn't pay us. But I saw the experience people had. And everybody had such a great time that actually did get in.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
From LA Dodgers to George Clooney’s Cocktail Hour: How Jeff Krauss Plans Iconic Events
So I said, look, let's look into and see if we could find other promoters that are maybe not working at the hottest club, but it's still good enough. And let's try and work with somebody a little bit nicer that will give us the authority and the rope that we need to do our thing. And I ended up connecting with somebody named Donnie and Tina.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
From LA Dodgers to George Clooney’s Cocktail Hour: How Jeff Krauss Plans Iconic Events
They were great to me and they showed me the ropes and I just wanted to learn more and see if I could see this thing through. I had the itch, so to speak.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
From LA Dodgers to George Clooney’s Cocktail Hour: How Jeff Krauss Plans Iconic Events
Oh, it was hard. Because remember, I'm calling people that I'm friendly with or whatever. Some of them I am close friends with or was close friends with at the time. But I'm the guy that's off to the right. And then when he sees the person and they have a great conversation, I'm like that guy. I'm not the guy in the middle that's talking to everybody, if that makes sense.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
From LA Dodgers to George Clooney’s Cocktail Hour: How Jeff Krauss Plans Iconic Events
I'm trying to give the best visual to this. Yeah.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
From LA Dodgers to George Clooney’s Cocktail Hour: How Jeff Krauss Plans Iconic Events
Once I started promoting parties... I got the creative brain, so to speak, to want to throw events. And I wanted to run my own nightclub and do all these things that were more on the operational side of it. Even though I was still front and center in a way, I wanted to expand. And I was thinking about what could be. I was imagining what could be, right? So I did open up a lounge.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
From LA Dodgers to George Clooney’s Cocktail Hour: How Jeff Krauss Plans Iconic Events
And it worked at first, then it didn't work. And then whatever happens, it didn't work in the end. But I learned a lot from that. And after that, I continued to just throw parties. Venues would hire me as a consultant to bring on promoters and book events and stuff like that. But it wasn't as much. I wasn't the guy that was sitting there at a table anymore with tons of people around.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
From LA Dodgers to George Clooney’s Cocktail Hour: How Jeff Krauss Plans Iconic Events
Patience can be a dream killer. If you don't have patience and you're an entrepreneur, that's really bad.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
From LA Dodgers to George Clooney’s Cocktail Hour: How Jeff Krauss Plans Iconic Events
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.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
From LA Dodgers to George Clooney’s Cocktail Hour: How Jeff Krauss Plans Iconic Events
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
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
From LA Dodgers to George Clooney’s Cocktail Hour: How Jeff Krauss Plans Iconic Events
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
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
From LA Dodgers to George Clooney’s Cocktail Hour: How Jeff Krauss Plans Iconic Events
you
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
From LA Dodgers to George Clooney’s Cocktail Hour: How Jeff Krauss Plans Iconic Events
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.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
From LA Dodgers to George Clooney’s Cocktail Hour: How Jeff Krauss Plans Iconic Events
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
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
From LA Dodgers to George Clooney’s Cocktail Hour: How Jeff Krauss Plans Iconic Events
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.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
From LA Dodgers to George Clooney’s Cocktail Hour: How Jeff Krauss Plans Iconic Events
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.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
From LA Dodgers to George Clooney’s Cocktail Hour: How Jeff Krauss Plans Iconic Events
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.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
From LA Dodgers to George Clooney’s Cocktail Hour: How Jeff Krauss Plans Iconic Events
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.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
From LA Dodgers to George Clooney’s Cocktail Hour: How Jeff Krauss Plans Iconic Events
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.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
From LA Dodgers to George Clooney’s Cocktail Hour: How Jeff Krauss Plans Iconic Events
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.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
From LA Dodgers to George Clooney’s Cocktail Hour: How Jeff Krauss Plans Iconic Events
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.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
From LA Dodgers to George Clooney’s Cocktail Hour: How Jeff Krauss Plans Iconic 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.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
From LA Dodgers to George Clooney’s Cocktail Hour: How Jeff Krauss Plans Iconic Events
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.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
From LA Dodgers to George Clooney’s Cocktail Hour: How Jeff Krauss Plans Iconic Events
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.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
From LA Dodgers to George Clooney’s Cocktail Hour: How Jeff Krauss Plans Iconic Events
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.
Leap Academy with Ilana Golan
From LA Dodgers to George Clooney’s Cocktail Hour: How Jeff Krauss Plans Iconic Events
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,
Mick Unplugged
Jeff Krauss on Building Experiences and Celebrity Connections
We called Cedric and we just said, hey, listen, we got this idea. It's very bare bones, but this is the idea. And he just listened and he said, listen, this is an amazing idea. But I think you guys are you guys are thinking of this as like one off. events as a just, you know, to raise money for charity, which is great. But what if we can build a brand?
Mick Unplugged
Jeff Krauss on Building Experiences and Celebrity Connections
By the way, first and foremost, thank you for having me on today. And that actually means a lot for you to say that kind introduction. As far as my because and my why, I have always just adapted the mindset of it's never over till it's over. It's just not. There's a difference between saying, okay, you know what?
Mick Unplugged
Jeff Krauss on Building Experiences and Celebrity Connections
What if we can build a brand that goes beyond COVID that We can build that is going to be. So we kind of just said, okay, we'd love to partner with you because that was what the conversation was. We just started brainstorming like, hey, what about this idea? What about that idea? This idea for months. And then finally we said, okay, let's do some test runs here.
Mick Unplugged
Jeff Krauss on Building Experiences and Celebrity Connections
So we test ran it a couple times and we said, all right, this concept is great. And it's not just about money and about all that stuff. It's the connection and the experience we're giving. So then we got Jay Benjamin involved, host and co-EP. Stacey Toy came on board, co-host and co-EP. And we just started, we just kept doing it.
Mick Unplugged
Jeff Krauss on Building Experiences and Celebrity Connections
More and more people wanted to come on board and host their, their fandom lives and raise money for their charities and meet their fans. And it's, it's been amazing. Like it's a very up close and personal experience, which is what we love, but it's an up close and personal experience that everybody joins together and can do. So you could be one-on-one and,
Mick Unplugged
Jeff Krauss on Building Experiences and Celebrity Connections
And then everybody else is waiting in the wings watching because maybe they didn't think of that. They didn't think of that question. Right. They didn't think of that. So now all the questions that everybody else is asking, you get to listen to and you get to have this special moment that and we get to bring entertainment to people's lives that especially during that time that is heavily needed.
Mick Unplugged
Jeff Krauss on Building Experiences and Celebrity Connections
Thank you. Again, that does mean a lot. One other thing I also do want to point out is that the difference between fan rooms And say, meeting a celebrity at a nightclub or a convention or VIP is that you get uninterrupted conversation. You go online at a Comic-Con to get, yes, you get an autograph and you get your picture, but... there's a bouncer rushing you off.
Mick Unplugged
Jeff Krauss on Building Experiences and Celebrity Connections
Like, hurry up, hurry up, next person, next person, because they want to cram as many people in as possible. Whereas here, we do have time limits based on the celebrity's time allotted, but we're not rushing people through. They come on, they have their conversation, they have their moment, and then they go back into the wings and watch everybody else and hang out.
Mick Unplugged
Jeff Krauss on Building Experiences and Celebrity Connections
This project isn't going to suit my needs because I am not able to accomplish X, Y, and Z. And the reason I can't accomplish X, Y, and Z is because it's not fitting within what I can do, whatever the obstacles are, So I will push as hard as I can to make those obstacles disappear. But if they don't disappear and you get knocked down, just get back up. Find another project. Everybody has talent.
Mick Unplugged
Jeff Krauss on Building Experiences and Celebrity Connections
cool events in the pipeline, a lot of cool fandom live stuff in the pipeline and just stay tuned and you will, uh, you will see what's coming.
Mick Unplugged
Jeff Krauss on Building Experiences and Celebrity Connections
They can follow me and my company. IE group. at iGroupNYC on Instagram. You can follow Fan Room Live at Fan Room Live. By the way, you can also follow Quote Notes Official, which is my other project where we spread love and inspiration through inspiring stories and inspiring quotes throughout social media to give people a brighter day and to motivate people and make people feel good about
Mick Unplugged
Jeff Krauss on Building Experiences and Celebrity Connections
the actual good things in this world that you can look forward to.
Mick Unplugged
Jeff Krauss on Building Experiences and Celebrity Connections
I appreciate that. And I would love to come back on. It's been awesome. And by the way, you're an awesome host. I really do mean that. And I do appreciate you having me on today. Seriously.
Mick Unplugged
Jeff Krauss on Building Experiences and Celebrity Connections
Everybody has motivation. The thing that I see is that people get knocked down. And then when they get knocked down, what they do is they say, oh, the world is going to look at me this way. Or whatever the case is, whatever their reasoning is that they're disappointed in themselves. But the truth is, is that Rome wasn't built in a day. That's right.
Mick Unplugged
Jeff Krauss on Building Experiences and Celebrity Connections
So you just have to look at it like, hey, I'm going to take my strengths, whatever they are, and apply them toward things that I can do, that I'm confident that I can do, that I enjoy doing. maybe delegate some other things to some other partners. Just keep it moving. I mean, not every project is going to work out, unfortunately. Absolutely. You just have to keep going.
Mick Unplugged
Jeff Krauss on Building Experiences and Celebrity Connections
But it's mental resiliency. That's right. It's mental. Right. Because again, half of the battle is mental.
Mick Unplugged
Jeff Krauss on Building Experiences and Celebrity Connections
Here's the thing. The way I look at it is you have many different facets of the event, as you said. You have the guests. You have the people that are working the event. And then you have the talent or the DJ or the speaker or whatever type of event it is. And then you have the miscellaneous stuff, right? So the way I look at it is this. Why would anybody want to do an event with me
Mick Unplugged
Jeff Krauss on Building Experiences and Celebrity Connections
come to an event that i'm producing or have any involvement if they're not treated well why would they that's the way that i look at it why would they come back to me why would they refer me to people why would they they wouldn't so my my philosophy is make the experience great
Mick Unplugged
Jeff Krauss on Building Experiences and Celebrity Connections
for everybody involved if you can just nail that and people are like hey you know what i'm excited to do this event with jeff i'm excited to work the event i'm excited to attend the event that's that's where the the magic is in my in my opinion i mean that's how you grow long-term businesses by having long-term relationships and if you have long-term relationships
Mick Unplugged
Jeff Krauss on Building Experiences and Celebrity Connections
People will remember that because you gave them an experience that is much deeper than them just going or working any event.
Mick Unplugged
Jeff Krauss on Building Experiences and Celebrity Connections
That means a lot for you to say. That's very...
Mick Unplugged
Jeff Krauss on Building Experiences and Celebrity Connections
I'm doing great, man. Thank you so much for having me. How are you doing?
Mick Unplugged
Jeff Krauss on Building Experiences and Celebrity Connections
Kind of as a dare in a way. I was online at a nightclub with a group of my guy friends. I'm personally a little bit introverted or actually very introverted at times. My friend, on the other hand, is very extroverted. And we're just standing there and promoter comes up and cuts the line, walks in with all these girls, right? So my friend says to me, Jeff, that's what we got to do.
Mick Unplugged
Jeff Krauss on Building Experiences and Celebrity Connections
We got to become promoters. And I said to him, no. Oh, I don't want to do that. Like, no. So he kept pressing me for weeks. Jeff, you don't understand. This could be so cool. We can make all this money and we can cut the line and meet all these girls. And like for weeks and weeks, he was pressing me. And so finally I said to him, okay, look, I will try this once if possible. I like it.
Mick Unplugged
Jeff Krauss on Building Experiences and Celebrity Connections
We'll do it again. But if I don't like it, don't bother me about this ever again. So I call my sister. She knew a promoter, connected us. We start calling everybody in our phone book. My friend is calling people from tennis camp from 10 years ago that he hadn't spoken to in years. I'm calling people from my college. You know, we're calling everybody we know to come out to this party.
Mick Unplugged
Jeff Krauss on Building Experiences and Celebrity Connections
And now I'm underage at the time. Show up. I show my ID and the bouncer immediately looks at it and says, this isn't you. Now, mind you, I've never had a problem getting into a nightclub before this. Just so happens, first time I'm throwing a party, the bouncer realizes that I'm underage. Go figure. So my partner goes inside. He's ranting and raving to the people running the place.
Mick Unplugged
Jeff Krauss on Building Experiences and Celebrity Connections
My partner and I busted our butts to fill this place, and he's going crazy to get me in, right? So finally, one of the people that's running the place says, look, we'll let him in, but he cannot drink. So I said, fine, no problem. I don't have to drink. No problem. I go in. It's a zoo outside of people trying to get in. Some of our friends didn't get in.
Mick Unplugged
Jeff Krauss on Building Experiences and Celebrity Connections
My sister came and she brought a whole bunch of friends with her. But one of the I guess the bouncer or the door guy knew one of her friends. So they didn't count that for us. And it was just one of those things where we didn't get paid.
Mick Unplugged
Jeff Krauss on Building Experiences and Celebrity Connections
because they said we didn't bring anybody that or whatever or we didn't bring anybody that paid or whatever their excuse was and we got into a whole fight with the promoter and whatever but the way i looked at it was the people that got inside had such a great time they were asking when's the next one and that that made me feel really good that i was able to putting the the the
Mick Unplugged
Jeff Krauss on Building Experiences and Celebrity Connections
the internal drama and money and all that stuff aside, what really made me feel good was that everybody had a great experience. So I said, look, we'll try this one more time, but I want to do this in a venue with another promoter that it's not the hottest place in Manhattan and we could just
Mick Unplugged
Jeff Krauss on Building Experiences and Celebrity Connections
do our thing, and we're going to have the rope that we need, the tools that we need to succeed and learn the business. I found somebody, Donnie and Tina. They taught me a lot of stuff. They gave me a lot of leeway, do whatever, and I just fell in love with it. However, as the years went on, I did open up a lounge that I was a partner in that didn't Work out in the end, which is fine.
Mick Unplugged
Jeff Krauss on Building Experiences and Celebrity Connections
You live and you learn. But as the time went on, I realized that I really love the event aspect of it. So I started gearing more toward, hey, you know what? Yes, I can consult for your venue. I can help you with programming, but I'm still going to focus on events.
Mick Unplugged
Jeff Krauss on Building Experiences and Celebrity Connections
I started focusing on experiences and I started to build my celebrity Rolodex, started working with restaurants, met my business partner, Mitch Faulkner from 123 Talent. And our whole thing was this. He wanted to book celebrities for appearances for the conventions and comic cons and all that kind of kind of stuff.
Mick Unplugged
Jeff Krauss on Building Experiences and Celebrity Connections
I just wanted them to come into the restaurant and have a good time or to the event or whatever I was doing. So we parlayed both of that. It fed right off of each other. And we built this great partnership that we just teamed up and we've been doing everything together since.
Mick Unplugged
Jeff Krauss on Building Experiences and Celebrity Connections
Thank you. Again, that really means a lot. Seriously. I do take a lot of pride in what I actually do. So it does mean a lot.
Mick Unplugged
Jeff Krauss on Building Experiences and Celebrity Connections
There's a lot to this. Number one is that they might have known me as, let's say, promoter, but they didn't know me of whether I was trustworthy or not to deliver. They didn't know me personally. Not everybody knew me or knew that I can deliver or knew that when I say something that it means it's going to happen.
Mick Unplugged
Jeff Krauss on Building Experiences and Celebrity Connections
So what happened was I would reach out and I would build the relationship with the managers, the publicists, the assistants, the agents. And a lot of times It would be for talent that they're big, but they're not global superstars, so to speak.
Mick Unplugged
Jeff Krauss on Building Experiences and Celebrity Connections
But what would happen is that that same rep would also rep other people or have colleagues or whatever the case. So it started to just build like, hey, you know what? He is a trustworthy guy. We can... send our talent to him. We can do events with him and dinners and all this kind of stuff because I built that up. It wasn't from scratch, basically. See, I had a few relationships.
Mick Unplugged
Jeff Krauss on Building Experiences and Celebrity Connections
My partner had some relationships. It kind of just intermixed and it just kept building. So I would build a relationship. I would introduce my partner. He would then kind of start doing stuff with people. He would then say, oh, by the way, meet Jeff. He does more of this kind of stuff. And it just kept building. And they were like, okay, Jeff and Mitch, these guys are legit.
Mick Unplugged
Jeff Krauss on Building Experiences and Celebrity Connections
And I just stick to my word. If I say we're going to do something, I stick to my word. Right. And yeah, that's pretty much my, my, my thing.
Mick Unplugged
Jeff Krauss on Building Experiences and Celebrity Connections
So this is a very, very interesting and fun loving story, I guess you could say. One day, everything is shut. Events are shut. Restaurants are shut. Conventions are shut. Everything we were doing was shut down. We're all just sitting in our houses. Now, my business partner, Mitch, has a lot of athlete relationships. So he called me up and he said, hey, Jeff, I got this idea.
Mick Unplugged
Jeff Krauss on Building Experiences and Celebrity Connections
What if we got some of our athlete and wrestler friends, clients online to just talk to their fans, maybe teach a class, maybe do this, do that? I said, hey, what a great idea. But what if we had a charity element to it? Oh, what a great idea. What if we included celebrities to do this as well? What a great idea. Even better idea. Started making some calls.