Intro: 00:02

Welcome back to the Response Drivers podcast, where we feature top marketing minds and dig in to their inspiring stories. Learn how these leaders think and find big ideas to push your results and sales to the next level. Now let’s get started.

Rick Rappe: 00:19

Hey, I’m Rick Rappe, host of the Response Drivers podcast. Here, I dive deep with marketing experts and innovators to learn how they approach targeted marketing and use data driven strategies to acquire and retain customers. We’ll talk about what’s working, what’s changing, and how we can stay ahead in an evolving marketing landscape. 

Response Drivers is brought to you by RPM Direct Marketing. RPM helps marketers turn direct mail into a measurable customer acquisition channel without having to build the internal team, vendor, network, or production infrastructure themselves. Built on more than 30 years of constant testing, RPM helps you launch faster, optimize performance, and drive more sales from your direct mail. Visit rpmdm.com to learn more. 

Well, today on Response Drivers, I’m excited to welcome Bill Fritsch. Bill has had a remarkable 50 year career in marketing, advertising, entrepreneurship and leadership. His journey includes what he calls his graduate school years at Disney headquarters, helping to grow a small ad agency into a major firm. Starting his own agency and ultimately selling it to a large multinational company. Taking a.com public. Building a brand advertising agency, and later serving as a turnaround CEO for one of the most creative agencies in the world. Today, Bill mentors young business leaders, sharing his experience and perspective that can only come from a career spent building companies, leading creative teams, and navigating major moments of change in the marketing world. 

On a personal note, Bill had an impact on me very early in my own career.  Back in 1991, when I was 20 years old, I interned at Christensen and Fritsch, and it was a great experience. I had a lot of fun, met wonderful people, and came away even more excited about where a career in marketing might take me. So it’s a real pleasure to reconnect with you all these years later and to get to interview you, Bill.

Bill Fritsch: 02:18

Thanks for having me, Rick. Likewise.

Rick Rappe: 02:22

Well, let’s go back and explore your early beginnings, and maybe you can talk a little bit about how you got started in marketing, how you ended up at Disney. I think Disney was maybe your first marketing type position, right?

Bill Fritsch: 02:38

It was. It was. So we have about four hours and I’ll tell the whole story.

Rick Rappe: 02:45

We could go as long as you want to go. But you know, maybe.

Bill Fritsch: 02:48

I’ll try and give you the digest.

Rick Rappe: 02:51

Sure.

Bill Fritsch: 02:52

And so I graduated from college in 1973 with a bachelor’s in accounting. Now why I studied accounting. Only God knows. I certainly didn’t know why I you know, I give talks to students and graduating seniors from universities now. And I didn’t have the foggiest idea.

And a counselor talked me out of wanting to be a writer and into wanting to be an accountant. So I studied accounting and I had to stick with it because his Uncle Sam had a rifle with my name on it and graph number for the draft and Vietnam on the other side of the rifle, you know, etched into it. Yeah. And I was very dead set against that war in particular. So I stuck with accounting and I should have known I had A’s in everything in college except my major. 

So. But I graduated a year before I got out of school. I had a job that paid a tremendous amount of money waiting for me with one of the big eight firms, and literally 12 months before they all courted me. And I don’t know why, but I was really set and I was set financially. Coming out of college, I was very poor, but it took me about, oh, maybe two weeks working for this firm to realize I don’t belong here. 

This is not me at all. I can’t do this for a living, because I’ve always had this mind that looks out into the future and kind of maps things to that. I have a conceptual mind, not a rigorous mind that follows paths, but something that assembles pictures. I have this creativity that’s kind of built in. So I was really stuck. 

I was literally doing something I just hated and so about a year into that, I, we had a client of this firm. There was a giant printing concern. They had 16 printing plants up and down the eastern seaboard of the US. And I thought, oh, they’re a printing company. I knew the controller there. 

And he hit me up with a. Whether I wanted a job with them. And I thought, oh, maybe I can switch into marketing, printing, marketing kind of goes together, right? So I ended up going to work for this firm in Uniontown, Ohio. I went to the University of Akron in Akron, Ohio, and was there literally less than four weeks because I was asked to, and I won’t go into the story, but right now, but I was asked to help the the president of the company steal a tremendous amount of money from the company and from the minority shareholders. 

And my boss, who I went to when I was approached about this, I went to him and said, what’s going on? The president wants me to cut this $365,000 check. And I’ve done this investigation and it’s for paper, but there’s no paper. This is purely a fictitious transaction. He’s just creating an invoice so he can skim money off the top of the company. 

Anyway, my boss said you’re not responsible. Just do what he says. If you need to quit, just go. You know, if he can’t do this kind of work. So what are you talking about? 

So anyway, he said, look, just do what he says. And I said, why? I mean, I have to, I have to get the evidence and turn him in. And he said, he’s in the mafia. Oh, boy. 

And you’re going to end up in a ditch. So I was confronted at age 21 with this conundrum, which is do I do? Do I help them do illegal things or not? Well, I’m just not made that way. But I called my dad. I said, dad, can we have dinner? 

Because my dad, he fought in World War Two, straight as an arrow human being. And he’d been shot by a German sniper, and he wasn’t afraid of anything and went to dinner and said, dad, you know, the this guy wants me to help him steal all this money. And my dad said, what are you going to do? I said, well, I’m, I can’t do that. So I’m going to. 

I think I’ll rifle his office and get evidence and turn him in. But dad said, yeah, that’s what I expected. You. I said, one little detail, dad. I could end up in a ditch. 

And my dad, my dad said so. That was my dad. He said, if you cross that line and you do this, you’re never coming back across the line. You won’t have a life worth living, so you might as well deal with this right now. So I did. 

I went back to the office, I gathered all these papers out of the guy’s office and I copied them. And next day I went to the auditors. I turned it over to them. And I was never, never showed up at the company again. And I didn’t get shot. 

But that was like life’s first lesson. And you’re asking how I got into marketing? Well, the auditors were so thankful for all that, that evidence. That they introduced me to this company called the Smithers Company. And I went to work for them as an accountant. 

But I immediately transitioned into this marketing think tank. And they brought in this guy from Walt Disney, a guy named Mike Vance, who was a motivational speaker of the day. He had worked with Walt and Bill building a concept called the University of Disneyland to teach Disney values to every Disneyland employee. Anyway, he came in one day of hearing this guy talk. It’s like I just couldn’t get out of my head. 

I got to go work for Disney. So next thing you know, my wife. I’m sending them resumes. I don’t even get a response from them. It’s like, what? 

You know, I’m taking my time to do this. Clearly. You know, they need to at least say, go away, kid. I know the answer. I need to move out to California. 

And once they meet me, I’ll get a job.

Rick Rappe: 09:11

Wow.

Bill Fritsch: 09:12

So with $1,000 in the bank. My my sweetheart myself. We’ve been married about three years. We’re still married.

Rick Rappe: 09:22

That’s great.

Bill Fritsch: 09:23

55 years now. And. Off you go. I’m sitting on Disney Step in Burbank, California, 500 South Buena Vista Street. Hey, I showed up.

Wow. Here, kid. We don’t want an accountant who wants to learn how to be a creative guy. Shh. Go away. 

Besides, you should’ve done your research. We have a hiring freeze. This is 1976, the first oil problems in the world. Long lines for oil and companies. Inflation was starting to do this. 

And so they had a hiring freeze. So I’m stuck. Well, I show up every day for the next two months, every day at the studio in Burbank. Now we’re $800 is getting mighty thin and I don’t have a job. And so finally I convinced them. 

I said, look, why don’t we do this? Give me the worst job. You can find me at Disneyland as an hourly employee. So I became a. And you’ll get rid of me. 

And so I became a seasonal employee working about 15 hours a casual employees, what they called it, working 15 hours a week. And I started July 2nd, 1976, on the hardest ride in Disneyland. These, these buckets that came across the sky had to stop. These 200 £0 things, let people out and get them going again. Thought it was going to die.

Rick Rappe: 10:42

Wow.

Bill Fritsch: 10:42

So I did that for six weeks. And and every day I was in contact with the studio calling again. And they’re like, we thought we got rid of you. So I know, but I’m going to, I’m going to work for you guys, period. Anyway.

Ultimately, the end of that summer. And I’m making this too long of a story. Rick, I apologize, but at the end of that summer, I was there six weeks. In a normal year, they would take 100 of the seasonal employees and give them full time jobs at the park. That year, they made one offer for a full time job at the park, and that was to me, out of 6000.

Rick Rappe: 11:20

And wow.

Bill Fritsch: 11:21

That’s a whole other story I’m writing an article about right now how that happened. And I turned him down. And the reason is I got a job offer from the studio the very same day, and it became marketing assistant for the Walt Disney Educational Media Company. And And that was eight different Disney businesses that took films and made educational things out of them, and home movies and stuff like that. Ultimately, it became the division that grew into this gargantuan thing, and we built the Disney Channel.

We built Disney’s home video enterprise, and, and I learned how to be on a team of five that turned into thousands. And so I learned all about marketing, direct marketing. The educational media company was all direct mail. And so I became early, early user and creator of direct marketing. And I learned some things about it. 

And I developed this attitude that it isn’t necessarily the thing that responds best. There’s, there’s an there’s an extra measure in all these things. And this led to Christians in which years later, 12 years later. And that was. There’s also the residual effect of what does it do to your brand and dizzy. 

We were concerned about both, so we didn’t always use the thing that was got the greatest response. We used the thing that got the best response along with the the best brand values that came.

Rick Rappe: 12:51

Sure.

Bill Fritsch: 12:52

Yeah. And that became a really unique idea. And when we created Christians and Christians in Fritch in 1988, our idea was we’re branded direct response, completely unique entity in the United States in our in our focus.

Rick Rappe: 13:10

Yeah.

Bill Fritsch: 13:11

Yeah. But that all came out of those Disney days. So that’s how I got into marketing.

Rick Rappe: 13:16

Amazing. Amazing. Well, it’s interesting. And I think a key takeaway from that story for me is, you know, you really, you really had to take some big risks and, and struggle to find your first job in at Disney where you wanted to work and you really had to persist and go through a lot of hardship to find and land that job. And I think, you know, my my kids are in their 20s at this point.

And they, they use indeed. And they fire off fire off resumes and they sort of wait and wait for things to happen. And it’s like, I know myself and, and obviously from your story, finding that first job was not easy and you had to be creative and persistent and, you know, sometimes. A little crazy to get your foot in the right door.

Bill Fritsch: 14:08

Well, I had two motivators. One is when I was sitting back in Ohio, my grandfather had my grandpa Crawford, my mom’s dad, who I just loved. And he, he had cancer and he was dying of cancer. I kept thinking, he’s going to get better. And I go to visit him in the hospital one day.

And he’s literally just half his normal size, just hunched over and I said, oh, you know, come on, grandpa, perk up when you get out of here, we’re going to do all the stuff together. And he said, shut up and listen to me. He said, I’m not leaving here. This is these are my last moments on earth. He died two days later. 

Wow. And he said, I’m sitting here and he’s he was probably 74 years old at the time. And he said, I can see the entire road that got me here and all the twists and turns. But for me, looking back, it’s one long road.

Rick Rappe: 15:06

Home.

Bill Fritsch: 15:07

From your vantage point. You’re going up that road, you’re going to see branches in that road and you’re going to have to make decisions, he said. I’m sitting here, I can see three of those branches, and I’m sitting on my deathbed, and I wish that God had taken any of those three home. He said, so when you hit that branch in that road, you put yourself in this situation I’m in right now. And then answer the question.

He said, follow your heart, not your head. Don’t follow the money. Follow the thing that brings you some form of happiness.

Rick Rappe: 15:42

Right?

Bill Fritsch: 15:43

Oh my God, that was like, that was like a thunderbolt because I was so miserable as an accountant. And then when I hear this guy, Mike Vance talking about Disney, and of course, Walt was my hero as a boy, all of a sudden that was like, I gotta do it right? Because I can imagine myself at my deathbed. I still do this, you know, right now I’m at one of those branches trying to decide what focus do I have for the next 30 years, right? Or the next 20 years or ten, however long I got on this earth.

So that was one motivator. The other one was once I decided, I’m going to go do this, I’m, I’m. My nickname is boy with Loud Mouth because I.

Rick Rappe: 16:23

Talk.

Bill Fritsch: 16:23

All the time. And you never noticed that about me, I’m sure. Rick.

Rick Rappe: 16:29

I don’t remember. I don’t remember you talking about all the time. No, I. Well, that’s great to talk.

Bill Fritsch: 16:35

So I told everybody I knew I’m going to go work for Walt Disney. And at a family, big family gathering, my aunt Pat hears me saying across. She’s across the room, 50 people in here and saying, hey, I’m going to go work for Walt Disney. And I hear her, her voice across the room yell out, you got a job at Walt Disney in. In those days, Disney was considered the most creative firm on earth.

Rick Rappe: 16:58

Absolutely.

Bill Fritsch: 16:59

And and said, no, no, I don’t, but I’m going to go get one. And she says, and this was the best motivator I’ve ever had in my life. She said, they can hire anybody on earth. Why in God’s name would they hire you? Well, when I went to California, there was no way I was going to give up on that quest.

No way at all. I could give up on it because I wasn’t going back to Ohio and my aunt Pat with failure, because that’s what she and I. I give these talks at universities and young people, and it really is around this idea of we you have to get those voices out of your head, right? You have to find your own path. And I combine that idea of don’t do the thinking necessary, gives you a lot of money. 

Do the thing that makes your heart beat faster, that makes you enthused and excited and feel valued, even if for a chapter. Because we, we, few of us know what we’re going to be 30, but we can see it just ahead in these in these chapters of life and find find the next one. Well, when I went to work for Disney, I, I gone, I, I literally earned one quarter of what I earned at the accounting company. And we were so poor for the years I worked at Disney, even though I’m up the ladder, they, they, because they were Disney, they just didn’t have to pay people much.

Rick Rappe: 18:27

Yeah, I think as I’m as you’re telling that story, the thing that that strikes me is that, you know, you’re you’re not afraid of making these big, bold moves and you’re not afraid of moving away from the safety of accounting. So you really had an interesting way of overcoming fear back then. And, you know, you’re you were more afraid of the long term regret of having not taken the, the path that you’re talking about, the, the more risky path, which I think is, is a good way to look at things. Yeah, we all, we all have these choices between safety and money and what we’re really, truly excited about. And it’s hard to sometimes overcome the fear involved for sure.

Bill Fritsch: 19:16

Boy, that is, if there’s any, if there’s any gold vein going through my life, it’s that issue which is. Don’t be afraid. People get business wrong. They. They think.

Oh my goodness, I can’t make a mistake. Young people coming out of college. They. Oh my gosh, I can’t make a mistake. There they go into these jobs so nervous. 

It’s like, are you kidding? You’re going to make a ton of mistakes. You don’t know anything yet. You’re not really experience all the ups and downs and trials and tribulations and the things you’ll face. So make them, enjoy them. 

But learn from them. Don’t make the same mistake twice and you’ll find you make less and less and less over time and lose the fear. But the other big fear is, I’m told to do something that I’m not comfortable with. And we have an epidemic of that going on right now. Rick. 

Just an epidemic of cowards. People who are, oh, I might get hurt if I don’t do what the boss asks of me.

Rick Rappe: 20:17

It seems to be it seems to be easier and easier to sort of get everyone else’s opinion on what you’re doing or what you’re. And to pay attention to everyone else’s opinion. And really a lot of that stuff is just is just waste. You don’t, you don’t need to think about it or give it any time or any thought. You know, it really doesn’t matter.

What matters is maybe more what excites you and where you want to go long term. But I also like the fact that you were in your career, and I mean going to Disney being the first big, bold move that you made. You were not afraid of big, bold moves.

Bill Fritsch: 20:57

No. And I’ve made some real mistakes along the way because of that, you know, age 55, I went belly up in 2008 and I had a negative net worth.

Rick Rappe: 21:10

Oh my gosh, 55.

Bill Fritsch: 21:12

And well, I started a firm called hydrogen, which is still an ad agency in Seattle. And I started that in 2001, and with a premise that I didn’t want a boutique ad agency I wanted. I wanted a brand center, but I wanted to buy digital shops all across the United States, but bring branding to the work they’re doing. And I thought that would be a very smart move. Well, I brought in.

Creative partners. I gave them minority shares in the business at the time. And but I gave them equal votes on the board of directors because I worked with Rick and Tom for years. And I figured, here’s my plan. Here’s where we’re going. 

Well, it just didn’t turn out the way that I had hoped because I didn’t want to be a 30 person boutique agency. I wanted to have 40 offices across the United States. And, and, and, and because that’s really exciting, it’s fun to build and. But Rick and Tom, first time in their lives where they own something and they just really wanted. Or we. 

The final thing and straw for me was they wanted to. We will never let any work go out of this firm that we don’t personally supervise. Right. Which means you’re going to be a 30 person firm. Fine. 

That’s if that’s your vision for life. Knock yourself out, enjoy every day, have control over that thing. And that’s their joy. The problem was for me, this isn’t working for me at all. Because, you know, I put a lot of money into this thing. 

And so anyway, I ended up leaving my own firm and Rick and Tom took it over and they did a great job with it. Hydrogen is doing great work today. And, and Mary, Mary Knight now is running it. And I think they’re a really strong, good brand advertising agency. But there’s still there’s still boutique, right? 

Yeah. So it just wasn’t my path. Well.

Rick Rappe: 23:26

Wow.

Bill Fritsch: 23:26

I started another one going right into the jaws of 2008. And you may remember that’s when the that’s the financial crisis was. The advertising business. You know, I was so arrogant, I took I had taken my literally a lot of money, put it into capital and brought in two other people’s money into capital. And we started a new firm.

We hired 12 very senior people and no clients. So talk about bold moves. So sometimes it works for you, sometimes it doesn’t. But we went out and we immediately won major contracts with firms like Microsoft and, and a whole bunch of technology companies. And they all proceeded to spend exactly zero because all advertising budgets got cut in the moment because they needed they needed to prop up their profits and they were cutting everything they could. 

So all of a sudden, we’ve spent all this capital, and one of the fellows who put capital in was a fellow named Jack Balazic. He’d been he built Foote, Cone, Belding West, and he took it from 85 people to 850 people in about five years. And he was very famous person in the advertising industry. And he bought Christiansen Fritsch.

Rick Rappe: 24:46

Oh, wow.

Bill Fritsch: 24:47

Well, after that, he and I became friends. And so he put capital into this thing. But I shook his hand and I said, Jack, I don’t know if we’ll make a lot of money, but I guarantee you’ll never lose any. No, there was no contract that said that. But when all the capital went away, I cleaned.

I found a way for Jack to get all his money back, but it required me cleaning out my life insurance. My whole life insurance. Wow. Cash value and my 401k. I cleaned everything out.

Rick Rappe: 25:21

So wow.

Bill Fritsch: 25:22

So I ended up. But Jack Jack ended up getting through this deal. Got all his money back.

Rick Rappe: 25:28

That’s amazing.

Bill Fritsch: 25:29

That’s the value of a promise, right? Which is your word. This is the other thing. We talk to students or I talk to students about, which is you. I value myself so highly that when I give my word, I honor it, whatever it takes.

Right. And that’s aided me so much in my life because I believe most people think when they deal with me, you get what you see when I say something will be so. It’ll be so. And I have a long reputation behind that.

Rick Rappe: 26:00

Yeah.

Bill Fritsch: 26:01

Anyway, so that was me at age 55, and I was up a creek without a paddle because of this tendency to really risk it. Oh, well, it didn’t bother me. Bother my wife?

Rick Rappe: 26:15

Well you’ve had.

Bill Fritsch: 26:17

I was better off than ever before.

Rick Rappe: 26:19

Yeah, you’ve had some. You’ve had some risky situations that didn’t pan out. But you’ve had a lot of others that did pan out. So the, the I mean, I know you’ve had a lot of other successes in your career. So the but that is a that is an interesting and compelling story.

Thank you for sharing that. I think that’s very, very interesting. One of the things that struck. Struck me about your story and just knowing your history a little bit, I know that you’ve you’ve had a lot of business partners over the years. You’ve always gone into partnerships with people, and you’ve always brought in a lot of other really intelligent and smart people. 

I think that’s interesting. You know, I think one of the things I remember when I was an intern at Christianson and Fritsch is I asked you and Ron to go to lunch with me, and I interviewed you over lunch, and I asked you, what are what do I need to know if I want to own my own agency someday? What do I need to do? How do I you know what? And you guys shared some great wisdom with me back then, 30 years ago, and one of the things you shared was like, don’t be afraid to hire people that are smarter than you.

Bill Fritsch: 27:34

Oh my goodness.

Rick Rappe: 27:35

And I see that you’ve done that. You know, you’ve done, you’ve partnered with a lot of interesting and great people to start things and to create things and talk. Talk a little bit about how you think about partnership and, and why that’s important.

Bill Fritsch: 27:52

I had, I have this picture here. I’m going to show it to you if I could. This is Ronnie when we started Christiansen and Fritsch.

Rick Rappe: 28:01

Yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah.

Bill Fritsch: 28:04

Right. And what we used to say we we had a huge version of this on a on a wall in one of our offices. And it was, you know, he doesn’t write and I don’t draw. Right. And yet we’re forming an advertising agency, right?

We better hire people, know what they’re doing. And so we used to, we used to remind ourselves all the time, we’ll never get this ego that says, I’m it. You listen to me. I’ve always had the attitude that I love smart people. I love smart people who are also of good character and outgoing personalities, right? 

There are a lot of smart people who are just nasty to work with, right? Well, just people in general do nasty. I love people who they they look forward and they solve problems. And if you surround yourself with people like that. You prosper in general. 

So take Christiansen. It started as Christiansen a fridge. And it was Ron and me. We each owned half of that company. And and whoa. 

I’m I’m 50% of this thing. Well along comes along comes David Giersdorf, who’s one of our clients. And David, he was running he was president of Windstar Cruises that had just been acquired by Holland America. And so he hired us and we became wind stars, you know, direct marketing agency. We used to call it customer communications more than direct marketing. 

And it really went well. And one day David called and says, hey, I quit my job. He just and I said, let’s have coffee. And the very next day we sat down with him and on a napkin, we worked it out and said, okay, David, want to hire you. And I hope he doesn’t yell me for revealing this, but Ron and I took our salaries to zero, so we paid David, I believe it was $110,000 a year, which in those days was a lot of money.

Rick Rappe: 30:23

Yeah. That was that was 1989. Yeah.

Bill Fritsch: 30:27

A lot of dough. And so we, we took zero. So we bring in David. Well, David had been in the cruise industry forever. And my premise of how you build a business isn’t you just get clients and they come and they go bring in people who have a business mind for the industry of the client, and then back that person up with tremendous creative firepower.

So David had been president of Windstar Cruises. Wow, this is really cool. David, come join us. We’ll give you 10% of the company. Ultimately, we gave him more than that. 

We’ll reveal how much and that was. And let’s go get a cruise line. It took us one year and we paid David that salary, and then we landed Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines, which had a capitalized billing of about $25 million a year. And we kept that through the entire duration of Christiansen and Fritsch. And then it became Christiansen, Fritsch, Gersdorff and then US Bank. 

Right. Cynthia Grant and then Tom Sperry, and so CF two GS and an S became each of them. We gave major stake in the business. Now, I can’t tell you, Rick, whether I gave money to them or I gained money from that. I can’t tell you. 

All I know is, in four and a half years of building that company, we were approached by many to buy us, and we ended up selling to Foote, Cone and Belding because I love Jack. Still do. He’s a close personal friend. Greatest leader I’ve ever known. And and so I have. 

I absolutely have an attitude. And when I counsel creative firms, it’s like, don’t be afraid to give up ownership. If in doing it, the business prospers. Right.

Rick Rappe: 32:24

Yeah.

Bill Fritsch: 32:25

It’s all I cared about is my stock growing in value. And it grew in value and it grew in value through a lot of people’s efforts. Not just my own.

Rick Rappe: 32:34

Yeah. So you were thinking, let me ask you, I’m going to ask you to unpack this because this is super interesting to me. You’re at the time, where are you thinking about an exit and the value of the business on the exit? You were you had the intention of sort of selling the business eventually.

Bill Fritsch: 32:56

Well, yes, when we started day one, Ron and I said, this will be a ten year chapter for us.

Rick Rappe: 33:03

Okay, so you had mine and.

Bill Fritsch: 33:05

My company Will grown and Will sold. And the premise of growing it is we will not work with any clients. Well, if we’re going to gain a client, we’re going to keep it forever. We will not turn clients. So we’d rather have five clients in five industries, big clients than 50 clients.

I’d work for a small ad agency before I started this, then have 50 clients that are always churning, right? Right. Because then you’re spending half your time pitching the next thing you said, rather, we’re going to go after only big ones and we’ll do projects for anybody if they’ve got big budgets that if they like us, they could grow. So we’ll do projects for anybody. But if we don’t like working with them, and in ten years of business that I was at Christians and French or CF2GS. 

We only lost one client.

Rick Rappe: 34:01

Wow.

Bill Fritsch: 34:01

That was U.S. Bank. And that wasn’t because of us. They got bought out by Bank back East and changed its name to US Bank. And that was year nine in our journey. We fired clients.

We would do work with with them. And if it was just hard working with them, they didn’t have an affinity for us. We didn’t have them. We just said, thanks, no, we don’t want any more projects. But the ones we gained. 

Then I hired a business head for that unit and like David, built his own team there. And he had we had the creative organization was run ultimately by Cynthia Hartwig and then Mary Knight, and she would manage that whole thing. But the creatives were assigned to these units. So David built his whole account team, and he had creatives assigned to it who had affinity for cruises and cruise lines. Same thing in banking. 

Same thing in technology. Same thing in mobile services. And so we had five clients and I don’t know, 150 million in capitalized billings. Right. We ran about 30% pre-tax profit year in and year out. 

That’s great. That’s not EBITDA. That’s pre-tax profit because we would only pitch 1 or 2 things a year. And and that was and it was a great business model. And I’m working now with my daughter’s company. 

It’s called Newton Street. They started formally January 1st of 2024. So they’re little. They’re two and a half years in business and they’re following the same model. And they started when they when they formed the partnership between Amy and her partner, Karen. 

They they had a lot of project work, which they did away with, and they focused on what work they were doing for Gates Foundation. And now they serve many divisions of gates under long term contract, and they’re just focusing now. They’re branching out into other areas of women’s health now. Amy worked at the Gates Foundation for 15 years, so she and Karen ran Women’s Health for the Gates Foundation. So they had a lot of experience. 

And so they have a world class reputation, but they’re focusing on clients they can gain and retain. And that’s that’s my whole consulting model with, with firms. How do you get off this, this churn and burn and get into deep service?

Rick Rappe: 36:30

Yeah.

Bill Fritsch: 36:30

Clients don’t go away, which is harder nowadays because of procurement than it used to be.

Rick Rappe: 36:36

It is. And I’d say luckily for my career, I don’t know if I got that idea from you, but it’s been been my idea for my whole career to, to hang on to my clients and to, yeah, go deep and retain them for a very long period of time. So that’s been my, that’s been my. The secret to RPMs. Success for 18 years is just to hold on to clients for a really long time, and we don’t.

We do that not through contracts, but we do it through service and results and being easy to work with and even fun to work with. Right. So absolutely, we work.

Bill Fritsch: 37:13

Will prevent you from getting fired. It’s just the way you behave and how you it’s not just the work you do and the quality of the work. And whether it’s performing, it also is your bedside manner in dealing with the clients, right?

Rick Rappe: 37:26

Yeah, we have a lot of fun with our clients. And honestly, I think that’s the reason why I can still do this after 18 years is because I really enjoy my clients and I love we’re friends and I like to serve. And I think that.

Bill Fritsch: 37:43

Should be.

Rick Rappe: 37:44

Super important. So that’s the.

Bill Fritsch: 37:46

Way it should be.

Rick Rappe: 37:48

Well, good Lord, we could talk for hours and hours, bill. I have a feeling that. And you know, I, I wanted to I want to go deeper with you on some of your guiding principles that you learned along your career in marketing. I mean, when we started working together at Christensen and Fritsch, I was doing artboards and still pasting up artboards and running them to the airport.

Bill Fritsch: 38:18

And kids don’t you don’t know what that is.

Rick Rappe: 38:21

I know, and and back then direct mail was like high tech, I guess, or something.

Bill Fritsch: 38:29

Data.

Rick Rappe: 38:30

Yeah. It used data for targeting and but the targeting must have been super basic, right. But but we and we’ve come a long way. I mean, you’ve gone through the whole evolution out of into digital marketing and you were your career spanned a whole bunch of transitions. And, you know, how did you navigate that?

And, and maybe talk a little bit about how people might be navigating this big transition that we’re facing now, which is this transition to AI, right?

Bill Fritsch: 39:05

Which is in many ways a real scary one. There’s, there’s positives and negatives to it. So, okay. How do I unpack this in a real.

Rick Rappe: 39:17

That’s that’s a big question, isn’t it?

Bill Fritsch: 39:20

Well, it is, but it’s, it is tied very much to, I would say, number one, I look at the landscape today and it is so radically different even before AI than it was when I started out. I had to go work for Walt Disney to be able to produce creative things and to do creative things. I couldn’t sit at home and do that in those days. It was next to impossible. Right?

And, and, and, and every step of the way, as things change, there are people who put their hands up and go, oh, you know, it’s going to it’s the death of the industry, right? Evolution is the is the watchword, right? It’s evolving so fast and good side of AI is you can be a heck of a lot more productive fast if you know how to use it, if you use it to think for you. I just heard a Wharton study that came out a couple of weeks ago. I heard this on NPR that the people who, instead of thinking through a problem, go to AI and say, here’s my problem. 

What do I do? They’re losing intelligence. So they’re mapping abilities, ability, people’s ability to think. Now the people instead are saying, here’s my thinking of where the things should go. And they’re able to use AI to research, to challenge, to do things to it. 

It’s extremely productive with the caveat that it lies and it does make stuff up. And it will it’ll it’ll take you down a path that is not necessarily the best thinking. AI is not creative. It can assemble data and it can tell you, here’s the best way to write something. By today’s standards, it cannot innovate. 

It can’t create in a way that human mind can. So there’s two things about the AI era. Number one, and the social media era, I’m watching young people sitting at home inventing businesses and becoming wealthy, sitting in their home computer. I don’t know how to do that. Right. 

 I’m really curious. How do you because I can’t I have these structured thinking, the things going on that are born out of 50 years and becoming an ancient human being here. Young people aren’t encumbered. This is the world they’re growing up in. So if you grow up in a world where you say, I can grab the pieces, I can innovate, and I can evolve fast. 

You’re going to do great. If it is, I’m coming out of school. I’ve studied this. This is me. I’m an accountant. 

I really thought I have to go back to college to go to marketing if I want to switch to marketing. And so for me, it was either do I kill myself or go back to school? Those are my two choices. I didn’t want to do my job. Okay. 

So young people coming out of school or early in their careers, if they think what they can’t do, they’re not good. It’s going to be hard. And so, so there’s several things that I share with people. And the number one thing is how to find your own voice inside you, within this cacophony of people telling you what to do. And I was lucky. 

And by the way, a lot of people won’t do that. And there’s a lot of studies that say only a certain percentage of the population can think in that way. A lot of people think in the form of how can I be in the village and be accepted. I’m not plagued by that. I, I. 

So so number one is this idea of you got to be able to evolve the. In order to do that, you’ve got to tame the thing in your head that says, this is the problem I can’t solve. And I always ask this question, which is of myself, which is I hit a wall. I can give several examples of a client we had when I was back at Hydrogen Family Services. We have a media budget that they want to raise $10 million. 

Working with rotary to build a new building. Great big fundraiser. They got media budget and we’ll come back to show the creative work media budget. The board has decided they don’t want to spend any. Oh, how do you solve that? 

There’s no media budget. Well, maybe a future one of these things. I’ll share the work that Tom, that Tom Shear and Rick Peterson came up with to solve that. And, and, and Martha Craig, and it’s a beautiful campaign where we created our own media. And it was so successful. 

The news media covered it for a week and didn’t cost time. So there, there are always answers. And you have to ask yourself, okay, okay. The only problem here is I don’t know how to solve it. Not that it can’t be solved for most people say I can’t be solved, right? 

And you know, it can be solved because other people have solved it. And the moment you say that, which is my only problem, is I don’t know how.

Rick Rappe: 44:22

My.

Bill Fritsch: 44:23

Curiosity is now there and I, I, I and you, you go out and you look at how other people have solved similar things and that gets you going. So one of the things is don’t stop because you hit a wall, right? So tame those voices and let your own voice. Dominate. And that’s a.

That takes progress and that comes through early career experiences, I think. Yeah. And so those are those are really important things.

Rick Rappe: 44:54

It’s a I think it’s an innate personality thing too.

Bill Fritsch: 44:58

It’s innate, although.

Rick Rappe: 44:59

I’m I’m lucky I have that trait as well because I, when I run into problems, I’ll, I’ll write them down on a big piece of paper and put them up on my bulletin board. And I always try to. I don’t know how to solve this problem yet. I always, you know, add the word yet and then I, I’ve experimented with this. And what I’ve found is even if I don’t try to figure out how to solve the problem, a solution will appear.

Bill Fritsch: 45:27

Yeah. That’s your unconscious at work.

Rick Rappe: 45:29

I know it’s like subconscious is finding a way to like solve the problem. So I mean, there’s obviously problems where I study and get curious and, and like, but, but a lot of times it’s just the fact that you’re like, you, you just ask for a solution and all of a sudden things will find their way, a way to work themselves out sometimes it’s amazing.

Bill Fritsch: 45:51

Well, you know, couple, I want to give you a couple ideas around this to complete that equation. And what you just said is I’m willing to accept it. It can be solved.

Rick Rappe: 46:04

But.

Bill Fritsch: 46:05

But structured thinking that we’re all taught is I’ve reached the wall and it can’t be solved. And then I get all this feedback from people saying, yeah, that can’t be solved. Be careful who you surround yourself with. You asked about my penchant to reach out for talented people I love. People know far more than I do, and I don’t recall in my entire career once I was out of accounting, anybody sitting around the water cooler.

You know, as in we used to say in the old days, complaining because we were always solving problems. And if you work with a certain kind of person, they don’t accept, they can’t be solved. And I have a whole bunch of examples. Maybe we could do a thing on this if you’re interested just on that issue.

Rick Rappe: 46:54

Sure.

Bill Fritsch: 46:55

So let me tell two other ideas in this whole thing. One that we talked about, which is don’t fear failure. People get this wrong. My, my point is in business, failure is an inconvenience.

Rick Rappe: 47:07

Yeah.

Bill Fritsch: 47:07

Your loved one getting cancer and you can’t do anything about it is a problem. But you can go bankrupt or you, you can be. I, I don’t believe in going bankrupt, but I was I was insolvent and but I solved it. And within a few years I was worth more than ever before because of the knowledge that I’ve gained and because it for me, okay, it’s just a problem to be solved. So don’t in business, don’t fear failure.

And I always ask this question when it’s taking a risk. The least risky thing you can do because so many times we fail because we were afraid we might get criticized for making a bold move.

Rick Rappe: 47:49

Yeah, yeah.

Bill Fritsch: 47:50

The only people that move up in good organizations are those who do make bold moves. And Walt Disney said, you can only make big mistakes when you’re trying big things. And I just love that. So one other point I want to make, this is the big transition. And that is early in my career.

When I got to Disney, I was handed this assignment. We have all these educators down in Florida coming for big conference, organized some kind of event at the Fontainebleau Hotel while I was an accountant three months before. I’d never organized anything in my life. 800 educators gathering. Well, I ended up doing really well with it. 

We created a concept called Disney on Ice cream because there was a thing going around the country at the time called Disney on Ice, and we threw a big ice cream social down for 800 teachers. Well, I did it so well, my to do list was suddenly 45 things and I got them all done. And then my list was 112 things. And if you’re really good at what you do, your list is going to be really long. And then it’s like if you’re, if you’re stuck and you’re thinking, my only out is, is collapse or quit. 

I was working weekends and nights and one, but my unconscious worked on it and one night, bang. Wait a minute. My job isn’t to do it. It’s to get it done. And those are two different concepts and get it done. 

So I walked in the next day and I said, hey, these are the ones where you want my talents on it because we can do it. Well. Now, the rest of these things, here’s how we can do it. Because of that move, I moved up three levels in Disney inside one year because I became leader. I became somebody who thought about how do I harness people? 

How do I find really good people to do these things? And how do I sell that concept to a leadership that doesn’t want to spend money?

Rick Rappe: 49:40

Right?

Bill Fritsch: 49:41

So those share with young people and that’s the big one.

Rick Rappe: 49:45

You can get trapped. You can get trapped in a to do list for sure. And it’s I.

Bill Fritsch: 49:51

Still got to get it done.

Rick Rappe: 49:53

I’m still working on that myself. Just trying to get myself into my, into how, what’s the best use of my time and what do I need to say no to? What do I need to, what am I doing that someone else can be trained to do easily or, you know, relatively easily? It’s, it’s always a constant struggle for, for me also to, to let go of control and to do that kind of thing.

Bill Fritsch: 50:21

So a big one, and well.

Rick Rappe: 50:23

There’s a certain amount of fear that you have to overcome to let go of things to write like it’s. We keep coming back to this theme of like overcoming fear or moving past fear. And it is true that these that that’s, that’s the thing that seems to be fighting against us more in business than actual real dragons. You know, we’re fighting against fear a little bit along.

Bill Fritsch: 50:49

Well, now my age, you know, I just learned I’ve been through, I’ve been through fire. I’ve had really a wonderful career, lots of success. Digital kitchen. My last chapter, Running something was the most exciting by far, but the hardest, the hardest because it was a culture that that really had challenges within it. Three offices doing the world’s best, arguably the world’s best creative work.

And to this day, the work that was done back then is still work that holds up all these years later. And So I learned it’s easier to build a culture than it is to shift the culture. And so you just learn these things along the way. But that’s the big lesson, which is once you tame the worry over doing the right thing and taking the bold move, once you realize that you aren’t in control and, and anyway, and doing the safe thing isn’t the safe thing in many cases. And the discernment between. 

This is the time when we have to make this move as opposed to I. If I was into safety, I’d still be an accountant because I could have bought a house. I was making a fortune. I would have learned how to invest money. I’d be worth so much money. 

But I’ve never believed that money’s what a career is about.

Rick Rappe: 52:14

Well, it’s about that. But it’s also about like, you know, amazing stories, amazing stories and amazing people and amazing clients and you know exactly risks and rewards and risks and failures. I mean, it’s all it all goes in the soup, right? I think. Well, that’s.

Bill Fritsch: 52:34

The book I’m writing right now really. And that’s, that’s, that’s coming out of the student talks. Yeah. To young people about what, what, what lessons I now know what I wish I’d known then.

Rick Rappe: 52:50

Yeah.

Bill Fritsch: 52:50

And that’s, that’s, that’s kind of the sharing now and give back.

Rick Rappe: 52:55

Well, gosh, Bill, I think this, this has been an amazing conversation. And I feel like I could talk to you for hours and hours and maybe we’ll get a chance to talk more another time soon. But I think for today, I’m going to wrap it up. But if people want to get ahold of you and they’re interested in talking to you or, or learning more, what’s the best way for them to reach you? Would that be LinkedIn or.

Bill Fritsch: 53:21

Yeah, I think LinkedIn’s the best.

Rick Rappe: 53:23

Okay.

Bill Fritsch: 53:23

It’s really easy.

Rick Rappe: 53:24

Yeah.

Bill Fritsch: 53:25

Bill Fritsch. I have an easy email address. billfritsch@gmail.com. Although nobody knows how to spell Fritsch so.

Rick Rappe: 53:34

Well, they’ll figure it out. I encourage people to go onto LinkedIn and read the articles that you’re writing. I think it’s great that you’re passing on your knowledge and your wisdom to the, to the, the next generation of business people out there. Hopefully they’ll pay attention.

Bill Fritsch: 53:50

Well, it is fun. And so thank you, Rick.

Outro: 53:54

That’s a wrap for this episode of Response Drivers. Thanks for tuning in. If you found today’s insights valuable, make sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode. And if you’re enjoying the show, we’d love it if you left a review. Got a question or a topic you’d like us to cover?

Just drop us a message at response drivers at rpmdm.com. Until next time, keep driving response and making your marketing work smarter.