IAM212- Creative Visionary and Storyteller Dedicated to Helping Clients Bring Life and Value To Their Brands

As a creative visionary and storyteller, Cory Rosenberg has been dedicated to helping companies and individuals alike bring life and value to their corporate and personal brands. With over three decades of experience, Cory has become a recognized expert in branding, licensing, production and new product development, and has ushered hundreds of projects from concept through to profitability. In addition to concentrating on developing his own portfolio of intellectual properties, Cory is a sought after creative and business/brand growth development consultant.

• CEO Hack: Book- Give and take
• CEO Nugget: As an entrepreneur, always have a contribution
• CEO Defined: A leader that is last

Website: https://dittydoodle.com/

Full Interview

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Transcription

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Intro 0:02

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

Gresham Harkless 0:27

Hello, hello, hello. This is Gresh from the I Am CEO podcast and I have a very special guest on the show today. I've Cory Rosenberg, of the Create Group. Cory is awesome to have you on the show.

Cory Rosenberg 0:36

Thanks, man. Great to be here.

Gresham Harkless 0:37

Thank you, I appreciate that. And I love what you're doing as well too, which is why I'm super excited to have you on as a guest. And I want to read a little bit more about Cory so you can hear about all the awesome things that he's doing. As a creative visionary and storyteller, Cory has been dedicated to helping companies and individuals alike bring life and value to their corporate and personal brands. With over three decades of experience, Cory has become a recognized expert in branding, licensing, production, and new product development, and has ushered hundreds of projects from concept through to profitability. In addition to concentrating on developing his own portfolio of intellectual properties, Cory is a sought-after creative and business/brand growth development consultant. Cory, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO Community?

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Cory Rosenberg 1:21

I am so psyched.

Gresham Harkless 1:23

Awesome, let's do it. So first question I had was the hear a little bit more about what I call your CEO story and what led you to start your business.

Cory Rosenberg 1:30

I think I've been an entrepreneur since I'm probably five. I remember just looking around my house and figuring out what I can sell. My father was a New York City cab driver. So I like to joke I like to say that I was born not with a silver spoon, but a wooden spoon with splinters in it. So I guess, I spent a lot of time my father was never really home, he worked his butt off. He was a great guy. But he worked his butt off, he worked 14 hours a day, seven days a week, I was like, wow, that's a big sacrifice. He's given up a lot of time for money.

And I started thinking about that concept very early on. And it really was something that stuck with me. And I felt like, at that point, I needed to figure out how to monetize things without me constantly working for it. And I was an artist, and people I would get a lot of attention for my drawings. And being the kind of kid that I guess didn't have a ton of friends when I was young, because I lived in a neighborhood that didn't have a lot of kids, to be honest with you. And so by the end of the day, I spent a lot of time drawing and less time exploring other artists.

And I got really into guys like Chuck Jones and Walter Lance. And these are character developers in Disney. And I started thinking about it. And I started selling T-shirts and pumpkins with characters painted on them. And it was really an interesting journey because I was an artist, but I also was a business person. And it was like a dichotomy doesn't really exist. It's a dichotomy that people are uncomfortable with, when I walk into a room wearing a CEO hat, which I have they're like, wait a second, you're a creative guy, how could you be a CEO? I'm like, did you learn nothing about what it's like to be a CEO? If you're asking the question, because the CEO has to be an artist, the CEO has to be a visionary. A CEO has to change his palette constantly and changes Canvas constantly.

So that's basically where this all began. I then went to college at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan. And I was a Long Island boy that was in the big city. And it was a very weird thing. I wound up working with a lot of phenomenal people. And I actually landed a job in the middle of the 80s with a really bad recession and merger mania happening in the advertising world. I actually landed a job before I graduated. And I did that by looking around and saying what's everybody doing out there to get a job?

So remind you this is 1985. In 1985, people were schlepping these big giant black boxes of portfolios from office to office to a recruiter. Most of us can only afford one and maybe some of us afford it too. Because it was a fortune to print and laminate and do all the stuff that you did to your portfolio back then. And most of these ads were compiled by hand and photography and type positives and all kinds of things. There were no computers doing desktop publishing at this time.

So I went home. I took part in Sony Walkman. I recorded a speech on the Sony Walkman and reinstalled it into my portfolio with a refrigerator switch triggering it so when you open the box, it talked, I wasn't able to hear what they had to say but I got what I wanted to say out. And I still have this portfolio today, you open it up and say, Hi, my name is Corey Rosenberg, thanks for looking at my portfolio Ebola, and I got to be known as the guy with the talking portfolio. I got a job quickly.

And I was very fortunate I had a job before I graduated. Unfortunately, I came into a very turbulent time in the advertising industry. And it was constant layoffs. It was painful to watch people that are now in their 40s and 50s, where I am now today, vital as hell, probably at the peak of their career being laid off, and not only laid off but demoralized, and emotionally distraught, wondering what's next. And I felt like it was that turning point, combined with my history of my father working constantly, that I said, I need to have control, I need to know what's ahead of me tomorrow, even if it's bad news, I need to know what's ahead of me.

So for the last 20, some odd, almost 30 years, I've been finding out, and every day it changes, so but I have dedicated a big part of my life to building businesses and employing people and more important than just employ people but inspiring people to live that passion, you only get one journey on this merry go round, so you gotta live it to its fullest. So that's how we got started. And that's where I'm at.

Gresham Harkless 6:29

Right? Well, that is definitely hard. I've been at the end of getting laid off. And I also graduated during the economic crisis. So I definitely understand that to some degree, how difficult that can be. But I appreciate you for jumping out there and taking more control over your destiny and being on the end of that. And I can definitely understand why you would want to do that. But so I wanted to drill down a little bit deeper. I know you touched on a little bit, but I wanted to hear what you're doing to kind of help support the clients that you're working with. And a little bit about what you feel makes you unique outside of your portfolio that talks

Cory Rosenberg 6:59

The portfolio foreshadows everything I do. Because I'm always trying to think about, how am I gonna stand out in this crowd, and it's not just about a gimmick or whatever, but it's about adding value to somebody, or to some organization, the best way I explain myself is I'm a black and white cookie. Generally, people buy black and white cookies, but they like one side better than the other, whether it's the vanilla, they're looking for or the chocolate they're looking for, it's irrelevant. But in my world, I have found that it's kind of all good. But there's one side that's better. What I've been trying to do is try to bring this all together in a meaningful way.

So let me explain the white side is to have to the black side is to want to. Right, this is stuff I have to do to because the lights have to stay on, people have to get paid, and things need to happen. And then on the other side of the equation, there's the want to. This is the stuff I'm really passionate about, this is stuff that I can work endlessly on and probably not even be paid for. And I don't care. And I need to always have a part of that in my world because that drives me and one of the things that makes up that chocolate side for me right now is helping other people reach their dreams. And I think it's really important for marketers, and people that want to establish brands, branders to think about these pillars that make up their brand, and not delude themselves into thinking, Oh, I just spent $80 on a logo.

And I came up with a really cool slogan, and I got a brand. No, it doesn't work. No course, you could have a local brand, you could have a regional brand, you could have a national brand, you could have an international global brand. There are all different forms of the brand, right? You could have a brand in your brain, you know, it's my own brand. It just hasn't left here yet.

So you have to understand the lifecycle of a brand. And you have to understand where you want your brand to go from day one, and that doesn't mean that you have to say. Well, I'm creating a global brand. Maybe you're not thinking about the brand at all. Maybe it's thinking about when you look at some of the most successful companies, you know, their logo is like Helvetica looks like sounds like Google, like it's just a typeface what a Google stands for as a friend. What does it stand for today? It stands for everybody should know anything they want when they want. It stands for connectivity. It stands for transparency. It stands for that type of service. And I think that's awesome.

Gresham Harkless 9:41

Yeah, it makes sense. And I wanted to switch gears a little bit and ask you for what I call a CEO hack. And this might be an app or a book or a habit that you have, but it's something that makes you more effective and efficient.

Cory Rosenberg 9:51

The CEO hack. There have been some great books that I definitely refer to in my day-to-day world I would say, I think the one that comes to mind for me is a book, that's not necessarily a marketing book, per se. But what it talks about is the book we called Give and Take. And what the book talks about is very successful people out there. And they have something in common, and they're all givers. But there are some very unsuccessful people out there. And they also have something in common. They're all givers. So the dichotomy of that statement is, okay, well, there's got to be some difference. And it's what they refer to as giver other ish when a giver knows when to kind of pull back because they're being taken advantage of, and I think the entrepreneur inherently is an artist.

And let me explain what I mean by that. Whether you're a songwriter, a painter, a sculptor, or whatever type of artist, you want to call yourself, you do it for contribution. Now, when you paint, well, you sculpt, you look at that, and you say, Wow, that's really nice. I did that. But doesn't really become full. A songwriter doesn't get this full accolades. Until somebody listens to their song and sheds a tear, or applauds. A painting doesn't become full until somebody can stand in front and think like, I wonder what he was thinking when he paints this.

And because entrepreneurs and artists, it's important that we have a contribution, the problem that we have as entrepreneurs is when to stop contributing, not because you're what they would deem a matcher, where you're looking for something in return, but when you're contributing into a vacuum, and it's a very fine line, it's a very hard discipline to figure out when that is, and one of the biggest issues is that sometimes your biggest culprit is your own delusions. But what's interesting about that is your own driver is your own delusions, it could be negative, but a delusion could just be a vision that's grander than anybody else can see, at the moment, Steve Jobs had delusions, he had a vision of something much bigger than anybody that ever anticipated. Elon Musk tends to have delusions and is criticized for it, and has suffered as much as he succeeded. He's also suffered from those delusions.

So as an entrepreneur, we have to kind of find these balances and figure out how much attention to give our delusions and how much attention to give the people that support us, or are they right? How much support do we give a naysayer? Are they right? Are they wrong? Are they being safe? They want you to be safe. Where's this criticism coming from? So there's so much psychology to being an entrepreneur and self-discipline psychology that I think to give and take is a there's a book that I think could be and should be mandatory reading for every entrepreneur, so they can open their minds to this concept.

Gresham Harkless 13:16

Yeah, that makes perfect sense and is nice. So I definitely appreciate that. And I want to ask you now my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO, and we're hoping to have different, quote-unquote, CEOs on the show. So I want to ask you, what has been a CEO means to you?

Cory Rosenberg 13:28

CEO is a leader that eats last, a CEO has the responsibility to set the tone of the organization, but not dictate it. I personally, as a CEO, always remain a part student and part mentor. And at the end of the day, I think that's the critical component of a CEO. We have a children's brand called Diddy doodle works. And in that brand is a soul that has a song called Alyssa. And the lyrics say you have two ears and one mouth. Why is that? Can you guess? could listen twice as much and speak a little less? So I think that's the best value a CEO can have

Gresham Harkless 14:20

Absolutely. Yeah, I definitely agree with that. Corey, I truly appreciate you for taking some time out what I wanted to do was pass the mic just to see if there's anything additional, you want to let our readers and our listeners know. And of course, they how they can get hold of you in touch with you.

Cory Rosenberg 14:32

Well, first of all, I want to thank you for doing what you're doing. I know you're in the early stages of your journey. And, you need to keep going because if you touch one person or you change one life, it's a monumental gift that you've given to the world and to yourself. So that's one thing. The other thing I would say is that life is a journey and failure is a big part of it. We didn't talk much about my failures, but I had a major catastrophe in 2008 when I built a business for 12 years kind of 65 employees with a $40 million infrastructure. And Lehman Brothers, the biggest bank in the world was with us. And unfortunately, we all know what happened to that. And that ripple effect hurt us tremendously. You have to figure out how to build armor against those things and come up from the ashes and build the roses of success.

So that's basically what I'd like to leave you with, I'm always available to help people, we are working on a new holding company called the Entertainment Asset Development Fund, the EADF, you could check it out @eadfusa.com. And basically what we're trying to do is aggregate capital to support entrepreneurs like yourself and visionaries, whether they be an artist or songwriters and musicians that could have a branded backbone, you could always reach out to me through edfausa.com. And we certainly get back to you. You can also reach me at Create Group, which is creategroup.com.

Gresham Harkless 16:11

Awesome, awesome, cool. Well, I appreciate that Cory, and what we'll do is we'll have those links in the show notes and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day. I truly appreciate your time and I hope you take care

Cory Rosenberg 16:22

keep on doing it.

Outro 16:23

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co

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