Bilal Little:

Welcome to another edition of ETF Central. I'm your host Bilal Little. I'm excited about this next guest because he's got the best name in the business. His name is Coltrane Curtis. He's the founder and CEO of Team Epiphany, a marketing agency designed to connect culture and community. No one has more experience than helping brands connect to their ideal buyers. And with that, welcome to the show, Coltrane.

Coltrane Curtis:

Thank you for having me. Thank you very much for having me.

Bilal Little:

You've been to Exchange before.

Coltrane Curtis:

Many moons ago. That was when I had a proper suit and I felt the energy, but today this is the best I can do for you today.

Bilal Little:

Hold on. So when was the last time you were here?

Coltrane Curtis:

I mean, had to be at least a decade ago.

Bilal Little:

Are you serious?

Coltrane Curtis:

Yeah, like a decade or more.

Bilal Little:

How far is your office from here?

Coltrane Curtis:

I mean, thank God for today because it's freezing in New York City today, but we might be, I would say in feet, maybe 200 feet from door to door.

Bilal Little:

That's my point. You got to come back.

Coltrane Curtis:

I mean, hey, I'm here. I walk past here every day. So I literally walk past here from my parking lot to my office. And so today I had the opportunity to go in the white tent and I realized like, how cold is it? Today it's heated. I found out that there was some heating there.

Bilal Little:

Yeah, the security guards are good people.

Coltrane Curtis:

Good for you guys. Yeah, man, for sure.

Bilal Little:

I'm glad you're here, Coltrane. But as we dive into the conversation, I think it's important to level set and allow people to hear directly from my guest who they are and what their company does and what they represent. Obviously you're the CEO and founder of Team Epiphany.

Coltrane Curtis:

Yeah.

Bilal Little:

Talk a little bit about the business and just level set the conversation and sort of I'll unpack it with questions.

Coltrane Curtis:

Yeah. And I'll try not to use any coded marketing lingo, but I mean-

Bilal Little:

No, use it. Use it because we have CMOs who listen to this as well. And I think that's the unique aspect of why I wanted to have you on just to be able to tell that unique story.

Coltrane Curtis:

All right. Well, I own a marketing agency. So you can start from there. And then there are all types of nuances and different type of marketing agencies and advertising companies, but I'm a marketer. I'm a second generation marketer. My dad ran an agency for 25 years, which is very unique for someone to look like me, to come where I'm from, which is Bed-Stuy Brooklyn. And to have a dad who I've been able to mirror him, see him build a business in our brownstone, expand from there. So I'm a second generation marketer. My dad was a multicultural marketer. Before he passed, he told me the last thing you want to do is multicultural marketing. Because you just get a smaller piece of the pie. And I thought what I had to offer is bigger than that. But sometimes when particular industries, that's what you're giving initially.

So I kind of picked up the torch, started this marketing agency. My dad always told me, "The world doesn't need another agency. What are you going to do differently?" And I've used the sum of all of my experiences to kind of create what the agency was. In 2004 when we started our tagline with the name of the company's Team Epiphany, but our tagline was we influence influencers. So I'd like to say that I introduced the term influencer marketing into the world. And it started at a time when it was hard to identify who exactly what influencers were. They were taste makers to some people. They were image makers. You can think about all the different terms, but we really coined the term influencer marketing because we really knew who creates the insights, who creates the celebrity. And so for us, we got very close to the core of it.

And influence is not just how we amplify the agency. It's in everything that we do. It's impossible to separate it. And so for me, because we're merchants of influence, right? We are purveyors of trust and culture. And I would say that we yield probably the most, or have access to probably the most important tool in a marketer's toolbox, which is influencer marketing and not the form of influencer marketing that we're seeing today. What we're seeing is paid marketing. It's a form of paid media. We're really talking about is like who is actually commanding control of culture, right? And there are very few of them. And we like to say that we have access to the gatekeepers of culture. And then we allow brands to take part in culture because of the relationships that we have in the space. And so huge clients, right? People always come to the agency, be like, "Have you ever worked with a startup brand?" I was like, "Yeah, this is 22 years. I started that before, but now we have big clients like Delta is our largest and Coca-Cola and brands like that."

Bilal Little:

Yeah, big publicly traded companies. I want you to tell the difference of, because I think this is an important question. I was always told that fashion and music basically highlight culture and/or move culture. Talk a little bit about what makes Team Epiphany that unique and different from competitors.

Coltrane Curtis:

Yeah. I mean, I think a lot of agencies come up with really clever taglines that kind of like are meaningless nowadays. When you think about terms influence and culture, everyone would really talk about it. In layman's terms, it's like, "Yeah, but I never seen you there." And so I would say that one interesting thing about Team Epiphany, which is a huge statement is that most agencies claim that they're about culture. And I think what we really have is a unique ability to create it. And when you can create it, you have to know that you have that power and being able to create something means you also have to protect it and be very mindful of who you give access to it because you care about it so deeply. And so for us, we really, I think for brands, I'm a marketer so I can come up with a bunch of quick taglines and trademarks and stuff in my head, but the main piece is that we really identify where brands want to be positioned in culture.

And to me, I would say positioning to me is probably a more powerful word and tool than marketing and advertising, because you really want to be positioned properly to be discovered. And I think as you start talking about consumers, we have the utmost respect for them. And I think having respect for the consumer knows that, especially now, they don't really respond to being marketed to or at.

Bilal Little:

Absolutely.

Coltrane Curtis:

Marketing at, you can't really say that, but marketed to because they're sharper and smarter. And I think we start from the premise that we are in an age of, regardless of economic status or socioeconomic status, I would say consumers have access to information and they're extremely well researched more than ever before. And so starting from that position of knowing that we can't market to them, what we need to do is allow brands to be discovered and pulled through the funnel.

You can't push through the funnel any longer. And so that's why traditional media and marketing fails to work, which kind of like created this new paid influencer media model because the TVCs, the commercials weren't working, the full page spreads in the print magazines aren't working. And so now you have to have a real sharp laser scalpel in terms of how you're really trying to reach this consumer. And I think in a Brooklyn term, we're mad nice with the scalpel.

Bilal Little:

So look, no, this is fascinating because I think it's fair to say people feel like they have to compete in a hyper-competitive landscape businesses. And to what you're saying is, how do we pull through the most unique aspects of what make you different and unique and help you address the market that you want to reach, if you will?

Coltrane Curtis:

Mm-hmm.

Bilal Little:

So if I'm listening to that correctly, it seems as though many marketers traditionally still are trying to market and be a part of culture. And I feel like your background, your experience and what you guys have done differently is said, "No, we can kind of shape culture and really help position you to be a part of what you say you want to be a part of."

Coltrane Curtis:

100%. It's about discovery. And so ultimately, if I had an easel and a jug, I can kind of give you Sunday football kind of like X's O's and always draw the playout. But the reality is, brands want to sell products and how do you sell products, right? Like you have to be in a world or in a macro environment where you can sell that product and you have to break through. And so the first thing you have to do is understand the consumer, right? And introducing a new term here, right? But I really believe in being an aspirational marketer because I think all consumers aspire, right? And if you're part of the ecosystem of what they aspire to, then you can be discovered and then you can break through. So if a footwear brand, you got 10 footwear brands and they're all marketing a basketball sneaker.

I'm thinking about All-Star Weekends coming up soon and they're all marketing a basketball sneaker. Well, how do they break through? Well, who are we talking to? Are we talking to the person who wears the basketball sneaker as fashion? Are we talking about it as a performance brand? So let's say we're going to pick a performance brand. From there, we want to really figure out, well, who does this person aspire to be or how they want to aspire to play? Do they want to be quick? Do they want to be like the athlete who's marketing that, right? So we have to figure out ways in which to tie the aspiration back to the consumer and make sure that the product is tied to the aspiration. But in order to do that, you have to know the consumer deeply. Your insights need to be spot on and you need to have an intimate connection with them.

And so for us as an agency, I think we're about a hundred people. I sit on every single job interview. I'm not here to check to see if your sales are adding up or how's your keynote. Someone else is doing that. But for me, my goal is to make sure that these people that I hire are connected to subcultures or what is interesting to them because their interests actually pave the way for our knowledge of space and understanding what consumer we actually talking to and what are their passions. And so this way, if a brand is interested in goth workouts, I probably have somebody on my team that does spin class in goth black workout suits, right? And so that person who might be a creative director, might be an intern for me because of their passion about this particular subculture and now makes us an expert or ahead of the trend. And so for us, we have to stay ahead, but it ties back to the aspiration of what they are, what moves them and what they're excited about. And so in order to do that, you have to have a deep relationship.

Bilal Little:

Absolutely.

Coltrane Curtis:

You have to have a deep relationship with the consumer.

Bilal Little:

It's funny, you have not only a deep relationship, but I think a core fundamental understanding of the consumer as well. And let me just say it this way, because the reason why I wanted you to be on the show, and I'm glad you were able to participate, is I believe in cross-functional learning, which means I can learn from someone who's doing marketing really, really well with consumer-based products versus in my own sphere of financial products, marketing financial products. There are tools and resources. And you said something that was earlier really interesting about the scalpel and having great precision and how you go out and market. What I think right now in a hyper-competitive business, we all struggle. So since it's hyper-competitive and we're all sort of grappling with the same issues, how are you looking at the way marketing is morphing and changing and communicating that through leadership to the brands who come to you and say, "Hey, what should we be doing right now?" Because I'm sure a lot of people aren't like, "I don't know what to do.

Coltrane Curtis:

Right now." No, 100%. So I have to separate that in two pieces. One, which is the best brands that we work with are the people who have decision makers who are connected to the very target that they're looking to be a part of. That's been somewhat the biggest challenge. As consumers become way more elusive, it's best to have someone on the brand team who understands the consumer from an ethos perspective, so we don't spend the majority of our time with the whys we're doing things. And so there's that. And then the other piece is about storytelling.

Again, I talked about aspirational marketing, right? That's who we are, but we're also storytellers, right? And we storytell not just through our Instagram channel, through the images that we post and the copy that we write, but we also storytell through just the pains, the struggles, the passions of who consumers actually are and where brands want to be in space. And so for us, we have to figure out what is the messaging, what does the content look like, and then how do we want to distribute that content? And it's changed a lot. Before it used to be Twitter and Twitter was, I've got a hundred whatever characters and it was short, snackable things, right? And we've always been long format storytellers, but the challenge is a lot of brand people were averse to that because the trends were saying like, "Hey, you have to talk in this many characters." But we're like, "Well, we want to give a backstory here. We want to give an understanding about why we're doing these things and what's the design process behind it."

So this way, what we've really found out is that educated consumers are the most influential consumers. And so the information dissemination becomes cultural equity. And so if you arm a consumer with these assets, they become the biggest, I would say, advertiser for your organic advertiser for your brand. And so for us, we spend a lot of time being smart, being cerebral. And even through every program that we do, our goal is to teach, is to give someone a piece of information that they can utilize in another space. That's where loyalty is built for us. True. So if you're buying a shoe and then you have a conversation with someone about that shoe and it allows you to open up other doors somewhere else, the loyalty to that brand and that product is far greater than the performance you immediately had with that shoe if you were talking about a shoe.

And so for us, that's the challenge. And I think, again, we were early, right? We were early on the influence thing. I think we're very early on educating and arming consumers with information, but that's where it comes back to being trust kind of creators. It's kind of like-

Bilal Little:

It's funny because trust is the epicenter of decision making to your point earlier. I think that's fascinating actually now that I'm sitting here thinking about it because you're going to have price elasticity depending upon where you're willing to spend. You're going to spend up if you trust the quality, the backstory to your point. So it's funny you say it like that, but I never looked at it like that. My question though, sorry, you got me waiting-

Coltrane Curtis:

I'm a nerd. I'm sorry.

Bilal Little:

I love it. No, I love it. So you sit at the intersection of culture and the consumer, and the consumer right now, their taste seems to be shifting a little bit. So talk about maybe just one or two of sectors that you really focus on, maybe footwear, maybe spirits. There's a lot shifting right now, and I'd like to hear from you how you're navigating that challenging dynamic.

Coltrane Curtis:

Yeah. I mean, you could take two big industries. Footwear, we can get to spirit industry is really interesting and challenging right now. We're coming off of a year when we probably had the best marketing year in as a Grand Marnier's history. The work that we've done this year was just some of the best work we've ever done at the agency, but the budgets are still cut for '26, right? Yeah. And it's not necessarily about the job that we did on the brand, it's really about what the industry is actually looking like and how consumers are drinking less, household income is down or take home is down. And so that $70, $80, 750ml is now looking for the same product next to it on the shelf or below it on the shelf or a little bit cheaper. And when you really look at the spirit world, it's an industry that hasn't necessarily evolved at the same pace as the consumer.

We see there's a lot more at home consumption and when you have at home consumption, it's very difficult to gauge not only how much and how often, but how or how are the drinks being consumed at home? If you go to a bar, you're going to have an incredible drink. It's probably going to cost you 22 to 28-

Bilal Little:

20 plus.

Coltrane Curtis:

20 plus. It's probably got like 12 different ingredients on it. And, cool, but when you go home, you're not making those cocktails like that. And so I always fight our spirit clients when they come up with these cocktail strategies that this is what the consumer is drinking and how they're drinking it. And it's like, to be honest, they're probably drinking that at home with like one chaser, a couple ice cubes and a red cup. And luxury brands don't want to hear that because your brands are consumed in the right vessel, in the right temperature, with the right ambient light, right?

Bilal Little:

Absolutely.

Coltrane Curtis:

That's perfectly out, but that's not how most consumers consume it at home or in a friend's place or watching a game or watching the Grammys or Oscars. And so what we have to do is understand that because they're trying to keep imagery and positioning right in the marketplace, but we also understand how it's being consumed. And so for us, what we will try to do is merge the two. So if I'm sitting here thinking about how do we merge the two, maybe shout out, not our client Solo Red Cup, which is just like OG staple how do you consume-

Bilal Little:

Yeah, for sure.

Coltrane Curtis:

... spirits, right? And then you think about how you're supposed to consume a 15-year old Glenfiddich or whatever you're having. And so these worlds don't collide, but maybe what we can do is take that Red Cup and turn it into maybe like a merger or collab with like Baccarat Crystal.

And now you have this incredible Red Cup vessel that could be a cool campaign, if you will. But it's kind of like that's why brands kind of like come to us because we'll find the solves. The solves are never easy, but if you can think of making a mashup between a Baccarat and a red cup, now we have a campaign that shows high and low, really how the consumer's actually living, how they're buying products, right? Like girls are wearing Fashion Nova and they're wearing Chanel boots, high low, right?

Bilal Little:

Yeah, yeah.

Coltrane Curtis:

You're leaving the club and it's late or you're leaving a concert and it's late or you're leaving the Grammys and it's late and you're going to stop at Church's Chicken and celebrate there, right? High, low aesthetics. So understanding how the consumer works and being able to kind of bring worlds together and maybe it's a campaign that we should pitch that we should do an upscaled red cup.

Bilal Little:

Sounds like a good one already because that's an experience. What you just said is experience. I see people gravitate way more towards experience that is memorable now than ever before. So what mistakes are you seeing when you have that conversation with brands that come to you and they're like, "Well, no, luxury is this. " And you're like, "I'm trying to tell you what the consumer is telling you." What mistakes are they ... Why do they keep making the same mistakes?

Coltrane Curtis:

I would tell you the same mistake, which is the reason why I started the agency 22 years ago. I think it's their unflappable trust in celebrity. I think people's brand directors, stewards of the brand are personally enamored by celebrity, and so therefore the brands that they work for and represented are. For us, celebrity supports our strategy. They're not our strategy. Sometimes even when we have a celebrity brand, the celebrity itself are still not our strategy. Celebrities are here to tactically support the strategy. Absolutely. And so when you really see blind campaigns that are just like, "Hey, put in someone's hand and now you're going to buy this product," number one, you're just completely disrespectful to the intellect of who the consumer is. And even though you might have a celebrity in the mix, they have to support the strategy. So a good example is this program that we did for Grand Marnier where when we started working for the brand, we worked with the Roots and one of my idols, Tariq from The Roots.

And then that worked for two years, so we got some more money. And then we did 2 Chainz, another good friend, and then the brand wanted to go bigger, more celebrity, and we were like, "Okay, cool. We'll do it." And then we signed Future. And so we're in a two-year deal with him or maybe longer, I don't know, the scope. And it really came to fruition that lucky us, it was I think the 10th anniversary of I think his best album, which is Dirty Sprite 2, DS2. And it'd been very easy to just be like, "Hey, we're going to have a performance with Future, invite consumers, do sweeps and da da da da da." And that's basically would have been selling the consumer short because you think about the aspirational piece. This consumer go buy a ticket to see Future, what's going to make this performance very special.

And so what we decided to do was do a ballet of Dirty Sprite 2 for the particular consumer at Brooklyn Academy of Music where we choreographed the entire album and turned it into a ballet. And why do we do that?

The right costumes, the right music, the right environment, but why do we really do that? Well, because going back to the aspirational piece, I bet you 70, 90% of the target has never been to a ballet. And so we use Future to support our strategy of being an aspirational brand, which is again, giving them a new Experience. And so why would they be open to it? Because it's future. And hey, we had to push Future, we had to push the brand, we had to push ourselves. I mean, Misty Copeland came. And so when you start thinking about the impact in culture, like Future can do as many shows as he wants, but I would probably tell you in the near future, you'll be seeing Future do a ballet again or something like that because the impact was so much greater because we changed the medium and we just mixed the genres and we just mashed it up. And so, I mean, it was an epic experience.

Bilal Little:

I've seen that viral. That was viral. My wife went. It was viral. It was viral.

Coltrane Curtis:

You never go viral when you're trying to go viral.

Bilal Little:

That's what I'm saying.

Coltrane Curtis:

We weren't trying to go viral. We were just trying to be aspirational and have impact.

Bilal Little:

But no, I have to ask this question. So it seems like you're trying to coach your clients, not to just be relevant, but to really earn their spot, earn their keep.

Coltrane Curtis:

Yeah.

Bilal Little:

What's the pushback do they give right now? Is it just comfortability?

Coltrane Curtis:

I mean, the first pushback is the budget. So the first thing we have to do is be like, this is not going to cost you any more money to do this, regardless if it does. We'll eat it, we will leverage the partners to do it, but that's our pledge, right? Our pledge is to move your brand forward. This is what it's going to take and it might feel a little bit uncomfortable, right? But that's the reason why I love being with Coca-Cola for 10 plus years, right? It's because you're growing on each of these experiences that you start pushing the envelope and you start creating trust with them. That's the biggest thing is like, okay, well, people are going to really come to a ballet. Oh, well, okay, let's say they don't. They're going to come to a Future show. Oh, it's going to be a Brooklyn Academy of Music. Okay, great. I want everybody to look great. So our recaps and our photos look great. So we're going to Brooklyn Academy of Music. You know you can't come up in there slipping with the wears, right?

You know you have to be there. You know you're going to bring a friend that's going to enjoy that experience. And so chasing the numbers, chasing the KPIs, you'll never hit it. I didn't think that our agency would be this big. It's the byproduct of doing great work. And so chasing like going viral, we didn't try to go viral, but we re-engineered the process of how you go viral, which is making sure you have as many amplification touchpoints that are organic to your experience as possible. So LaQuan Smith did all of the ballerina's outfits. Wow. LaQuan did that? So guess what? If he pushes it out, now I'm speaking to the fashion world, right? When Future's pushing it out, now I'm speaking to the music and the high fashion world again, because I think he was just coming off of a, I think a Lanvin collection maybe.

I think that's who he was. So we're really now in this luxury space. And so luxury is now pitching and now we're in a cultural space because now we're in Brooklyn and name it. And so now we start having all of the things to become viral. It's not just like, "Hey, let's go viral and let's pay for these posts." I've never been the person, I've always been the person to say, if you ever had to push or put hashtag ad or advertisement or paid or partner or any of that, I feel like that's trash. That's trash.

Bilal Little:

You diminish the entire experience.

Coltrane Curtis:

Even when we're doing contracts, we have to have, "We need two posts in this format." And to me, I look at it as limiting because my thing is like, if we are doing our job, why do I want to limit how many times you want to share this? And we've had some situations where we've had to limit the time, the amount of repost or content that talent who engaged with this experience did because it just didn't seem believable, but it was very organic. They were just, I'm marketing to them too. I'm trying to create trust with this particular target or with this particular celebrity or talent. And so again That's crazy. I'm a marketer, right? So I market to the brand, marketing consumer. I market to my own talent because I want them to share organically. I want them to be so moved by the work that we're doing that they have to support it because they want to do it again.

To me, that's social, right? That's social media. It's all earned. And so nowadays you have to pay people sometimes, but the reality is it has to come from a genuine place of just trust and wanting to belong. And so there've been instances when we use talent to help identify a vendor. I've been in Houston and Uncle Bun B. And it's like, "Are you going to perform?" He's like, yeah, but I was like, "Yo, I'm going to need a barbecue vendor. We're in Houston. Who can cater to 150 to 200 people that you trust, not just make the best barbecue and bundle identify that person?" And so now you have the person who's performing on stage actually helping you make the thing better. That's the ecosystem that you want around every single project that you have. And so that's kind of like the secret sauce.

Bilal Little:

Oh man, I love that. You mentioned, I'm not going to say the brands, but you mentioned some of these brands that you've basically continued to help pull. They've been legacy clients for a long time, but not only are you pulling them, but there's this sort of mutually beneficial relationship where they allow you guys to create, they allow you guys to tap into your genius, if you will. And in today's environment, the marketing platforms are extremely fragmented, right? You got all the social platforms, you got traditional media. How are executives dealing with creativity, data, KPIs and measurements in the world that we're going into?

Coltrane Curtis:

I would say that they are parallel. They generally never cross and it's our job to make sure that it crosses. So again, I'm an old head, and I've always been closer to the dork and geek side of things. And what we had really found was that my wife would even say this too, she would say, "You're very seldom wrong. Sometimes your delivery is off, but you are generally right." And what we were finding, how that applies to business.

Bilal Little:

You tell her you love her right there.

Coltrane Curtis:

Yeah, I know. I mean, 20 years of marriage this year and 22 years of a company and a 14 and 17-year-old, I tell her I love her all the time. Trust me. We share a wall at work. You know what I mean? I bang two times and she knows I love her.

Bilal Little:

I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I had to. I had to. You got to shout to the wife.

Coltrane Curtis:

No, 100%, right? But what does that mean in the business world? What it means is I might be right, this insight might be right, but the bigger the opportunity, the more data and support you need to give confidence and trust in that insight. Absolutely. And so what we were finding at the company for a while, we kind of plateaued because we weren't able to get to the bigger opportunities with the accurate insights because we didn't have the data to support it. And so for a very long time, we were able to like Frankenstein things, right? You can look at data from Nielsen, you can look at data from, I think it's GPI, you can look at Harris Poll, right? You can look at those things, but you'd have to Frankenstein it yourself to kind of like tell this story. And so over the last year, we've been kind of working on this thing called Context and what it basically is data for us, data that helps us prove our insights.

And I think the first thing was, why do brands use focus group data to build or support their platforms? So when you really think about it, that system is broken and it's time for some innovation or evolution there because you think about it, right? The majority of people that go to focus groups are people who are happy getting $250 for the day after taxes, do the math, buck 50. And those are people who you're basing your brand on and people want to get paid $150 a day to tell you everything that they know, that's who you're trusting with the insight behind your brand, for real. And so a lot of times when brands get that data, we spend a lot of our energy fighting that data, right? It's just wrong.

Bilal Little:

Yeah, It's not Quality. Garbage in, garbage out.

Coltrane Curtis:

Out. 100%. But if now I'm looking at this data and you looked at this as fact, how do I combat that? And so we had to create our own piece and it's called Context. We're building it together with the Harris Poll to make it robust. And it's basically consumer data for us, by us, if you will. No FUBU pun. But the reality is you want people like me participating in a study that gives you the output to then build your brand on. You don't want the person who's making $150 for the day. Now, how do you get a person like me to do that? Well, I share in the results of the actual study. And so ultimately, what we're now building is this network to respond to these kind of prompts and these questions. And now these are the people who are actually influential, but they don't need the $150.

What they need is the output, because they're having the same challenges that we are having as an agency in their own entrepreneurial lives. And so now you include the most influential people who trust us to participate. So now the data that comes out of it is sharp. It's early. It's on. It's poignant. It's people who you read about, people who you wouldn't expect to participate. But now we have access to that. And so that's something at year 22, started at year 20 that we're ready to roll out, but that's how you put better work in the world. Not just by having the insights, but having the data that supports the insights and now the work can be better. So now brands can't have the excuse of not knowing or not trusting or not having because the bedrock of the information is now cemented in honesty and truth of that actual consumer. And yeah, I'm really proud of that.

Bilal Little:

Let me ask you a question about that. Is that proprietary?

Coltrane Curtis:

It's proprietary. It started from the brain trust of my boy, Jared, Jared Cobbs, who leads my strategy team, who to me, other than my father, is the smartest person I've ever met in my life. And I think he's earned, but also created the space at the company to create something like that. And we benefit from it, but not only do we benefit, we talk about to our earlier conversation about culture, we don't access it, we create it. And so when you think about having respect for it, this will be an incredible addition to the culture in which we represent. Culture is like, yo, if you take something off the shelf, put something back of equal greater value, this is a prime example of that.

Bilal Little:

There's a lot that I want to ask you about some of these things. I just want to tell you just from me why this is an important conversation to have you here. There are so many financial firms in which me and my team support and represent, particularly on the ETF space. And the beautiful part about an ETF wrapper is, think about it as technology, but it's just an investment vehicle, but it allows you to bucket all these different publicly traded companies. Rather it is in consumer-based products, just retail. It could be travel, it could be a lot of different things, spirits. There are a lot of ETFs with millions and millions and even billions of dollars in various areas and sectors. But sometimes I don't feel like that story is told enough and discretionary consumer spending tells a story. And it not only tells a story about transparency, but it's almost pulling you into what the next generation wants.

So that's why listening to you, I can not only relate because I see the trends, but I'm also trying to communicate to these legacy financial institutions on how they can actually endear themselves with their next potential allocator, if you will. So this has been phenomenal on a lot of different fronts. Now, in doing my research, there's something that I just want to sort of wrap up. I have two questions to wrap up on.

Coltrane Curtis:

I'm scared now. Go ahead.

Bilal Little:

No, this is fantastic. This is fantastic. The first is you actually, every single interview that I watched of you have inspired me to now go buy this book.

Coltrane Curtis:

Was it Positioning?

Bilal Little:

Positioning.

Coltrane Curtis:

Yeah.

Bilal Little:

I've never heard of this book, but I'm listening every time. It's almost like rigid as part of your story. In one sentence, tell me the significance of it to you.

Coltrane Curtis:

Now I have to tweet it, right?

Bilal Little:

Yeah.

Coltrane Curtis:

The significance of it. Well, first, it was my Bible growing up. It was the book that I read every year with my dad. So after my dad passed, you get all these trinkets and all these things. I got watches for my dad. I got my dad's graduation ring, but on my desk is the original copy of positioning with his Post-its, his cryptic handwriting, which mine is as cryptic and highlights all the important pieces. I think it's the most important document I've ever read because life is about positioning. And the thing about positioning is that you will always be positioned and it's very difficult to change your positioning.

And so for me, the next reinvention of myself, I want to be a positioning expert. It's very difficult to introduce a term and then be the voice of it, but we did it with influence and I'm going to take the learnings and the mishaps of watching other people run with it. I'm not going to allow other people to run with the positioning piece. But for me, it's the way I raise my kids. It's the way I move through life. It's the way in which you tell stories through everything that you have on. From the selvedge denim you wear to your nail beds, to the way you lace your sneakers, that positions you in particular ways and you have to be very mindful of that. Positioning is it. It's more important in marketing, more important in advertising. And yeah, it's funny you picked that up.

Bilal Little:

Before I jump to the last question now, you sparked one more. I feel like we don't do a good enough service and you may do a better job of this than me, so I'm just going to be transparent here. There's a lot of young people who are struggling, who are graduating college, who are trying to figure out life. What's one piece of advice you'd give to that young person trying to identify what's next?

Coltrane Curtis:

Yeah. Hard skills. Hard skills. When you really think about basic core hard skills, what I mean, can you write? How quickly do you process information? You'd be surprised at how many kids look for jobs. It's particularly in my industry, particularly with me, that got it messed up. I would say that cool is a byproduct of being a nerd and I hire nerds. I can teach you how to be cool. It's not that difficult. Do a couple of things, be positioned properly, and I can make you cool. But the thing is, how do you process information and how do you communicate what you process and how do you put things together? Hard skills.

See, now you're going to have me go home and beat up my 14-year-old because every time I look at him, I'm like, "My guy. No, we're going to get this-"

Bilal Little:

Let's go. Let's go.

Coltrane Curtis:

Our entire majority, well, at a particular point, our entire team, now the majority of our strategy team weren't strategists. They were published writers. Why? Well, we can teach you how to be a strategist. I can't teach you how to be connected to subcultures and then communicate what you see just because you're putting it together. And so my agency is extremely diverse. I think we're more than 70% minority people of color, more than 70% women. I don't care. I'm more seeking diversity of thought, diversity of skillset. Absolutely. And it just so happens that a lot of folk look like me, a lot of folk look like my wife because they hungry and they have hard skills.

And so for us, we're a talent agency first, and we have to find the right skillsets, the right values. You have to marry all those things to kind of like work a team epiphany, but we're the most talented we've ever been now. And I would say it's because of somewhat failures of other industries. When you really think of fewer print magazines, means that they're more writers. How are there more writers?

Bilal Little:

Cross-functional talent.

Coltrane Curtis:

How are there more writers available because these are some of the smartest, sharpest human beings you can find on the planet. They're weird and quirky and goofy, but that's my lunchroom table that I was hanging out in high school. It feels right. And so for us, I would just say diversity of thought, but the hard skills, bro. The hard skills.

Bilal Little:

Last question. What's in your playlist right now that-

Coltrane Curtis:

Oh, don't do that to me.

Bilal Little:

I'm throwing it on you right now that it's a song that no one knows that you listen to. So I'll tell you mine first to give you context and then we'll go from there. So I tell everybody my favorite movie is Interstellar. What's in that playlist is actually the entire soundtrack, but the song today is Mountains.

Coltrane Curtis:

Mountains. Geez. I listen to only old stuff generally, right? And obviously I'm Coltrane. I have a son named Ellington. I have another count.

Bilal Little:

Jazz heavy.

Coltrane Curtis:

I listen to a lot of jazz heavy, but I won't give you some obscure jazz stuff because then you'll just be like, "Is it Miles or not?" I listen to a lot of Lauryn Hill.

Bilal Little:

Okay.

Coltrane Curtis:

I love the song Zion.

Bilal Little:

Oh, fire.

Coltrane Curtis:

Yeah. If you listen to that song by yourself and you're not crying, we can't be friends. But the weird thing about me, which is, again, this is embarrassing, but I listen to a lot of Hans Zimmer. You know what I'm saying? And so the reason why I believe that I'm my own superhero, and so sometimes when I really need to hear, I need to hear that theme song, I need my own theme song, you know what I mean? So until I get a Hans Zimmer one, I'm listening to anything Hans Zimmer on iTunes. That's my joint.

Bilal Little:

We got to go catch his next concert because that is my guy. Coltrane, thank you for joining ETF Central.

Coltrane Curtis:

Peace, yo. Very good. Thank you for having me.