He sold top business minds on a TV show that promised to save the world – and make them famous. They handed over thousands. Then reality set in: they were unemployed. And they’re still in touch.
The only thing that seems to have changed is a simple, one-word message. “I love you,” it says to the woman at the top of the list.
Liz Taylor was a TV icon until she left the spotlight for good; then a public relations and sales executive, she went to work for the only thing she’d ever really wanted to do: she had a passion for marketing.
“I felt like I was doing what I could, and that was it,” she says. “There was nothing more to really do with advertising and marketing.”
When her agency began pitching clients on a new reality television show, she didn’t hesitate. She was determined that the only thing she needed to do was convince the world that her work had value. Just like her TV show, she decided to take that on.
“I really wanted to work with someone who had this idea and who was very clear how to take it to a place where it could be commercialized, and that’s not just a TV show,” she says. “That’s not just making television shows. We were really on a mission here to make it a real business – and I wanted to be a real business owner. The show made it seem like I was really that in the business.”
When she approached her former boss and mentor, Jim Goetz, he thought it was a great idea.
He agreed to produce an eight-week pilot season for a 30-minute show called My Way, which would use the agency’s expertise in marketing to sell a product to everyday people across the country.
Goetz has always been a serial entrepreneur, and his love of success led to his founding of Goetz Companies in 2005. He also used the idea to create The Gersh Agency, which represents
