Never Sell Ice to Eskimos: Recent Episodes
Lonny Sweet
Hosted by Sweet Management Group CEO, Lonny Sweet, The Never Sell Ice to Eskimo's podcast features some of the best and brightest sales minds in the world, in a light, fun and conversational format. Our goal is to help to demystify the "sales person" stereotype and provide listeners with an inside look into personal journey from some of the top sales and business executives in the world.
Reesa Lake is Head of Creator Expansion and Agency Partnerships at LTK. In this newly created role, Lake brings LTK’s economic opportunity to creators across new platforms, verticals, categories and demographics. With a continued mission to deepen the relationships with creators, LTK Lake builds strategic partnerships with creators and their representation to further support their clients across all platforms.
Prior to joining LTK, Lake was Partner and Executive Vice President Brand Partnerships at Digital Brand Architects (DBA), as DBA's first talent manager, she adopted a keen focus on growing social media influencers into full-fledged million-dollar businesses while expanding the industry's perception of traditional influencers to include online and offline talent. Signing and representing notable lifestyle personalities, including Camilla Coelho, Rachel Parcell, Paola Alberti of Blank Itinerary and others. Having been behind thousands of the most known influencer programs with brands that range from Cartier and Amazon to Volvo as well as the strategic positioning of the industry's most coveted talent, she is a pioneer in the social media space.
Before joining DBA, Lake was the Executive Producer and co-creator for NBC's The Great American Health Challenge and led sponsorship sales for live events and other bespoke branded entertainment opportunities, starting her career in public relations.
Reesa was named Influencer top 50 by Talking Influencer and has been featured in Business Insider, Business of Fashion, Deadline, Digiday, Forbes, Fashionista, Hollywood Reporter, Refinery29, Tubefilter, WWD, Yahoo.
**Adam Geisler spent the first 10 years of his career at Everlast, the 118-year-old half-a-billion-dollar global fitness and lifestyle brand. Adam held positions in Marketing, Merchandising, and eventually President of the business, where he led the brand’s wholesale and licensing divisions globally to over $55M in wholesale sales (4 years 15% CAGR) and $18M in licensing income. Everlast was acquired in 2007 by the $3B retailer Sports Direct for $200M, a 12x+ multiple.
Adam later went on to help lead the start-up sports performance accessory company called MISSION. While at MISSION, he led Strategy, Merchandising, and Sales to grow the business from $3M to $50M in wholesale in less than 5 years.
He then went on to Authentic Brands Group the 2nd largest IP company globally generating over $13B in total retail sales. There he was the Global Brand Manager of their sports portfolio – Prince, Spyder, and Airwalk to name a few—which represented over $1B in retail sales. He would eventually move on to business development across the IP portfolio, driving new business as well as global retail development.
Adam along with Private Equity Firm Reynolds Channel, his partners, and the pre-existing management team created Youth Athletes United 3 years ago - which is comprised of Soccer Stars, Amazing Athletes, JumpBunch, and TGA Sports - with the goal of creating one the largest youth sports franchise platforms in the country, where every child is an athlete and can enjoy learning the fundamentals of the sport while having fun! Adam and his team have led the company to double its revenue growth in less than 3 years through system-wide revenue via organic growth and strategic acquisitions. Most importantly, the team is getting closer every day to reaching its goal of impacting over 1M kids every year through its platform of over 200+ franchise units across the system. Today they impact over 200k+ kids while burning over 20M calories annually! The company is a group of committed individuals with a team-first approach toward positively impacting children’s lives every day. It is a passion and a lifestyle for all involved!**
Steve Nudelberg is an Author, Expert Sales Trainer, Biz Dev Expert, Keynote Speaker, and Serial Entrepreneur.
Steve’s specialty within organizations centers on creating daily sales processes, sales acceleration and development, Social Selling, The Art of Building Relationships, Storytelling to make conversations engaging, and Pipeline Development.
Matt Pazaras is entering his 9th season with the Milwaukee Bucks and oversees Business Development for the team and Fiserv Forum, including all aspects of sales, account management and strategy for its portfolio of marketing partners. He has played an integral role since arriving in Milwaukee as part of the leadership team that has transformed the franchise, including the construction of Fiserv Forum, which opened in August, 2018. Matt has had experience in several leadership roles within the sports industry prior to joining the Bucks. He served as Vice President of Global Sales for Raptor Sports Properties, which works with sports properties around the world – including Italian soccer team AS Roma – to maximize their revenue. Prior to that he worked for the New Jersey Nets as Director of Marketing, where one of his major accomplishments was leading the positioning and presentation development for the arena naming rights that were sold to Barclays Capital upon the team’s move to Brooklyn. Matt began his career by serving 8 years as Manager of New York Knicks Marketing Partnerships for Madison Square Garden.
Ali Cox has been telling food and ag stories since founding her agency in 2007. As a member of a fifth-generation farming family, she cares deeply about food and agriculture — and as a branding and marketing strategist, she knows how consumers’ perspectives have the power to shape the industry’s future.
Ali has merged the expertise from her New York agency days with her client-side experience to hone her digital brand strategy, website development, and content generation specialties. Since launching her agriculture and food ingredient-focused marketing agency, Ali and her team have been committed to helping the agricultural and food industries share the story of where and how their products are grown, processed, packaged, and delivered to the consumer. AC&C works from a place of education, and its knowledge extends all the way down to crop variety, soil types, and water resources.
Since relocating home to Turlock from New York, Ali has grown her business from a boutique consultancy into a full-service agency that serves regional leaders across a variety of industries. The agency understands and values the voice of California’s heartland and has worked with family farms, growers, processors, food companies, restaurants, and advisory boards.
Ali’s professional experience in New York includes serving as Aereo’s first-ever director of marketing, where she was responsible for its branding, go-to-market strategy and $20.5 million Series A announcement. Prior to Aereo, Ali was the director of sponsorship sales and services for IMG’s Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week and held positions in public relations at Ketchum Public Relations and in IMG’s Sports and Entertainment Consulting Division. In 2004, she competed at the Athens Olympics on the U.S. women’s rowing team. Ali graduated from the University of San Diego with a Communications degree and minor in Business Administration. She is a Turlock High School, class of 1997 alumi. www.alicox.com
Marc Riccio is the CEO of USA Lacrosse, a nearly 420,000-member organization that serves as the governing body of the sport in the United States. A former collegiate lacrosse player at Hofstra, Riccio’s professional experience has led to specialties in media, fan engagement, sport and entertainment business operations, building new companies, revenue generation, executive leadership, and employee development.
Prior to joining USA Lacrosse, Marc was the Chief Commercial Officer for KlarisIP, a boutique intellectual property and media consultancy. He was charged with advising major sport and esports properties on strategy, growth, revenue generation, and organizational transformation.
Marc’s experiences include leading his own consultant business, MR21 Advisory where he advised global esports and gaming companies. Prior, Marc was the EVP of Commercial for Lagardère Sports (now Sportfive), a full-service global sports agency. Marc spent 17 seasons leading business operation and development for the New York Jets (NFL) and he worked for Hofstra University, leading marketing and development for intercollegiate athletics.
Marc has also taught as an Associate Adjunct Professor at Hofstra University and continues to advise and mentor in the technology and esports Venture capital accelerator community.
Marc has a Juris Doctor from St. John’s University School of Law, and an MBA and BA from Hofstra University.
As president of MikeWorldWide, Bret oversees all practice groups and geographical markets to ensure best-in-class client service and integrated creative strategy. He has spent the last five years at the agency implementing an insights-driven approach to creating earned-worthy content that moves the needle for businesses across all sectors, with specialized brand-building expertise in the food and beverage, sports and entertainment and alcohol categories for brands including Barefoot, Under Armour, Subway Restaurants, MET-Rx and Vitaminwater. Bret has earned campaign recognition from top industry award programs and has been recognized himself for noteworthy contributions to his organizations, clients and industry at large as a 40 Under 40 winner by PRWeek as well as named to the magazine’s Global Powerbook 500 list. Werner’s experiences as a senior executive in the industry have won his agencies the PRWeek Agency of the Year title in their size category three different times.
Edgar has nearly twenty years experience working at youth focused brands influencing millennials and Gen Z audiences across their main passion points of music, entertainment, fashion, sports, sneakers, gaming and art. Currently working with a 120+ member team to drive industry leading work across strategy, creative, content development and production, large scale events, and commerce.
After a 24-year career representing some of the biggest stars in sports, Taub returned to his entrepreneurial roots and launched Stoked in 2020. Taub represents a roster of Olympic, Action Sports and Iconic athletes including the best skateboarder (Nyjah Huston), snowboarder (Chloe Kim) and surfer (John John Florence) in the world. Taub focuses on creating “off-the-field” revenue opportunities for his clients including endorsement, appearance, social media, licensing, and equity/ownership partnerships. Stoked launched a talent advisory practice that advises brands on their talent ambassador procurement, including NOBULL and Hugo Boss.
Taub began his career at If Management in 1996, representing sports television personalities, finishing his tenure in the role of Director of Client & Business Affairs. Taub next spent seven years at SFX Sports Group, as Vice President of Talent Marketing, before starting his first athlete representation company, GFHF Marketing & Management, in 2005. GFHF was acquired by CAA Sports in 2007 and Taub finished his tenure at CAA as Head of Sports Endorsements, where he generated over $297M in athlete endorsement partnership revenue managing a client roster including Shaun White, Cristiano Ronaldo, Dwyane Wade and Novak Djokovic.
In 2014, Taub was recognized by the Sports Business Journal “Forty Under 40.”
Taub graduated from Cornell University and is married with two children, based in New Jersey suburbs outside NYC.
A founder and principal of GSE Worldwide (known as TLA Worldwide (TLA) until January 2019). TLA was formed through the merger of The Agency Sports Management (TASM) which he co-founded in 2004, The Legacy Group and Peter Greenberg and Associates in 2011.
Spielman leads the talent marketing and broadcasting divisions for GSE working with elite personalities including Bo Jackson, Steve Young, Jaylen Waddle, Amon-Ra St. Brown, Ahmad “Sauce” Gardner & Nick Mangold. In addition, Spielman works in the corporate marketing division working on behalf of numerous Fortune 500 companies to leverage the power of sports. Prior to launching The Agency Sports Management, Spielman worked in the talent marketing divisions of SFX Entertainment (SFX), Integrated Sports International (ISI) and Professional Sports Publications (PSP).
He is a proud graduate of the University of Massachusetts sports management department. In addition, he is a father of 3 children. has two great dogs and is happily married for over 26 years to Jennifer who he met at UMass in 1989. Russ supports the Crohn’s and Colitis foundation and is on the board of the Little St. Nick Foundation. The Spielman’s currently reside in Melville, NY.