The Leff Exchange: Recent Episodes
Leff Communications
The Leff Exchange podcast is where the business of storytelling gets interesting. We talk with leaders and innovators from a range of industries and fields to understand their strategy, challenges, creative process, and more. Get insights, ideas, and recommendations that will help you stand out in your next leadership meeting, team project, or cocktail hour.
One of the pervasive myths about any creative pursuit is that the best artists are able to tap into some kind of divine inspiration. The truth is a bit less interesting: it takes a lot of hard work, day in and day out, to find your voice and a process that can produce consistently high-quality work.
Country music songwriter Mark Sanders is intimately familiar with the persistence it takes to break through. Along the way, he has mastered the craft of songwriting, achieving a level of success many could only hope for. Even if you don’t recognize his name immediately, you’ve heard his work. Over the course of his career, he’s written 14 number one songs for country music royalty and hundreds more for a wide range of artists.
In this conversation, Sanders discusses his influences, his approach to collaboration, the importance of a good rhyme, and the Nashville industry machine.
Anyone who works in any storytelling field has had to learn to manage deadlines. It’s a threat, a motivator, and sometimes a crucible for creative ideas. While many of us have spent our careers dreading encroaching due dates, the field of journalism is like a full-throttle sprint toward deadlines on a daily basis. For broadcast journalists like Lauren Victory, a longtime reporter for CBS 2 in Chicago, managing deadlines brings not only recurring challenges but also the ability to excel under the most trying circumstances. Along the way, she picked up an Emmy for her investigative reporting.
In this conversation with Scott Leff, Lauren discusses all of the storytelling elements she manages for her segments, the evolution of her storytelling approach, how she distills complex topics into relatable stories, and how social media has altered the game.
Podcasts are relatively new, but the Slate Political Gabfest—endorsed by Stephen Colbert and others—has been a mainstay on the airwaves for 15 years. We sat down with Gabfest host David Plotz—CEO of City Cast and former editor-in-chief of Slate magazine and CEO of Atlas Obscura—to find out what makes podcasts work. In the following conversation, David discusses podcasting, the fate of local journalism, and what about the future of media energizes him.
Think about one of the favorite concerts you’ve seen. You may need to reach back a little further than you’d like. For those two hours, chances are you were transfixed by the artist. And it wasn’t an accident. Behind that artist was a whole crew—lights, sound, staging, and roadies. And behind all of them was the artist’s manager, who had worked for months with the artist to shape their vision and bring that experience to life.
Howard Greynolds is intimately familiar with just about every aspect of the music industry. As the founder of Overcoat Management, for the past 25 years, he has managed such acts as Glen Hansard, Iron and Wine, and the Frames. As the enduring success of his artists demonstrates, he excels at that collaborative process of nurturing creativity at a high level.
In the following conversation, Howard discusses the many hats he wears as a manager, the importance of relationships and teamwork in the music business, and the parts of the job that still make it all worthwhile.
Crafting a good joke requires hours of writing, rewriting, and experimenting. And then, of course, there’s timing and delivery.
Mark Cendrowski is an Emmy-nominated sitcom director who has worked at the top of the game for more than three decades. He has directed episodes for a wide range of sitcoms, including The Big Bang Theory, The Neighborhood, and Fuller House. In this podcast, Mark shares insights from his career, discusses why the creative process is all about problem solving, and talks about the time he and TV legend Betty White found comedy gold.
The articles written over the past year on leading through a crisis could fill several encyclopedias. Within them, the terms trust, transparency, and communication have almost become cliché. They are often made into boxes to check for an incoming CEO or other C-suite executive. Yet to truly embed these traits in an organization is no small feat. And how successful a leader is in these endeavors sets the tone for the whole company. Leaders must check their egos at the door and be open to learning from those around them.
Mark Skroch has worked in the agency world for more than 20 years. In April 2020, Mark joined BCV—a leader in hospitality, social media, and marketing—as general manager. In this episode of the Leff Exchange, Mark discusses how he stepped into that role and what he’s learned while stabilizing an organization amid a crisis.
Dave Lubbers has made his reputation and picked up a few Emmys and Peabody awards by finding those indelible moments in stories. As a producer for ESPN for more than 20 years, he’s covered the athletes, events, and sometimes overlooked angles to give viewers a deeper understanding of sports and society. In this episode of the Leff Exchange, Dave sheds light on his approach to storytelling, addresses working within the constraints posed by the pandemic, and educates us on a forgotten sports tragedy.
People who think of design as just the way you make an idea visually compelling are only scratching the surface for what great designers do. At a fundamental level, design is about solving problems, telling a story, and visualizing ideas or concepts. Great design also has a point of view on what should be communicated and how. Accomplishing all of those objectives through requires designers that have skill, experience, and curiosity, and fearlessness.
Erin Sarofsky embodies all of those qualities and more. Throughout her career, first working for established post-production houses and then leading Sarofsky, a design-driven production company, she has excelled by being a thought partner and artist for some of the world’s top brands, television programs, and movie franchises. In the following conversation, Erin shares insights from her career: how she went from designer to business owner and visual tastemaker, how project constraints can spark creativity, and the formula for building and leading high-caliber teams.
Oscar-winning director Alejandro González Iñárritu remarked, “To make a film is easy. To make a good film is war. To make a very good film is a miracle.” With so many inputs and variables, much can go wrong in the production process at any time. Since filmmaking is a team sport, successful projects must stay true to an original vision while giving each person on the production the space to do their best work—no easy task.
Mark Mitten knows these challenges well. Over the past decade, he has served such roles as producer, executive producer, and director on an impressive slate of projects. His work ranges from the Roger Ebert documentary Life Itself and the Oscar-nominated Abacus: Small Enough to Jail, to the recent Showtime documentary Ringside and the soon-to-be-released Miracle on 19th Street.
In the following podcast, Mitten reflects on his inspiration for visual storytelling, how he champions creativity and collaboration to get the best from his colleagues, and why his experiences from the business world are directly applicable to filmmaking.
Business leaders are always looking for guidance and support in addressing their challenges, and that need has become more acute during the pandemic. When long-term strategy has suddenly been replaced with week-to-week recalibrations, a trusted source of insight can be invaluable. Insurance companies have been carefully tracking data and trends and adjusting their pricing and coverage to reflect changing business and consumer behavior. In this way, insurers have a unique vantage point on what we’ve just been through and what lies ahead.
Chris Demetroulis, managing director of transportation at Gallagher, has more than 25 years of industry experience. I sat down with him to talk about the evolving risk landscape, the importance of data and analytics in scenario planning, and why customer engagement is all about problem solving.
In this episode of the Leff Exchange podcast, we are joined by Akeem Anderson, the director of paid media at Zeno Group, a global integrated communications agency. Akeem shares insights and perspectives on the lack of Black representation in marketing, the business imperative for diversity, and what’s ahead for the industry.
Zeno works across the consumer, corporate and healthcare industries with a client roster that includes Lenovo, Motorola, Gensler, ABB, Abbott Vascular and more. Zeno was named 2019 Agency of the Year and Midsize Agency of the Year by both PRWeek and PRovoke Media.