A weird way to get clients

As I write this, I’m on a plane to LA to meet with the team at Brotege. It’s a skincare brand started by Gabe Saporta from Cobra Starship (you may know them for doing the theme song to “Snakes On A Plane” back in the 2000s).

I’ve been working with them for a month or so now as fractional CMO, and it’s been a really fun opportunity to wrap together a lot of things I’ve worked on over the years (CPG like Olay and Pantene, running creative pipelines, paid media, etc etc).

But what’s most interesting IMO is how it happened. It’s a little winding and weird, but there’s a lot to learn from it…

I didn’t know Gabe back in the day, but we grew up in similar circles (punk music) and have a lot of mutual friends going back 20+ years when we probably slept on a lot of the same couches.

Then he ended up getting famous, going on The Real World and playing stadiums with Justin Bieber while I was a broke-ass loser struggling to pay off my student loans 🙃

We crossed paths again when I did a podcast with him about 2 years ago. I was really impressed with how smart he is, we followed each other on IG, but we didn’t keep in super close contact.

Then a couple months ago, I posted an IG video where I used Nano Banana and Rodin to create a Gameboy out of meat (very accessible content, right?). He saw it, and DM’d me to see if that workflow could be useful for making ad creative. 

I asked what the ads were for, he told me about his brand, we started bouncing ideas around, one thing lead to another, and here we are.

“Cool story, but what’s in it for me?”

A lot, actually! This is more or less how every opportunity has come to me.

1. People are the magic ingredient (but not like Soylent Green)

It’s very simple: if you want good things to happen to you, talk with more people. It’s the closest thing to a magic “make my life better” button!

Every time you talk with someone (whether they’re a stranger or an old friend), that’s a chance for something good to happen.

For example, I would’ve never guessed that the podcast I did with Gabe in 2024 would turn into a fractional CMO role in 2026, but here we are!

So the more people you talk to, the more good things will happen. It’s that simple!

You can be calculating and make a list of targeted “prospects” that you pitch, or you can just DM people who seem cool, go to events and be chatty, etc.

Personally, I prefer the latter because I only want to talk with people that I genuinely think are cool and interesting, but that's just me.

There’s no single right way, the important part is just that you do it.

2. They’ll respond to passion

There’s a lot of conventional wisdom about “lead magnets” and so forth. I’m sure those things work for some people, but for me opportunities always come from wildly unexpected places.

For example, I made that weird ass video about a meat Gameboy with ZERO expectations that it would turn into a client (but it did). I got into the Midjourney magazine from posting my weird images of dancing pink skeletons.

When you genuinely give a sh*t, people will notice. And they’ll care, because giving a sh*t is unfortunately a rare thing.

I’m not saying “do what you love and the money will come,” because that’s naive. There’s always a commercial reality that you need to consider. 

But I’ve personally never seen success when I did what I was “supposed to” do, unless it was also something I genuinely believed in.

Talk to people, do things you think are cool, and good things will happen.