Public Relations and Credibility Marketing with Jimmy Moock and Elena Krasnow

Jack Sharry: Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us for this week’s edition of WealthTech on Deck. I think we’re gonna have some fun with this show. I should have a soundtrack with waves crashing on the beach, little beach moodmusic and a backdrop of palm trees, some ocean breezes and sunny blue skies. Today, we’re gonna have some fun at the beach with my good friend, Jimmy Moock, and my new good friend, Elena Krasnow. Both are with Streetcred, a leading communications firm for RIAs, fintechs, wealth and asset management firms, and other firms big and small that want to break new ground. I’ll ask them to introduce themselves in a moment. But as we always do, try to keep things interesting and fun, today we’re going to talk about some of the out of the box thinking that they have done and they do with and through their clients. Specifically, we’re gonna talk about FutureProof. We’ll also have a conversation as to how we communicate more broadly and breakthrough in your communication. So Jimmy and Elena, welcome to WealthTech on Deck.

Elena Krasnow: Thanks for having us, Jack.

Jimmy Moock: Hey, Matt and Jack. Thanks for bringing us on the pod. Excited to be here.

Jack Sharry: Yeah. Fun, fun, fun. So Jimmy, not unlike myself, you are a grizzled, seasoned veteran. Sometimes people like Elena and our producer for the show, Matt Nollman, refer to us as OGs, and we’ve worked together in our past lives. So please share a little bit if you would, about your background and what you do at Streetcred.

Jimmy Moock: Sure. Well, I won’t give you the 30 second version, but I also won’t give you the 20 minute version, Jack, because we want your listeners to tune in and actually finish the pod. My story dates back to, well, honestly, becoming a dad at college. Believe it or not, my girlfriend from my freshman year dorm room floor and I, we ended up having a baby during our sophomore year of college.

Jack Sharry: Who knew?

Jimmy Moock: And we got married, and unfortunately, we split up before we graduated college, but in five years, we both did it, and we juggled our schedules around one another’s so that while one of us was in class, the other one was athome taking care of Cassidy, who today is 28 years old and has graduated college herself and is in the world of software sales.

Jack Sharry: Good for her.

Jimmy Moock: But as I was nearing the end of my college career, obviously I needed to score an internship or two, and I was fortunate enough to land one at a mid sized firm in New York City called Peppercomm, and it was a an amazing summer. I was doing everything from helping rearrange offices to building media lists to pitching our clients, and by the end of the summer, the owners of the firm had actually tried to talk me into joining before graduating college, but given Cassidy and the dynamics of being a father and a student, I wanted to go back to West Virginia and finish everything, but upon graduation, I did receive and take the job there, and this was during the dot com heyday. So some of your listeners might remember magazines like the Industry Standard, Business 2.0, and Red Herring. These were the tech publications of yesteryear that might have been as thick as a phone book because of all of the venture capital money swirling around and all of the advertisements. And you might remember fun stories about $100,000 launch parties, but then came the dot com crash, the bust, which was not fun, because I saw clients evaporate, basically in droves. Obviously, we had to go through some layoffs at the firm. I was lucky enough to make it through to the other side, but soon after that came unfortunately, and sadly, 911 which I was actually supposed to be at one of the towers for a client of ours calledIdeal, which was a startup within Merrill Lynch at the time, but we, we decided we weren’t going to get to the trade show until like 11am that morning. So you could imagine everything that I personally went through there, along with my dad, who worked on Wall Street, and soon after that came the blackout in Manhattan, when the power was out for about two and a half days, I think. So those two things really made me start to think about what I wanted to do with my life. Did I want to be pitching consumer tech or corporate services, and did I want to be in New York? And funny enough, at the time, one of my clients, which was different than most, was a division of GE Capital called GEFA, GE Financial Assurance, and it was launching its first fixed indexed annuity. Now, 28 year old Jimmy was not too excited about annuities, and I had no idea what the hell they were at the time, but I will tell you that I started to think a lot about my own retirement, which comes for all of us, inevitably, at one day in time.

Jack Sharry: Sure.

Jimmy Moock: And I thought, well, I want to make sure that I’m able to eat steak during retirement and not chuck or even dog food, whatever. So that’s when I left and came back to Philadelphia, and I worked in financial services. You and I worked together at a firm that will not be named for various reasons. After that, during those years, United Capital was a large client of mine. Joe Duran, everybody knows his story and the charisma and his take on M&A within the industry, which culminated in the sale of United Capital to Goldman Sachs. But at a industry conference, it was MarketCouncil, Brian Hamburger’s show. I happened to meet who I would describe was my top competitor at the time, Jason Lahita, at the bar in the Fountain Blue. And we happened to share a couple of pops, and we realized that we saw the world of PR the same way. And we had a lot of conversations while he was at his former firm and I was at mine about what it would be like to play on the same team. So fast forward to the pandemic and dealing with the loss of my father due to cancer. I had an epiphany, and I thought to myself, it’s now or never. And Jason had just launched Streetcred. I called him up and I said, hey, do you still want to do this? And he said, absolutely. And Streetcred turned four years old on September 15, and since then, we’ve been having a blast dealing with startup pains and the like, but I wouldn’t trade it for the world.

Jack Sharry: Great. We’ll get into more about Streetcred and also some other things that will be some fun, have some fun talking about. Elena, you’re at the other end of that timeline we just went through. You’re newer to this game. Tell us, how’d you wind up doing this sort of thing, and what do you do at Streetcred?

Elena Krasnow: Yeah. Well, one thing I’ll just say, I remember so well when Jimmy came to Streetcred a few months in because I was actually already working at the company, and the energy that Jimmy brought from day one is just unmatched. You’re so good at what you do, Jimmy, and we’re so lucky to have you…

Jimmy Moock: Keep going.

Elena Krasnow: But, yeah, honestly, I actually started out studying Environmental Studies in college at University of Oregon, I worked for an environmental advocacy nonprofit for about five years, and then the pandemic hit, I found myself in desperate need of an industry shift for a variety of reasons, which is a story for another time, but Jason had just started Streetcred, and I approached him and was like, I have a bunch of transferable skills, a deep hunger to learn and understand this industry. Give me a shot. And I jumped at the opportunity to be Streetcred’s first PR account executive in 2021. Back then we were just a team of four. It was me, Jason, Lisa, our incredible ops person, and Will Rubin. But now we’ve grown, as Jimmy has said, into a bustling startup of about 20, but I’ve been very fortunate to work at Streetcred for the last three and a half years-ish, coming up on four years in January, and I now hold the role of marketing manager, which has been a really exciting role to take on, especially at Streetcred, where there’s so much growth potential and so much that we have to offer. So I manage all of our social at home and on the conference circuit, I help drive our sales efforts. And of course, as you know, Jack, I co host our podcast with Jimmy, and we were so grateful to have you on, that’s been such a special project to me.

Jack Sharry: Yeah, that was fun.

Elena Krasnow: Yeah, we had so much fun talking about all things listening. You really gave us a master class.

Jimmy Moock: One thing that I got to highlight in terms of Elena and her countless contributions to the firm, she mentioned the word advocacy during her former career, she is an amazing advocate for every one of our employees, as well as every one of our clients. There’s so much that she does behind the scenes that she doesn’t necessarily get credit for under the spotlight, but without what she brings to the table, we would have lots of headaches on our hands.

Jack Sharry: Sure, I totally get that. Elena is part of the process to join the podcast, which was a great deal of fun. Not only is she an advocate for your clients and for your colleagues, but I observe she’s an advocate for our industry. She does a very nice job, that sort of helps us roll into our next topic. I’ve sort of teased the concept of FutureProof a little bit as we got this podcast started. And Elena, I’m going to start with you, talk about the role that you played… Jimmy, I’m going to come back to you and you can give more of a detailed version of what it is, but maybe just a highlights version, just so people know what we’re talking about. But it was kind of hard to miss FutureProof while it was happening. So kick it off and tell us about, at a high level, very high level, and then talk about your role there. It was kind of fun to watch you do your thing, so.

Elena Krasnow: Awesome. Yeah. I mean, FutureProof is the largest wealth management festival on record, and the asset management community is, you know, there now too…

Jack Sharry: If I could interrupt… festival, I’ve not heard that word used with conference. So explain that part. I think that’s an important part of your, what you guys are up to.

Elena Krasnow: Yes. FutureProof is not a conference. Get it right, people, it is a festival. And that is truly felt when you are on the ground.

Jack Sharry: That’s great. Before I get back to you on how this whole thing got started because I love the whole concept, I just have to pick up on something. There’s also a theme of what I view as Jimmy and Elena and Streetcred, and what I just heard about the FutureProof festival. I gotta get past this conference thing… And I would recommend this to my… to our listeners. I just heard this literally last week for the first time. I’m obsessed with a woman by the name of Frances Frei, she’s a Harvard Business School professor, and she talks a lot about authenticity and how fundamental that is to being effective. And it’s all around building trust. So I leave you to that. There’s a TED talk, she’s got a podcast. She’s done lots of writing, written a few books. I’m already into all of it, but it’s all around how, in fact, I’m going to be speaking next week at the MMI conference in Charlotte, and I’ve incorporated what I learned on the many things that I’ve been listening to over this past weekend and reading from her. But I just want to highlight that, because that’s one of the things I know, Jimmy, about you and what you’ve done over the course of your career, it’s about being authentic. It’s about being who you are. And I just think that’s so powerful. And it’s one of those things we kind of step over, like, oh yeah, they’re authentic, and that’s cool and glad they are, or whatever, but it’s, I think it’s fundamental, far more fundamental than… I’ve always thought this, but I’m just… now that I’m obsessed about my friend, Francis Frei (we’re not friends), but it’s all about that. So, Jimmy, enough of my diverted comment, but I do recommend that to our listeners to check that out. So how’d this whole thing… Go ahead, Jimmy, sorry.

Jimmy Moock: Let me just add this. We talk a lot about the word authenticity at the office and with our clients, and we see it used a lot within the industry, and most of the time, Jack, I’ll call a spade a spade, and most of the time it’s used as a talking point, but…

Jack Sharry: Said Jimmy, authentically. Go ahead.

Jimmy Moock: Yeah. I mean, think about it.

Jack Sharry: Yeah, no, I know. I’m with you. I’m with you, brother.

Jimmy Moock: It’s lip service.

Jack Sharry: Yeah, yeah. It’s true.

Jimmy Moock: But as it relates to Elena, and I would say, every one of us here at Streetcred, and more broadly, our ethos in terms of how we operate. We really, really do encourage our clients to bring their authentic selves, whether it’s them as the SME, or if it’s them embodying their own firm to be real versus being anything else, because nobody wants to deal with anybody that’s fake. Think about it, right? Like that is the biggest turn off in life, to me.

Jack Sharry: Yeah, actually, Frances Frei says, one of her many brilliant, just little snippets, she says “We can pick up on inauthenticity in a moment.” You know, think about that. Because you met someone who’s, who’s “fake.” Back in the day, we used to call it “fake,” and it’s like, I lose interest, and then… anyway, check it out. But it’s, you know, just when you’re authentic… Frankly, it’s one of the reasons this podcast has been so successful. We have authentic conversations. And one of the other things she mentioned, which frankly, I didn’t realize I was doing explicitly, although certainly it’s something I strive for, is the more authentic I can be, the more authentic the person on the other other side can be, which sounds like, how you guys think and operate at Streetcred.

Jimmy Moock: And that’s totally connected to your book about active listening. I know that we talked about this a little bit on our pod, but you could tell when somebody is waiting for their turn to talk versus listening to what somebody else is saying and then responding to that. And whenever I catch that happening in a podcast or something I’m watching on video, it’s time for me to tune out.

Jack Sharry: Yeah, yeah. So true. So I love the diversion. Thank you for all that. And we’ll, I’m sure we’ll circle back to this, because I think it’s fundamental to what I see you guys doing. How’d you get this whole idea in the first place? It’s just so incredible. I mean, what did you say 4300, 4200… what was the number of folks…?

Jimmy Moock: So, 4200 people. Year one was 1700, year two was 2500, and, Jack, I’m not lying when I say that both of those events, they felt gigantic at the time, but this past September, being in Huntington Beach, I was literally blown away. I was nervous. I’ve never done so much walking before in a four day span and I have my my step counter to prove it, but kudos to Matt Middleton and the team at FutureProof, specifically Niall…

Jack Sharry: Yeah. Why don’t you explain the dynamic? What’s the Streetcred role? What’s the Matt Middleton role?

Jimmy Moock: Yeah. So this is Matt Middleton’s baby. Streetcred is just their PR partner for as long as they will have us. So all the credit in the world goes to Matt and his team, Niall and Christine and Kevin and Paula. There’s so many to list, but what you need to know is that when it comes to professionals that are running an event, I think the list probably starts and ends with the team at FutureProof. And I would say that whether or not we were working together.

Jack Sharry: Well, we’re gonna have to have Matt on our show to talk more about that. But where’d he come up with the idea? Because this is such a… what I love about it, it’s just such a breakout from how things have been done, and you can see what happens when you’re authentic, as we’ve discussed, and when you swing for the fences and with great confidence and clarity. Boom. It works. So how did it come about? Do you know?

Jimmy Moock: Yeah, so this is me paraphrasing, which I really shouldn’t do on the record, but here we are, okay. So if we all agree that we could absorb content or a webinar or industry information and seeing influential people online taking part in activities in our industry, whether it be a webinar or a panel or anything along those lines, nothing’s stopping us from absorbing content, like via this podcast, or what we might see with one of our industry publications. So as best as I can tell the story, this was during the throes of the pandemic, when everything was shut down and we didn’t know if the world was ending. What was going to happen to investment dollars, what was going to happen to industry participants? How are people even going to work with clients, whether you’re a PR firm serving an industry participant, or whether you’re an advisor working with someone who’s worried about their financial life, and Matt had the belief and bet that industry events would come back, because this is what he does and what he did. And the bet paid off. But he knew that in order for events to stand out and to be different, they had to be different. There was no more worrying about, how am I going to register for this conference, plan my day and then make sure that I’m able to make it from conference room A8 to E6 in between the five minute break between two talks that I wanted to see. And I think the beauty of FutureProof, the company, is that they have really invested in technology and how technology can bring to bear the best of experiences, right? So it’s more about the individual experience of someone who goes to the show, whether it’s Elena or myself or any of our clients or any of the speakers, young or old or mid career, it’s a festival and not a conference. But I kind of think of it as akin to a movement, right? Because podcasts like this can be or a webinar, or whatever we’re trying to learn can be done now on our time, whether you’re riding a bike, whether you’re counting your steps, whether you’re food shopping, like I was last night at 10:30pm, thank God for Wegmans being open till midnight. Matt’s idea was to bring the industry together, but to do so in a differentiated way that is going to really, really focus and highlight on the community of what makes wealth management and investment management special, and I couldn’t be be more… prouder of him and his team for what they’ve done, because year one, they crushed it. Year two, they crushed it. Year three, they crushed it, and they have literally changed the game as it relates to our industry being together in person.

Jack Sharry: Elena and Jimmy, if you would just talk about some key takeaways. We’ve… I’ll give you some hints, at least what I’ve heard you say, and would love to have you expand on those as you’d like. It’s about authenticity, it’s about listening. I know we had that conversation when I was on your pod, but you also are both very good at that, listening. And then just also, if you’d maybe comment on just what it takes to be an effective communicator, you guys do that with and through your clients and out into the industry, communication sphere, whatever that might be. So talk a little bit about that, and then we’ll… whichever one of you would like to start, please begin.

Jimmy Moock: Sure. I’ll take this really quickly and, Elena, backfill on anything that I miss. But when it comes to PR, three things that I think separate us from any other PR firm on the planet. Number one, we take our clients and the work that we do for them personally. We leave it all out on the field. We bleed for them, obviously not literally. But I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been up past midnight or awake before 5am working on client assignments. We believe that PR is a contact sport, meaning you need to be out on the field. Every one of us, from Jason to our newest account coordinator, we are all doing every portion of client work, because the minute we give that up is the minute that our skills become rusty. And then number three, we take a team approach, right? Our team, our clients and the media that we work with, all with equal respect, and when any one of those things is out of balance, that’s when problems happen. So we try to make sure that they are never out of balance.

Jack Sharry: Cool. Very well said. Elena, what would you add?

Elena Krasnow: Yeah, well, I’ll speak a little more broadly to the question of communicating effectively, Jack. I think being authentic, like we’ve discussed throughout this conversation, is so critical, and being unafraid to connect business goals and personal stories and share vulnerable moments is something we encourage our clients to do. For example, if you’re in the business of financial planning, and you have a story about how your financial plan saved your family or a close friend, tell that story, and you know, help connect that to the business. Money can be such a vulnerable topic. We all have money stories and ways that money has shaped our belief systems. And the more that we bring those things to the surface and bring that human element to the surface, I think the more we can really drive success. Storytelling, of course, like being able to tell a good story, everyone on Earth loves a good story, so honing that skill is really important. And then I’ve also just been really loving the more that I’ve been hearing about, less jargon in our industry, more accessible language, especially in client conversations, like leaving out the financial terminology that’s not going to resonate, and keeping the language that’s more broadly understood. And yeah, I’ll leave it there.

Jack Sharry: Actually, another word that pops to mind coming from both of you is just respect, respecting your constituents, whether it’s colleagues or clients or the media or whoever your circle of constituents are, it’s about listening. It’s a form of respect. They’re interchangeable in my mind. And being authentic, being real, that sort of engenders more, more authenticity on the other side. So I hope for our audience, you guys could follow along. I think you have, because this has been some wonderful storytelling, something that you just mentioned, Elena, that I think is so, so important, and Jimmy, you’ve been doing this as part of our conversation today. So just underscoring some lessons learned as we’ve been having this conversation, it’s… that’s one of the things I’m finding, as my colleague, Matt Nollman, who is our producer on this show, has taught me is just on social media, it’s about being authentic. It’s about being who you are, about sharing, in my case, what I always try to do, and I observe you guys do the same, is, how do we advance the ball? How do we move it forward? How do we help the other? And I always find I get paid back in spades, so I never worry about, you know, I’m not giving anything away. I’m just contributing to the advancement of the industry and advancement… and that serves my personal purpose, so it all works. So anyway, I’m just sort of summarizing some of the things I’ve, we’ve been sort of floating around on and talking about, but they’re pretty important stuff. And I think in this new age of communication, it’s very different than it was so long ago. And you guys are great examples of that. So I don’t know if you have anything to add as we look to close, but thoughts, comments?

Jimmy Moock: I’ll keep this really short and simple, and I’m stealing this from my partner, Emma Smith, because she’s working on a byline that I finally finished reading yesterday, and I think it’s fantastic. For us to have a great relationship with any client to do their PR effectively, we both, agency and client, need to start thinking more about simplicity and clarity, how to lead with value, not features, and then test your messaging often and refine it as needed. If you are doing all of those things with the right amount of effort, your PR campaign is going to be, it’s going to help drive change in your organization and help you achieve those business objectives that you have set out for yourself.

Jack Sharry: Anything to add there, Elena?

Elena Krasnow: Yeah, I’ll just… I would agree with that, and thank you, Jack, for having us on the show. This has been so much fun and a great conversation.

Jack Sharry: Yes, thank you. Thank you both. So for our audience, first of all, thanks to Elena and to Jimmy. This has been a lot of fun, pleasure to speak with these guys from time to time, and this was more of the same. All good, wonderful. So for our audience, if you’ve enjoyed our podcast, please review, subscribe, and share what we’re doing here at WealthTech on Deck. We’re available wherever you get your podcasts. You should also check us out on our dedicated website, wealthtechondeck.com. All of our episodes are there along with articles, perspectives, and curated content from many leaders around the industry. Jimmy, Elena, thanks so much. This has been a real, real pleasure.

Jimmy Moock: Mr. Sharry, thank you.

Elena Krasnow: Thank you.