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Conversations with the Inspiring Lauren Kashuk

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Today we’d like to introduce you to Lauren Kashuk.

Lauren, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
To quote Steve Jobs, “you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So, you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.” This couldn’t be more true for me in telling my story. Like a cat, I’ve lived a lot of lives and worn a lot of hats. I’ve been fired and promoted. I’ve been on the highest highs making a great income with awesome perks and I’ve been the poorest I’ve ever been in my life. Every opportunity though has brought me to my passion of Ideaison, I just didn’t know it looking forward.

After graduating from the CU ad program, I was one of the lucky few who received an entry-level job at Saatchi & Saatchi New York off of a clever cover letter about Back to The Future. From my start on the MillerCoors Team as the only female on a beer account—MGD, MGD64, and Keystone Light, I was hooked on finding the intersection between creativity/art and business. But I never understood why agencies didn’t have the work and cultural environments that tech companies did, or valued their most precious resource— their people. I grew into creative strategy and copywriting/concepting roles and bounced around creative shops before moving back to my hometown of Denver with Ogilvy. I was then poached from a previous co-worker at Y&R to work remotely on an internal creative team at Google directly with entrepreneurs and small business owners to build the Google Small business brand from the ground up. Throughout this process, regardless of the job and glam associated, I’d always spend my nights/free time/ any attention I had to music.

From attending music festivals and shows to supporting musician/DJ/producer friends, music has always been my biggest love, but beyond licensing and production for TV commercials, I didn’t know how to enter the music industry from the ad world, how to parlay my creative marketing skills the right way. As I dove deeper into music, I worked part-time at SOCO (at one point we ran 6+ music venues on South Broadway) and served as a VP for Ogilvy Denver. The diverse yet intertangled experiences of ad agencies and a whole bunch of side jobs to pay the bills led me to being the current creative director and founder of Ideaison (pronounced eye-dee-ay-zon), which is a little over two years old.

At Ideaison, we bring compelling ideas to life by connecting people together (as idea liaisons) through live events. We provide creative direction (inclusive of experience design), creative production (inclusive of talent buying/booking and artist relations) and marketing (soup to nuts) for live events.

Since founding Ideaison, I have pioneered the creative and marketing teams for 3-day national headlining cannabis sponsored open-consumption music festivals (which is still in its infancy on a national scale), produced multiple content shoots in grow houses and designed experiences in partnership with revered bands. With the help of some amazing lighting and interior designers (Knomad.Colab + Caitlin Dewey), we were hired to concept and produce an authentic Moroccan inspired lounge with Phish lyricist Tom Marshall. We’ve helped national music festival clients go viral with well-known comedians/actors and sent women in the Colorado music industry to Austin during SXSW to play an unofficial showcase that we co-produced.

At the core, I am a creator and a futurist who is deeply inspired by the great inventors and leaders— Branson, Jobs, Huffington, Nova Han (look her up: she is the visionary behind Electric Forest Music Festival.) I take inspiration from forward-thinking creative/design firms like IDEO (hence the direct name inspo for Ideaison). I study the way these companies grew and those innovators lead as I grow and lead my own team. Put simply, I want to empower others around me to be their best. I want to do my best. I want to re-write the rules. I not only dream big but act on my dreams, even when I doubt myself. At Ideaison, we provide the same level of rigor and creative prowess to brands of all sizes— from boutique to large scale. But have a sweet spot within events— concepting, producing, and promoting them.

We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc. – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
The road building Ideaison has been anything but glamorous and progress never looks linear. It’s a constant sacrifice to pursue your dreams. I joke with my team that we live on Ideaison island. Sometimes, we’re having an epic beach party and sometimes we feel like Tom Hanks in Survivor, in total and utter isolation, screaming at a freaking coconut. When you don’t have a plan B, you do whatever you need to do to continue to make Plan A a stable reality. This summer alone, I’ve been balancing 4+ jobs with various music companies to continue to build Ideaison and our client base and my team so we can progress and show work we’re proud of. But it has also consumed my life. And that struggle in itself is hard.

Another struggle I’ve had is with what society deems “successful.” We’re taught that success is directly correlated to money but I’ve been learning that fulfillment and progress and simply doing what’s RIGHT can and should be viewed as a success too. I had to rewrite my own definition of success, and deal with being my hardest critic. I’ve been rejected so many times in my life, from clients and brands to guys I’ve dated. Through it all, I believe that there is a way to fail forward and embrace our fuckups and learn from rejections to be stronger. I try to do that every day.

The largest piece of advice I would give to ANYONE, male or female, is to be OK with being uncomfortable and to be prepared for delayed gratification— from monetary to press, etc. True success comes from enjoying the journey and celebrating the small wins. Opportunity really just looks like a lot of hard work. Gratification and accolades don’t usually happen overnight, so you shouldn’t think you’ll be the exception (as most do when they begin down this path.) We live in a world of instant gratification because we’re so connected digitally and it’s easy to get an answer from Alexa. But building a business and expecting stability and acclaim and constant revenue isn’t a given— I have to work hard for it, day in and day out. Clients, new projects, they don’t OWE me anything and I’m lucky if I get any of their time. Most days, I don’t necessarily see the fruits of the tree that I am watering and loving on to grow. For women, in particular, I’d tell you that if you’re not being offered a seat at the table as it relates to raises, opportunity, fair compensation, equity, etc., it’s OK to search for or create a new table that aligns with you. And if you do go down that road, try to create healthy boundaries for when you do lean in. I find that I have been a victim earlier this year of a “mean girl” mentality in the workplace. Women around me who I thought were allies were operating from a scarcity mindset— thinking there’s a limited amount of seats and a limited amount of visibility and opportunity. They berated and put me down for forging my own and trying to work next to them. They questioned my motives, which are entirely pure. I was too trusting and it burned me. I learned that those women are not my people. But just as much as I identified that those who aren’t my people, there are 10X more women who are. Then I started to find others who operate out of abundance. We want to all grow, together. Together, we’re stronger and better. We must collaborate and stop competing.

So let’s switch gears a bit and go into Ideaison story. Tell us more about the business.
Like a soup thickener, we thicken an event’s secret sauce at Ideaison. We aim to concept and produce spectacles and add a sense of I-DON’T-KNOW-HOW-THEY-PULLED-THAT-OFF. At the core, we create out-of-the-box larger than life experiences and work with the right voices, via influencers, media partners, creative partners, to amplify the experience. But I’m most proud of my A-list team of kick-ass women (looking at you Kayleigh and Rylee) and the incredible community of clients and partners we’ve been deep in building.

Clients come to Ideaison because we’re nimble and hungry— we want to guide ideas and events to spaces and places and heights they’ve never been but always aimed to go. Often times we work with event managers, producers, or with those in marketing roles with ideas but without the bandwidth, means or resources to pull it all off and within budget. At times, we concept and produce experiences as part of sponsorship at a 3rd party event and other times we’ll create and produce a full event from soup to nuts.

What do you feel are the biggest barriers today to female leadership, in your industry or generally?
I could write a whole book on this. I truly believe that women, together, are going to change the world but only with strong male allies. Any woman who is blazing her trail and has been told she wasn’t good/smart/experienced/cash flow positive enough but goes for it anyway inspires me. My mother constantly tells me that I can do whatever I put my mind to, regardless of my gender. As a successful dentist with her own practice, she has led the way before many women in other male-dominated spaces.

Professors like Kelty and Mindy from the CU Boulder Ad Program. Previous bosses who have shown me that it’s alright to be ambitious (looking at Melanie, Karina, Ashley.) Current badass women in the creative and music spaces like Leah Concialdi, Cassie Cowan, Kaitie Watson, Maddy O’Neal, Aviva Sonenreich (of Mom & Dad), Il-Esha, Annabel Lukins, Nova Han, BEYONCE (really though!), who balance so much pursuing their dreams in music.

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Image Credit:
Brittany Hallberg, Adam Berta, Grayson Goldman, Jon Kohlwey

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