LEGENDS LIVE FOREVER with Mark Roesler CEO CMG Worldwide

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Speaker 5 My guest today, Mark Rosler, is the founder and chairman of CMG, Celebrity Management Group Worldwide.

Speaker 5 They are the exclusive business agent for over 300 of the world's most sought-after and recognizable celebrities. Most of them are already deceased.

Speaker 5 And this is the really interesting part about Mark's work. Before CMG, celebrities that had passed away or their estates had limited rights to their name or images.

Speaker 5 Mark saw the problem and made his mission to change that.

Speaker 5 Some of his super famous clients include entertainment giants James Dean, Elizabeth Taylor, Marilyn Monroe, sports legend Jackie Robinson, musical entities Ella Fitzgerald, Maria Callas, Alia, and historic figures Neil Armstrong, Malcolm X, and Albert Einstein.

Speaker 5 In the 37 years that Mark has been representing over 1,500 of the world's most famous personalities, He has successfully positioned his marketing and management company as the dominant force in the evolving intellectual property arena.

Speaker 5 Mark was kind enough to give us access to his spectacular offices in Beverly Hills, which are packed with priceless memorabilia.

Speaker 5 So make sure you go to our YouTube channel, Carol DeLouse Show, to watch the video episode so you can see it all. I hope you guys enjoyed this incredible episode with the iconic Mark Roessler.

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Speaker 5 mark welcome to canonologus thank you so much for doing this catherine my pleasure congratulations on your show doing so well thank you i know it's such an honor because not only you're giving us this interview but we are doing in this spectacular space that you have here, your office packed with incredible memorabilia.

Speaker 6 Very proud to be here in Beverly Hills. And of course, one of our major clients is the city of Beverly Hills representing their intellectual property assets that they have.
So that's why we're here.

Speaker 6 we enjoy being here.

Speaker 5 That's amazing. So we're going to, I've brought your book because, as you know, I'm a huge fan.

Speaker 5 If you guys never heard about the history, I highly recommend it because it's so much of Hollywood history.

Speaker 5 So I have a few questions about the book, but before I talk about the book, since we're sitting here in this beautiful office, let's talk about what's behind me here.

Speaker 5 If you guys are listening to the audio episode, I highly recommend you go watch the video episode because we're going to show a lot of this. Some of it is priceless, I would say, right?

Speaker 5 For example, this shirt right behind you is original Michael Jackson.

Speaker 6 It's from his video, music video, Moonwalker. And,

Speaker 6 you know, we

Speaker 6 started the business in this is our 45th year. And the business started in Indianapolis, Indiana, where my hometown was.
So that was always our corporate headquarters. And we had a museum there.

Speaker 6 And because

Speaker 6 My children grew up and most of our business was either in Nashville or here in Beverly Hills, we

Speaker 6 moved some of our memorabilia to our various offices. So some of our memorabilia is in different parts of this office right here.

Speaker 5 And you have tons of it.

Speaker 6 Well, we have tons of it in different parts. You know, in 45 years, you know, it's like you collect a lot of things.

Speaker 5 I cannot imagine. So just, so we have an idea.
Is this something that has a price? Is it priceless? Like, let's say if you were to sell it in auction.

Speaker 6 Like I said, we've accumulated a lot of things over the years.

Speaker 6 Some things I purchased, some things I were given to me.

Speaker 6 I was in the O.J. Simpson civil trial.
I was the one that valued what O.J. was worth to

Speaker 6 enable the Brown and Goldman family to collect on their

Speaker 6 wrongful death of their loved ones. And it was my testimony that resulted in the $33.5 million verdict.
Those golf clubs were the clubs that O.J. was

Speaker 6 had the night of the murders.

Speaker 6 So really.

Speaker 6 So I have a number of O.J. Simpson memorabilia because it was one of the things we do besides representing, represent thousands of entertainment, sports, music, and historical celebrities.

Speaker 6 But one of the things that we do, we value intellectual property, particularly of celebrities. So that was one of the many cases that we did.

Speaker 5 And by the way, you talk about it in detail in the book, and it's fascinating. So let's rewind your story because you said you've had this company for 45 years.

Speaker 5 You were actually the person that came up with this idea, this concept to put this into law that celebrities,

Speaker 5 their property, their namesake, their brand should be preserved after they pass away, correct?

Speaker 6 I was at the forefront of that and I was in the right place at the right time.

Speaker 6 I started the business in 1981. And what you have to remember is that long ago, there wasn't even an internet.
So it was really hard.

Speaker 6 It was really hard to know about

Speaker 6 these celebrities of the past. And there were celebrities that were known throughout the world, Elvis Presley, James Dean, Marilyn Monroe.

Speaker 6 But despite the fact that they were well known, it was a little harder to get

Speaker 6 memorabilia information about them, research them and so forth.

Speaker 6 But

Speaker 6 so I happened to notice that, that there was was an interest in these people and thought, why aren't there

Speaker 6 rights?

Speaker 6 Why isn't their image being protected?

Speaker 6 And a series of things happened and

Speaker 6 we're where we are today.

Speaker 5 So who was your first client? Was it James Dean?

Speaker 6 It was Elvis Presley.

Speaker 5 Elvis Presley. So can you tell us the story, like how...

Speaker 5 How did it happen? How did he become your client? Just so people understand the process a little bit.

Speaker 6 I was

Speaker 6 graduating from law school in 1981, and I was in Indianapolis, and there was a company that was a publishing company called the Curtis Publishing Company, and they owned the copyrights to the various Norman Rockwell illustrations that appeared in the Saturday Evening Post.

Speaker 6 And that was in 1981, and they had gained popularity because a few years earlier, it was a bicentennial of the country. So there's a real

Speaker 6 200th anniversary of the country and there's a real Americana theme and interest.

Speaker 6 And so this imagery from the Saturday Evening Post and Norman Rockwell was very popular. So

Speaker 6 I was in law school. They were in Indianapolis.
I did a legal internship for them.

Speaker 6 And in 1981, at that time, I had also had a roofing business in law school and business school that was reasonably successful. And that was going to be my career.

Speaker 6 But I found some of the work in the intellectual property area kind of fascinating. So it happened to be the winter, the fall winter of 1981.

Speaker 6 And I approached the gentleman that owned the Curtis Publishing Company.

Speaker 6 And I asked him, I said, hey, look, if maybe we should start a separate company besides the copyrights that you own to represent other intellectual property.

Speaker 6 And it just so happened that the Elvis Presley

Speaker 6 Graceland, Elvis had died a few years earlier. There were issues with Graceland, what to do with Graceland.
So we had that connection and that ended up being our first client.

Speaker 6 But Graceland wasn't even opened at the time. And we started representing the Elvis Presley estate.
And I realized that James Dean was also very popular

Speaker 6 particularly in paper good products in different parts of the world because I had done some international traveling. And so James Dean was a second client.

Speaker 6 So with Elvis and James Dean and Babe Bruth and Buddy Holly, so a group of clients that we picked up and convinced that we should try to protect their. intellectual property and establish some rights.

Speaker 6 And so we started representing them. But the interesting thing was, we ran into challenges because I realized

Speaker 6 the legal difficulties because the only way we could protect their intellectual property was with either their trademarks or their copyrights. And

Speaker 6 so we started working on various laws in different states, what we call the right of publicity.

Speaker 5 Which is kind of like how it works nowadays, right?

Speaker 6 The right of publicity is a very important

Speaker 6 body of intellectual property rights that

Speaker 6 you and I both have a right of publicity, which allows us to protect our name, our likeness, our signature, our voice. And it's just

Speaker 6 celebrities have a right of publicity, and that's typically the bigger celebrity you are, the more valuable your rights are. Of course.

Speaker 6 And then the issue becomes once that celebrity passes away, how long do those rights exist after they die?

Speaker 5 How long do they exist? Is that forever?

Speaker 6 That's a good question.

Speaker 6 I can give you an example. I did an interview like this once, gosh, maybe 20 years ago, and

Speaker 6 it was picked up and ran nationally.

Speaker 6 I had a call. I happened to be in Las Vegas at the time in a taxi and somebody called me and

Speaker 6 they said said they're a lawyer and they said they're a criminal lawyer, but they didn't understand intellectual property. And they said, you know, I'm a relative of somebody that's that's famous.

Speaker 6 I'm wondering if I can protect their name and likeness.

Speaker 6 And I said, well,

Speaker 6 who's your relative? And they said, well, I'm the great, great, great grandson of Abraham Lincoln.

Speaker 6 And I said, wow. I said, with all the pennies and $5 bills, if we could protect the name and likeness, we'd both be rich.

Speaker 6 So the moral of that story is, yes, there's a limit to how long you can protect those,

Speaker 6 this so-called right of publicity for deceased people. And that

Speaker 6 limit is actually, the best way to answer that is it depends.

Speaker 5 It depends on the celebrity.

Speaker 6 No, it depends on the state and depends on the country. because it's state by state.

Speaker 6 Some states like the state that

Speaker 6 I drafted the right of publicity statute for the state of Indiana a number of years ago in the 90s, and that called for protection for up to 100 years after somebody died.

Speaker 6 Tennessee calls for 10 years of protection,

Speaker 6 but it continues for

Speaker 6 after that until there's two consecutive years of non-use. So obviously when you're dealing with an Elvis Presley,

Speaker 6 you know,

Speaker 6 you could have an Abraham Lincoln type situation where it does last forever.

Speaker 6 The majority of the states here in California,

Speaker 6 the rights to the name and likeness of a deceased personality are set at 70 years.

Speaker 5 70 years.

Speaker 6 But there are some jurisdictions that don't even recognize a right of publicity.

Speaker 6 Because of that hodgepodge of maybe Tennessee would last forever, Indiana would last for 100 years, California and other states would last for 70 years, other states it doesn't last.

Speaker 6 There is no right of publicity for deceased personalities.

Speaker 6 I guess it's somewhat,

Speaker 6 that's where people like us come in to help navigate through those

Speaker 6 complications. It's complex, right?

Speaker 5 It's very complicated.

Speaker 6 Well, it's, you know, without going into too much detail in the limited time we have today,

Speaker 6 with the the celebrity, there's copyrights,

Speaker 6 there's trademarks, and there's right of publicity. Copyrights and trademarks are federally based, so

Speaker 6 it's uniform throughout the country. With the right of publicity, it's state-based.
So

Speaker 5 it's very complicated.

Speaker 6 Very complicated, but it can be very complicated.

Speaker 6 But for the most part, That's your best form of protection, the right of publicity, which basically recognizes the goodwill, the value in your name and likeness, and or your signature or your voice.

Speaker 6 And so that's really the most effective form of protection, the right of publicity.

Speaker 5 So obviously your clients are the most successful

Speaker 5 celebrities, so to speak, of all times, right? We are talking about massive success, Michael Jackson, like you just said, Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe, right? She's your client.

Speaker 5 You talk a lot about her in the book, which is super interesting.

Speaker 5 I think that one question that everybody has is, in these cases, in a lot of these cases, they're making a lot more money after they pass away than they made in life, correct?

Speaker 6 Sometimes.

Speaker 6 You know, what you have to understand is with a celebrity,

Speaker 6 during their lifetime, there's what's called personal services. You know, they can give concerts, they can, you know, perform, they can

Speaker 6 do whatever during their life, but and they also have intellectual property. But upon their death, the only thing they have is intellectual property.
It's really not a situation where

Speaker 6 a celebrity makes more money after they die than they did before they passed away. It certainly happens, and certainly with what's happening today, there's the landscape's changed a lot with AI.

Speaker 6 And,

Speaker 6 you know,

Speaker 6 we've done a lot of valuation work for

Speaker 6 personalities on what's called date of death taxes, where now the IRS even comes in and puts a value on the right of publicity upon a celebrity's death.

Speaker 6 So we've done a lot of that for a lot of the major

Speaker 6 A-list celebrities, so to speak, upon their death.

Speaker 6 And the data that we have with the 30,000 agreements that we've put together over since we started

Speaker 6 the business,

Speaker 6 the data that we have is that a celebrity does lose about 10% of their intellectual property right value after their death. And so there is a decline, and we saw that.

Speaker 6 But the interesting thing of all that, with everything that's changed in the landscape of the past

Speaker 6 number of years,

Speaker 6 that's really starting to turn around.

Speaker 5 Let me just, a parenthesis, but you talk in your book about, for example, the memorabilia. Like, memorabilia is a $500 million,

Speaker 5 billion-dollar industry nowadays, right? So, a lot of these celebrities, whoever inherits all this money, they're making

Speaker 5 substantial money, like selling t-shirts, mugs, whatever is sold with her image goes to

Speaker 5 whoever, like the family, whoever has the rights to her name, correct?

Speaker 6 It depends on, you know, memorabilia can be owned by anybody. So I can own this memorabilia of O.J.
Simpson. I don't represent O.J.
Simpson. Right.
And so anybody can own memorabilia.

Speaker 6 Anybody can sell it. And just as you said, The business of selling celebrity memorabilia is very significant.

Speaker 5 But can they use the celebrities, like can they use their face and their name like let's say me if can i put a t-shirt line with michael jackson's face on it and just use it no you can't no right no you can't i mean that's that's what's called either the right of publicity or trademark rights and um but

Speaker 6 Let's take an example of Judy Garland, a client of ours.

Speaker 6 They recently sold one of her slippers from the Wizard of Oz.

Speaker 6 The family or the estate or our company as the business agent for them, we don't get any money for that unless we own that particular item. So you could own it.
Anyone could own it. And

Speaker 6 they're the beneficiary of the

Speaker 6 type of money.

Speaker 5 Anybody can sell, like you can decide you want to sell this today, like the O.J. Simpson golf clubs, and you can sell them.

Speaker 6 That's right.

Speaker 5 Right. Or this Michael Jackson sweater, you can decide to put it in auction and you can sell it.
Right.

Speaker 5 But if somebody decides to create something with a celebrity's face and name, they're not allowed to do that, correct?

Speaker 6 That's correct. And the distinction is

Speaker 6 a commercialization of

Speaker 6 the intellectual property must go through the rights holder. But

Speaker 6 what we have to also understand is what's called the First Amendment.

Speaker 6 The First Amendment Amendment allows somebody like you to do what you want in the media, to broadcast or come up with a publication or a podcast or a news story or

Speaker 6 a book.

Speaker 6 Those are all First Amendment uses. They're obviously commercial,

Speaker 6 but the First Amendment allows you to do that, whereas

Speaker 6 the

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Speaker 5 Can people like technically by law, like if you're really following the law, can people actually post

Speaker 5 anything with

Speaker 5 the names or the faces or videos of these celebrities without authorization? I know they do, I know everybody does, and it's very hard to control it.

Speaker 5 But is it something that can be done, or technically, they're breaking the law, this law?

Speaker 6 No, for the most part, that's

Speaker 5 fine.

Speaker 6 That's fine. I mean, there's limits to how, you know, what

Speaker 6 let's just say a studio owns

Speaker 6 the particular movie, so there's a limit um on how long you can how much of that clip you can use on social media uh without violating their copyright or you know also a particular imagery if somebody owns a particular image of somebody they can preclude somebody from using that copyrighted image oh okay interesting of all the celebrities that you represent which one makes the most money do you know i you actually have a list in your book but i'm not sure if it's still current but it's a very interesting list.

Speaker 6 That makes a few books a few years old. A few years old.
So

Speaker 6 our biggest client and the most famous person probably the past hundred years is Albert Einstein. Albert Einstein's used in a lot of different promotions around the world.

Speaker 6 He's known around the world, so he has an instant name recognition. The image of him

Speaker 5 is instant. Who collects the money for Albert Einstein? Does he have like relatives?

Speaker 6 Well,

Speaker 6 when someone has intellectual property, it's

Speaker 6 what you call intangible. You can't necessarily touch it.
Right.

Speaker 6 Tangible, you have tangible property and you have intangible property. So you can do whatever you want with your property.
And in

Speaker 6 Albert Einstein's case, he left all of his intellectual property and intangible intellectual property and his tangible assets to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Speaker 6 And they're the steward of that and they have all of his papers, all of his

Speaker 6 photographs that he had, and they control the intellectual property. So they're our client with Albert Einstein.

Speaker 5 That's very interesting.

Speaker 5 He was number,

Speaker 5 I don't know,

Speaker 5 he was number six or seven on your list when you wrote the book. Number one on your list when you wrote the book was Michael Jackson.

Speaker 6 When Michael passed away

Speaker 6 in 2009, there was tremendous interest and there was a tremendous surge of popularity with Michael Jackson. And with everything that happened with the show,

Speaker 6 the show in Las Vegas and the touring show and the This Is It movie. and all the memorabilia, Michael Jackson was

Speaker 6 certainly the highest earning celebrity, deceased celebrity. Since that time, there have been other personalities that have gone up and down and been number one.
And so it bounces around just a bit.

Speaker 6 And a lot of times the way they look at the list of, and

Speaker 6 there are different entities that kind of judge and

Speaker 6 kind of rate who's the highest earning deceased celebrity. Sometimes they accumulate it from different sources like auctions, memorabilia,

Speaker 6 things like that. And certainly after someone dies a few years ago, Elizabeth Taylor was the highest earning deceased celebrity because she had

Speaker 6 such a huge jewelry collection that they auctioned those diamonds in her jewelry.

Speaker 5 Right, the famous diamonds.

Speaker 6 Yeah, for, I believe, like hundreds of millions of dollars.

Speaker 5 My God, yes.

Speaker 5 Just so you guys, if you guys want to know, on your list when you wrote the book was number one, Michael Jackson, number two, Elvis Presley, which is still, his name, I assume, because everybody's always talking about Elvis Presley, right?

Speaker 5 Must still bring in a substantial amount of money, right?

Speaker 6 We represented Elvis Presley for most of the 80s, and we don't represent him today. His rights were sold off to someone.
But yes, I mean, between Graceland,

Speaker 6 you know, four or five hundred thousand people a year go through Graceland.

Speaker 6 So all the admissions and the and the music royalties and then the right of publicity royalties are, you know, significant for Elvis Presley.

Speaker 5 And number three was marilyn monroe marilyn monroe is um still you know known throughout the world and generates um significant sums of money it's just to your client no those rights were sold too uh we represented marilyn monroe for about 20 years and those rights were sold off a few years ago yeah so let's talk about selling the rights for a second because just so people understand that's another thing that you write in your book that's super interesting you mentioned that sometimes even celebrities that are not dead yet, they decide to sell the rights to their name and image, I guess, right?

Speaker 5 To someone for a lot of money, correct?

Speaker 6 We're at a point today

Speaker 6 where it's no longer a surprise that these intangible intellectual property rights that we're talking about, that a personality, a celebrity personality has, there's value.

Speaker 6 And the question is, how much value? And there are plenty of people out there.

Speaker 6 I guess I'll take that back. There aren't plenty of people, but there are some people that can effectively value what those intellectual property rights are worth.
We do a lot of that.

Speaker 6 They can be worth a significant amount of money. Celebrities know that.
And,

Speaker 6 you know, they can make estate planning. They can say, hey, look, I'd like to keep this out of my estate because

Speaker 6 the complexity of estate planning, particularly with a celebrity, is very high. So they have to recognize that there are significant taxes involved.

Speaker 6 So, you know, there are situations that you can set up trusts

Speaker 6 and so forth. And yes,

Speaker 6 if you have a celebrity that had $100 million worth of intangible intellectual property, they could get hit. at death for as much as 50 million dollars.
Oh, my God.

Speaker 6 So, you know, you can have as high as

Speaker 6 50% tax. So there's a lot of tax planning

Speaker 6 and other issues that go into that with a celebrity.

Speaker 5 And you help them do that as well. Like, do they reach out to you before they pass away? Sure.

Speaker 6 We do a lot of that. Yeah.

Speaker 5 So you do a lot of the planning before that happens. Because unfortunately, a lot of these cases, of course, the person is super famous.
There's so much money involved, like Michael Jackson.

Speaker 5 And then once the person passes away, we see a lot of trouble, right? Relatives fighting, families fighting for a piece of the pie.

Speaker 5 At least that, like, for us outsiders, we see a lot of that in the media, like a lot of chaos. Now, we were talking about Elvis Presley after, um, what's her name? Uh,

Speaker 5 Lisa Marie passed away so young, right? She passed away. There was some tension between the family that stayed behind.
We always hear stories like that, right?

Speaker 6 That's right. I mean, we, um, it's, it's almost uncommon for there not to be a fight over the money and the intellectual property.
So, you know,

Speaker 6 we have celebrity estates that have as many as, in one case, there are 64 beneficiaries. So, you know, to get 64 relatives that own different percentages to go along with things, you can just imagine

Speaker 6 some of the issues that come up.

Speaker 5 It doesn't matter like how organized the wheel is and everything.

Speaker 5 There's always some issue. Do you have a favorite of all the celebrities that you represent? Of all the celebrities you met? Because I know you met so many of them.

Speaker 6 Well, yes, I've met various celebrities. And,

Speaker 6 you know,

Speaker 6 as far as who some of my favorite ones are,

Speaker 6 I spent a lot of time with Betty Page, who was

Speaker 6 someone that became very popular as a pin up queen. So she was one of my favorite clients.

Speaker 5 And that story is in the book as well. It's very interesting.

Speaker 6 I find it very interesting with Albert Einstein because he was so smart, had such an impact on the world.

Speaker 6 So it's been interesting representing him. Maya Angelou is one of my favorite clients

Speaker 6 and her so inspirational and I've worked very closely with the family since she passed away.

Speaker 5 And you mentioned in the book you were also friends with Hugh Hafner.

Speaker 6 Heff was a very good friend. We did a lot of work with

Speaker 6 him and over the years and he was

Speaker 5 a very special person. Tell us a little bit about him.

Speaker 6 He was a wonderful man. He loved old movies, so we would watch old movies every Friday night at the mansion.

Speaker 6 I traveled a lot. I had offices overseas, and

Speaker 6 this was kind of a second home to me out here in the Los Angeles area.

Speaker 6 So I was probably only here 10 days a month and but when i was here i was always welcomed over to his uh the the playboy mansion and we enjoyed watching movies together so he must have been to a bunch of those famous playboy mansion parties yes we went to a number of those parties yes he was a very intelligent man and he did many of the famous beautiful women that we represented when Playboy did their

Speaker 6 sexiest and most beautiful women of the 20th century. We represented eight of the top 10.

Speaker 5 That's fun work, huh?

Speaker 6 We were amused at how many we represented. But

Speaker 6 with all that we did with Marilyn Monroe, Marilyn Monroe was such a part of Playboy, and so was Betty Page. We did a lot of interaction, different programs with Playboy.

Speaker 5 So, how is the Playboy legacy, the name, doing after his passing?

Speaker 6 We don't represent

Speaker 6 Playboy or Mr. Hefner right now and or his estate.
So

Speaker 5 I don't know. I don't know.
You don't know details. Do you have one favorite that you represent now?

Speaker 6 Probably my favorite client and the most challenging and intellectually stimulating client right now would probably be Albert Einstein because there's so many things that we're doing around the world.

Speaker 6 And what's happened is

Speaker 6 with everything that's happened with AI and virtual reality and so forth, it kind of allows personalities like Albert Einstein to almost come to life.

Speaker 6 And, you know, so there's some exciting projects we're doing.

Speaker 5 But at the same time, do you think that's going to make everything so much harder to control?

Speaker 5 Because now anyone can literally get this technology, can get AI and can recreate people that have passed away. Do you think that's going to be a little more complicated, like on your end?

Speaker 6 People can't. recreate these people.

Speaker 6 It's very difficult to replicate

Speaker 6 some of the things that we're doing.

Speaker 6 We're kind of at the forefront, not kind of, we are at the forefront of digital human technology. There are different projects that we're working on.

Speaker 6 And it's very difficult. What AI lets you do is research and instantly accumulate vast

Speaker 6 history of

Speaker 6 the various personalities and actually do things like write scripts and things like that. So it certainly certainly does

Speaker 6 make

Speaker 6 the legal work that we do easier, the research work that we do, the investigative work and so forth. But

Speaker 6 so it opens up new doors in that way. But is it going to allow people to come up and create Albert Einstein?

Speaker 6 You know, people try to do that, but it's hard. And when they do,

Speaker 6 we deal with it appropriately.

Speaker 5 Yeah, I hear you. Before I let you go, because we're almost running out of time, when Princess Diana passed away, they asked you

Speaker 5 for your help in protecting her image, correct?

Speaker 6 That's correct.

Speaker 5 Can you tell us a little bit about it?

Speaker 6 Within a few weeks after she passed away, obviously almost everybody on the planet. knew what had happened and it was a very tragic, a very spectacular incident.

Speaker 6 There was outpouring of grief and interest in everything with Princess Diana. So

Speaker 6 her

Speaker 6 handlers and her attorneys over in the UK called us and

Speaker 6 I went over there and we began representing Princess Diana, her estate, and tried to control the various uses that were out there and generated.

Speaker 6 a fair amount of money for the client.

Speaker 5 That's nice. You get asked as an expert in trials and situations like that all the time, right?

Speaker 5 Like you said, you got asked to help in the O.J. Simpson trial.

Speaker 6 When it comes to an analysis of the intellectual property rights of a deceased personality,

Speaker 6 often we're the first people that come to mind. So we often get involved, whether it's a

Speaker 6 evaluation at the date of death or what do you do or some dispute and so forth. So we often get involved in that.
That's why we have, you know, most of our staff are lawyers.

Speaker 6 So it's important to have that legal knowledge and, you know, what to, how to deal with these various issues.

Speaker 5 How many attorneys do you have here? Do you know, working for you?

Speaker 6 Well, yes, I know.

Speaker 5 You must know.

Speaker 6 I mean, company-wide, about 20.

Speaker 5 Oh, that's a lot. So we are sitting in your Beverly Hills office.
You're going to give us a tour. Do you have an estimate in your head?

Speaker 5 How much do you have in terms of all this memorabilia that you have here

Speaker 5 housed here in Beverly Hills? Because you have these incredible pieces. It's like incredible to walk around and just look at everything.
Like, do you have a number in your head? Do you have any idea?

Speaker 6 Well, I have a number in my head. You know,

Speaker 6 it's very difficult because, you know, security is very important. Some of it's priceless and irreplaceable.
But yes, I mean, mean,

Speaker 6 all of it is irreplaceable, right? Certainly, you know, I'd say tens of millions of dollars.

Speaker 6 But we like to

Speaker 6 be as discreet as we can

Speaker 6 about what it is. We're disclosing where it is.

Speaker 5 And it's very emotional. It's very, it's exciting and emotional to be near these pieces and look at it like, wow, this was literally Michael Jackson.

Speaker 5 Then Marilyn Morrow skirts like, oh my God, it's just unbelievable. Thank you so much.
It's such an honor for being here.

Speaker 5 I just want to read this one phrase of your book if I have time, because it's my favorite really, really quickly. And you guys really get the book because it's so inspirational.

Speaker 5 You wrote at the very beginning of the book, one of the most invaluable lessons that you learned from your celebrity clients is that they follow their dreams and by doing so, lived their lives to the fullest.

Speaker 5 Are you following your dreams? I think you are, huh?

Speaker 6 I am. Thank you.
Thank you.

Speaker 5 Incredible body of work.

Speaker 6 It was a pleasure to be on your show.

Speaker 5 Can we go do a tour? Sure.

Speaker 5 Guys, if you're listening to the audio episode, don't forget to go watch the video episode because we're going to give you an exclusive tour into his incredible offices and show you some of this priceless memorabilia.

Speaker 5 Thank you so much.

Speaker 5 It was a huge honor. Thank you.
Congratulations. You have an amazing, amazing, amazing, amazing, amazing work.

Speaker 6 Incredible.

Speaker 5 Thank you, Kathy. The book is Brands That Never Die.

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