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johnboothus · 4 years ago

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Tequiza Sunset: A History of Anheuser-Buschs Agave-Infused Corona Killer That Wasnt

It’s the turn of the century, and you’re at SeaWorld San Diego, a sprawling complex of saltwater semi-captivity that Anheuser-Busch, the country’s largest beer company, has owned for the past decade. But you don’t care about who owns the place. You’re just there because some guy who works for a beer brand you’ve barely heard of invited you and 300 other 21- to 25-year-olds to the compound to see some dolphins and drink some free suds. Is it weird that he hired a limo to drive you and a bunch of strangers to SeaWorld? Kind of, but hey — it’s Y2K, baby! Anything goes!

“At the time, there’s no such thing as Uber, so from a liability standpoint, we had to pick them up and drop them off. … We got like every taxi in town — buses, limos, whatever was available — to take these people back and forth,” says Edmundo Macias, Tequiza’s former brand manager. “We said let’s throw a big party, and there’s gonna be free Tequiza.”

Introduced in 1997 to ride the first wave of American tequila curiosity and protect St. Louis’s flank from growing threats from imports and spirits, Tequiza was A-B’s hottest new product launch of the ‘90s, rolling out con gusto across the American South and West to solid early sales. A Brandweek article from February 2000 that Macias shared with VinePair proclaimed that “Tequiza was launched cheap by A-B standards and already has eclipsed No.1 craft beer brand Sam Adams in volume, putting it well on the way to 1 million barrels.”

But that was then. The brand never hit a million barrels, and never gained any sustained traction with American drinkers. Tequiza limped along for another decade or so until A-B — which by then had been reconstituted as Anheuser-Busch InBev — retired the beer from its rotation for good. What happened to Tequiza? It’s a classic tale of cross-segment ambition, dubious distributors, and flagship fealty. But even though the beer itself has long since hit the trail, Tequiza’s liquid legacy helped spawn the flavored malt beverage boom currently remaking the American drinking landscape.

“It was ahead of its time,” says Gerry Khermousch, the former Brandweek editor, who has covered the beer and non-alcoholic beverage industries for decades. But what a time it was. Here’s how it all went down.

Blending trends: tequila & cerveza

Some beers are borne of centuries of tradition, of closely held recipes, of many generations of brewers learning from those who came before. Tequiza’s origin story, on the other hand, is entirely contained in its awkwardly bilingual portmanteau of a name. The beer was a drinkable embodiment of a couple contemporary trends A-B hoped to tap into:

The premiumization of full-proof tequila amidst full-proof spirits’ growing popularity with American drinkers

The remarkable deluge of imported Mexican lagers, led by what was in hindsight one of beers’ first lifestyle brands — Corona

Both strategies represented A-B playing defense — or more charitably, insurance — with its market might. Categories in the late ‘90s were much more segregated than they are today, and losing a lifelong beer drinker to full-proof spirits was anathema to a company like A-B. But peeling them away from booze was tougher, too, recalls Tim Schoen, a three-decade Anheuser-Busch marketing veteran who worked on Tequiza, among other brands. “Back then the specific target was spirits drinkers. The spirits category was encroaching on the beer category and so [Tequiza] was certainly trying to attract some of those potential lost [beer] customers, the ones that [were] looking elsewhere.”

“Interest in hard liquor was starting to be resurgent,” echoes Colleen Beckemeyer. As A-B’s director of new products through the ‘90s, she oversaw the launch of Tequiza. “Maybe tequila wasn’t the most upscale option for the hardcore liquor drinkers, but it did have its footprint in the Southwest. For that reason, I think it was kind of interesting to us,” she says.

To American drinkers, tequila was also interesting, period. The spirit was strong, far-flung yet available, and retained remarkable pop-cultural prominence before, during, and after Tequiza’s release. Consider:

1972: The Rolling Stones embarked on what Keith Richards would later recall in his memoir as “the cocaine and tequila sunrise” tour

1983: Shelly West’s “Jose Cuervo” topped country charts

The 1990s: Van Halen’s “Cabo Wabo” (released 1988) begot Sammy Hagar’s eponymous cantina concept (1990) and tequila (1996)

2002: “Jose Cuervo” was atop Billboard’s country charts again, courtesy of Tracy Byrd’s “Ten Rounds with Jose Cuervo.”

But while the agave distillate was some cause for concern, Tequiza’s bigger bogey was Mexican beer, and one brand in particular. “This was developed to try to compete with Corona,” says Macias, who worked for Beckemeyer on Tequiza’s rollout. “That was the genesis of the brand.”

Chasing Corona

The competition would be fierce. In 1998, Corona overtook Heineken as the U.S.’s best-selling import beer. “In less than a decade, Corona’s manufacturer, Grupo Modelo S.A. de C.V., has transformed a once-obscure Mexican beer into a global brand whose name recognition — if not its sales — approaches that of Coca-Cola and Marlboro cigarettes,” The New York Times noted the following year. Corona, with its endless-summer attitude, primo painted label, and iconic clear glass bottle, was a big deal in the U.S. beer business, and marked a tectonic shift in drinkers’ attention toward the southern border.

“Corona was a sensation, there’s no question about it,” says Benj Steinman, publisher of the long-running trade publication Beer Marketer’s Insights (BMI), “and it was strongest in the biggest market, California. A-B in the ‘90s was 50 share of the [beer] market in California. … They saw it as a problem.” William Knoedelseder, in his best-seller about the Busch family, “Bitter Brew,” reported that by 1991, A-B’s own internal research showed that Budweiser was slipping among “contemporary adult drinkers … who were turning to upstart American microbrew brands such as Samuel Adams and imports like Corona Extra.” Despite the runaway success of Bud Light — which had been introduced in 1982 and was, by the mid-90s, neck-and-neck with nemesis Miller Lite for America’s overall best-selling beer — drinkers’ excitement for the Mexican “vacation in a bottle” was enough to spur a response from A-B.

The response was Tequiza. By the time Macias moved from A-B’s Hispanic marketing team to new products in 1998, the Tequiza experiment was already rolling. Both he and Beckemeyer say the liquid itself was developed by A-B brewer Jill Vaughn, who incorporated agave nectar and actual tequila into the brew at A-B’s St. Louis pilot brewery. “She really was able to help bridge the brewing and the marketing” considerations for Tequiza, says Beckemeyer. (Vaughn no longer works for the company and did not respond to messages sent via social media.)

Maybe even more calculated than the liquid itself was the vessel that it would be sold in: 12-ounce clear-glass longnecks, Corona-style. “Corona owned clear glass, and they still do, to a certain extent,” says Schoen. Selling Tequiza in similar packaging, with a similar, bold yellow color scheme, was a way to get customers keen on A-B’s would-be Corona counterpoint. “The clear bottle was really the standard, and we didn’t necessarily want to deviate from that,” says Beckemeyer of the decision.

Selling sweetness

But was it ever any good? Opinions differ on this front. “The product was great,” says Schoen. Macias remembers early iterations being too sweet, something he believes hamstrung the offering among male consumers, and the brew was reformulated at least once after complaints of sweetness from rank-and-file drinkers.

“I remember the first test market was someplace in Texas,” said Beckemeyer. “I was out and we were having a first batch, and it was terrible. It was so sweet. So we went back to the drawing board and made it less sweet.”

A canvass of review forums suggests Tequiza was, at best, a polarizing option among American drinkers. The beer boasts an impressive all-time rating of 0 on RateBeer.com, and a score of 50 (“Awful”) on BeerAdvocate. It’s hard to say how many of those reviews came from people who’d actually tasted the beer, though, and the brand clearly had some fans. When news of its discontinuation hit the internet, real Tequiza heads made their distress known. “The only beer my dad has ever liked was Tequiza, which is now out of business. Any recommendations of something similar?” queried one redditor in 2012.

Regardless, Tequiza’s national debut in 1999 predated the heyday of user-generated review forums like RateBeer and BeerAdvocate. Traditional advertising, marketing, and distribution still held serious sway over the average supermarket shopper looking for a 6-pack. “We had initial success right out the gate, and what we kept hearing was, ‘I don’t normally drink beer but I would drink this,’” says Macias, adding that that feedback mostly came from women. The team rolled the beer out with the print and billboard ads with the slogan “Give it a shot” to suggest full-proof braggadocio, plus a radio spot featuring a riff on The Champs’ horn-heavy 1958 classic, “Tequila.”

The ads may have helped, though Macias believes that A-B never gave Tequiza enough money to really give the brand a fighting chance with more sustained marketing or a costly TV commercial. Marketing for A-B’s new products all came from a shared budget, so “if you’re spending that money on Tequiza, that means you’re not going to [be able to] spend money on other innovations,” he says. And with no obvious ties to the firm’s flagships, A-B had no obligation to throw money at Tequiza’s post-launch performance. If it did well on a shoestring, great. If not, the company could cut bait without damaging the aura of its portfolio champions. “If it was part of the Bud Light family, or Budweiser, or even Michelob at that point, it would have had a separate, sizable budget,” speculates Macias.

(A spokesperson for Anheuser-Busch InBev, Lacey Clifford, says the company today doesn’t employ any “relevant spokespeople who could discuss [Tequiza] in any kind of detail.”)

But more than anything, Tequiza — or any beer in any macrobrewers’ U.S. portfolio, really — needed buy-in from drinkers to succeed. And to get in front of drinkers at retail, it needed support from distributors. A-B’s much-ballyhooed, nominally independent wholesaler network was the envy of the industry in 1999, and it went to work in service of St. Louis’s latest creation.

“They blasted [Tequiza] out, like they often are able to do with that distribution system,” says Steinman. “That just really [got] the product out immediately and everywhere.” Wholesalers aligned with A-B were thirsty for a beer to offer retailers fielding increased demand for Corona. They didn’t have rights to distribute actual Corona in the U.S. at the time (particularly vexing given that A-B then owned 50 percent of the brand’s parent company, Grupo Modelo) but how about this product that looks like it, and has real imported agave and tequila in it to boot?

According to BMI’s internal figures, Tequiza sold 570,000 barrels in 1999 — a respectable national debut. “That’s pretty good,” allows Steinman. But Macias knew it wasn’t enough to secure Tequiza a permanent spot in A-B’s portfolio. “A lot of smaller companies would love to have 600,000 barrels … but we [Anheuser-Busch] spill more than that,” he says. Tequiza’s agave-based sweetness was holding it back from popularity with male drinkers, a vital cohort. “As I’d sit in these focus groups, especially with males, they would say, ‘It’s too sweet, not enough tequila taste, and we [want] something with higher alcohol.’” (Hence the SeaWorld San Diego mission: a mass taste-test to gauge the popularity of three different Tequiza formulas, each with a varying amount of agave sweetener.)

In a bid to convince hard-drinking American dudes to, as the slogan said, “give it a shot,” Macias pitched the idea for Tequiza Extra — higher alcohol, less sweetness, and a black label that didn’t even mention agave. “It looked almost like a Cuervo bottle, the fonts were similar,” says the one-time brand manager, who these days works for a San Antonio spice company, Twang, that back in the day had provided flavored salt packets for Tequiza’s launch. “I thought it had all the potential in the world, but when we introduced it at one of the big distributor conventions, we kept hearing the distributors [say] ‘that’s not something I would drink.’”

“That basically killed the brand,” he concludes.

But Steinman is skeptical. “If the distributors weren’t signing up for repeats, that’s because the consumer wasn’t really signing up for repeats,” he says, adding that the fact that A-B never sprung for Tequiza TV ads was “not dispositive” of its eventual failure, either. In other words: If people wanted to drink Tequiza, wholesalers would have kept ordering more, regardless of whether it was on TV or what they personally thought of it.

Schoen offers another important bit of context. “There was one reason [Tequiza] didn’t work at the time, and that reason is very simple: Bud Light growth,” he says. Between 1990 and 2000, A-B went from producing over 11 million barrels of its flagship light adjunct lager to over 31 million barrels, per “Brewing Industry” by Victor J. and Carol Horton Tremblay. (The economic reference text opted not to even bother with Tequiza’s category, known then as “phantom specialty,” because it was too small to merit mention, and “malt-alternatives are not close substitutes for beer.”) “It was on just an incredible run, so [Tequiza] got what we’ll call ‘mixed’ distributor support and execution. There were so many other things [wholesalers] were doing” at that time that Tequiza simply wasn’t as much of a priority, remembers Schoen.

“I don’t know if wholesalers lost interest or consumers lost interest, but for whatever reason, there just wasn’t as much interest,” says Beckemeyer. Why dwell on Tequiza? A-B had the Bud Light juggernaut; the first craft beer boom was busting; and products like “Doc” Otis’ Hard Lemon malt beverage were testing well with consumers. “We [weren’t] going to fight a tidal wave,” she explains. And so Tequiza was swept away. The brand was still available in select markets until 2009, but it was effectively “gone by 2005,” says Steinman.

The Tequiza legacy

Tequiza’s short life wasn’t particularly glamorous — unless you count radio ads and SeaWorld glamorous — but it wasn’t totally pointless, either. Tequiza’s legacy, to the extent that it left one, can be traced in the products A-B and ABI pursued once it was gone. After unceremoniously laying the brand to rest, A-B leaned more heavily into flavored beers. In 2006, A-B released Shock Top, brewed with orange and lemon peel; in 2009, Bud Light Lime (a “significant new entry” for its time, says Steinman); and in 2012, Bud Light Lime-A-Ritas, full-blown fruited FMBs. Vaughn herself was involved in the development of nearly all of them. Tequiza made A-B “more comfortable with the [idea of] introducing flavors to a beer,” says Beckemeyer. “That was a foreign idea at the time.”

With the benefit of hindsight, Tequiza, like Coors’ Zima, another contemporary FMB punchline/product, could be seen as a premonition of American drinkers’ recent thirst for FMBs, canned cocktails, and perceived “better for you” ingredients. Schoen (whose current firm, BrewHub, works with several clients that use agave in their products, with more on the way) points to the red-hot popularity of the loosely defined Ranch Water category as an indication that A-B’s agave-infused failure was the right idea at the wrong time. In its day, Tequiza “just wasn’t big enough to make it sustainable,” he says. “But I would argue that if someone had it out there today, it would have been a hell of an entry.”

The article Tequiza Sunset: A History of Anheuser-Busch’s Agave-Infused Corona Killer That Wasn’t appeared first on VinePair.

Via https://vinepair.com/articles/tequiza-agave-infused-ber/

source https://vinology1.weebly.com/blog/tequiza-sunset-a-history-of-anheuser-buschs-agave-infused-corona-killer-that-wasnt

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benjhaisch · 8 years ago

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GIVEAWAY! Are you or anyone you know eloping this year? My assistant @anjehaisch just launched her new portfolio and is giving away an elopement package to celebrate. To enter yourself or a friend, head over to her page, give her a follow, tag someone and let us know why you/they should have Anje come out and shoot your nuptials on us! Photo by @anjehaisch (of course) https://www.instagram.com/p/BQivsJeDrus/ Photo by Benj Haisch

#Instagram #Benj Haisch

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slrlounge1 · 6 years ago

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How I Make $200K A Year From Instagram

You are probably sitting there like, “Seriously, another post about Instagram? These are so played out!”

But what if I were to tell you that I got 158 wedding leads and made $191,211 in 2018 from Instagram alone with very minimum ad spend.

It’s Not About You

We use a very straightforward method that isn’t used by many. It has nothing to do with the amount followers you have or how cohesive and colorful your feed is. Honestly, it really has nothing to do with YOU. I’m a strong believer that no one really cares about the things you like or your top five favorite things to cycle through; they actually care about how those things make them feel.

Team Growth

Now, as we go through this, I will share this past year’s numbers so you can see how this works. Up until October of 2018, it was just my wife and I. To keep up with the demand, we hired six photographers, two videographers, an admin, and an editor. Before we grew our team, our customer inquiries broke down like this:

40% did not book because we were too expensive

30% did not book because we were unavailable

10% did not respond and were likely price shopping

20% booked us

Now that we have photographers and videographers at different price points, I honestly think these numbers will grow exponentially. We’ve already booked 8 weddings within our first month of trying it! You can see all of this represented In the graph and table below! A lot of the December weddings will most likely book; we’re just waiting for meetings and payments.

Success Without Fame

Here’s the kicker. This isn’t because we have a bunch of followers or are well known; actually, no one really knows who we are! We aren’t celebrity photographers with a bunch of followers and we don’t speak at many conferences or win a bunch of awards. We started our business six years ago and went full time four years ago!

I don’t have the stats for before July 2017, but if we only had 7K followers in July 2017, I would assume we just had 3-4K followers in April 2016 when we were still generating leads and $50-$70K a year from Instagram.

So to say that it has a significant impact on our business is an understatement. It’s responsible for 40% of our revenue over the past 12 months! The fantastic thing about that is that it’s mostly organic! We have only spent a total of $1027 on Instagram ads since January, and over $500 of that was on our shop, not for booking clients. That’s over an 18,000% return on our investment in 2018 and 99% profit margin. Those are odds I’d be willing to invest in every year!

Profitability over popularity

Now, the information I’ve just shared begs a number of questions:

If it’s not because of how many followers we have or how popular we are, well then how are we getting so many inquiries with only 4-12K followers?

How are we running these ads?

How do I grow my following and engagement through Instagram?

Let me answer all of those questions as simply as I can: It’s all about profitability over popularity.

Max Follows

If you have ever looked at our Instagram, we are CONSTANTLY maxing out the number of people we follow. For some of you that don’t know, the maximum amount of people you can follow is 7500 people. We do this because Instagram is incredibly powerful for finding the exact client you want to engage. Where so many people make a mistake is that they expect people to engage them and they think that their photos have some magic pixie dust for creating engagement. That’s only the case if you are Fer Juaristi or Benj Haisch, haha! But for the rest of us mortal photographers, it just doesn’t happen, so we have to create it!

How do we do that?

Go and find your target audience! It’s hard for us to unfollow a lot of people because 90% of the people we follow are potential brides that we have engaged in one way or another! If you want more information on this and how we find them, it’s a lot to type out. Check out our podcast episode on finding the right audience where we specifically break this down! Over the past year, this has been our pattern for the number of people we follow! It’s all extremely strategic and has been incredibly beneficial!

Instagram Ads

Let’s talk Instagram ads! People are afraid of these because they have no idea how to use them! I published a podcast about utilizing Instagram ads for your business so make sure you check it out on iTunes or the podcast website!

When it comes to Instagram ads, there are two ways of running them: 1) Extremely specific ads created in the Facebook manager, and 2) boosted posts. Facebook ads manager is extremely powerful and is terrific for reaching the exact bride/demographic that you want! I occasionally do these. Now, I know some people say “NEVER BOOST A POST!” I think this rings very true when referring to Facebook, but not Instagram. Instagram is a different beast.

With Instagram boosted posts, I’m going for brand awareness. Studies show that someone needs to see your brand seven times before they begin to recognize it! I want to put my brand in front as many people as I can as often I can so that I’m the first person they think of whenever they get engaged! I want to be like that annoying person who sales Rodan & Fields or Tupperware or ItWorks, except without the annoying part. Come on, you all thought of someone when I said one of those products. That’s how I want to be! Boosting my post allows me to do that especially during times where everyone is getting engaged and also specific booking seasons. I talk more about it on our podcast on episode 26!

If you REALLY want the best bang for your buck, Instagram ads are insanely cheap. You can see in the ROI image above that there sometimes where I am paying 11 cents per click. That is INSANE! Take advantage of that while you can!

Engagement Wins

When it comes to growing your engagement. It starts with you. I’m going to shoot this STRAIGHT and keep it 100 when it comes to engagement. Sure you could post about you and what you love in life, your adorable dog, and the photos you love. You might even expect people who resonate with you to follow you, engage and then book when it’s time. But let’s be honest, we live in such a narcissistic culture that people who post, especially some of our target audiences, LOVE to be engaged but rarely engage in return. How many times have you been sitting on train or plane and seen someone scrolling through their Instagram feed, never liking and commenting on the photos they see? I see it ALL OF THE TIME!

We have to go to them.

You may be saying, “Wow, that sounds like a lot of work.” And it is, but when we make $200K from Instagram, I can’t help but see that as active marketing (a.k.a. Work). It needs to be budgeted as an allotted time in your day as you work on marketing.

If you run a business, you don’t want to get sucked into the black hole called Instagram. So let’s look at what it looks like to streamline engagement efficiently.

Keyboard shortcuts

We have keyboard shortcuts for everything! It’s easy to target people who get engaged, buy a new house, celebrate an anniversary, find a venue, or wear a wedding dress, etc. Once you find them, make sure that you sound authentic. If you do, it’ll save you from spending a ton of time writing the same thing over and over.

Case in point: Below is a photo of a girl on Instagram that got engaged. Look at the difference between what we told her and how authentic it is rather than the four other wedding professionals above us.

There is a HUGE difference from what we said, and they said. I don’t know who else she reached out to, but she reached out to us and booked us! There is a lot more to go into about this, but I don’t want to bore you. If you’d like to hear more about this, it’s on that same episode of the podcast as finding the right audience. We also talk about it during a talk we gave at the Showit United Conference and that talk is also on our podcast, episode 39!

If you use an iPhone, here is the breakdown below on how to set up shortcuts. I also use these for hashtags, so for all of those that copy and paste; you are welcome.

People don’t want to feel like they are being pitched to or annoyed. They want to feel like you value them!

Instagram Stories

Oh man! This is SO key in so many ways. One of our most popular podcast episodes goes a little more in depth about the power and benefits of Instagram stories, and in one of our most recent episodes, I talk about how this is just going to become more vital as I look at Instagram trends for 2019. The fact that Instagram now has two distinctions between portfolio and personality is huge! We can keep our feed well-curated and professional while at the same time staying extremely personal with our stories.

Direct Messages

Also, PLEASE don’t be afraid to slide into the DMs. Don’t be a creep about it, but it’s a lot more inviting than you think. People post specifically to be engaged in some way or another, and if you can provide a form of affirmation, you can create a positive experience and boost your brand awareness. I have liked and commented on people’s photos for months without a peep back, but once I connect with them through a DM because of a story they posted, that engagement goes to the next level! I can’t tell you how many times I have responded to a story, gotten into a conversation, told them how I couldn’t wait to meet them, and then they tell us that they have already planned on hiring us, or they love following us or have been talking about us to their boyfriends or other friends. Seriously, don’t be afraid!

I have created POWERFUL connections through DMs while using keyboard shortcuts. When you can create a transformationally positive interaction with someone on social media, everything changes and almost ensures they book with you. Here is just one example, and this is strictly using a keyboard shortcut!

Who do you think that girl is hiring when she gets married? No question!

Highlights & IGTV

Don’t sleep on these two just because not a lot of people are emphasizing them. There was a time where we said Instagram stories wouldn’t compare to Snapchat, so don’t be surprised when the same happens with Youtube.

I know I’ve said IGTV doesn’t compare to Youtube. We like to use IGTV to put our portfolio videos or slideshows from sessions and weddings. Goodness, gracious. There is so much to go into about this, but remember one thing: The best way to benefit in the engagement area is to utilize the new features Instagram comes up with. Instagram loves rewarding good behavior. Feed the beast, and in turn, you will be rewarded with its loyalty (or a baseball signed by Babe Ruth – see the movie Sandlot).

Conclusion

Now, I know that was a lot, and trust me, there is A LOT more I can say and teach on this subject. I can’t tell you how to grow your Instagram from 1K to 20K or 100K, but I can tell you how actually to make money with Instagram! I have a lot of friends with 20K, 50K, and 100K Instagram followers, but they make NO money from it. All you need to know is how to leverage the attention you do have for your business!

If you want more information on these topics, check out our podcast for information! I have talked A LOT about all of these! Episode 26 & 39 are really great places to start! The culture hacks series is all about Instagram!

We also have a couple of Freebies on our educational site that you can grab and quickly step up your social game! Check those out here!

from SLR Lounge https://www.slrlounge.com/200k-in-one-year-from-instagram/ via IFTTT

#IFTTT #SLR Lounge

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newssplashy · 7 years ago

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NEW YORK — Sarah Saltzberg knew from an early age that she wanted to be an actor and a writer, too, because she loved concocting improvisations.

Then again, as a teenager, she did have a nice little business designing, making and selling macramé bracelets, which made her think about an entrepreneurial career.

But never during her childhood did Saltzberg fantasize about a life in real estate.

This is not one of those stories with a surprise ending, so the cards are going on the table right now: Saltzberg, 42, who made good and continues to make good in the theater, is also a founder, with Jon Goodell, of Bohemia Realty Group, a 6-year-old niche company that specializes in rentals and sales, river to river from 96th Street to the top of Inwood, plus a bit of the Bronx.

Saltzberg’s staff shares her creative inclinations. The majority of Bohemia’s 120 agents have degrees in the performing arts. The roster includes actors, dancers, burlesque performers, an opera singer and a professional clown. The head of training at the company is a folk/rock singer and songwriter. The uncertainty that is part and parcel of a real estate agent’s life (where, oh where, is that next commission coming from?) is familiar to actors who routinely deal with similar anxiety (where, oh where, is the next role coming from?).

“Real estate is constantly shifting. You have to hustle to be successful, which is the same as being an artist,” said Emily Ackerman, a Bohemia sales agent who is also an actor and playwright. “We’re comfortable with instability. In fact, a lot of us thrive on it.”

Prospective sales agents will undoubtedly be relieved to learn that no audition is required and that the culture of the agency’s two offices — in West Harlem and Washington Heights — is decidedly un-corporate. Employees bring dogs and babies to work, and have been known to break into song — with perfect pitch, of course.

“I’ve worked at traditional real estate companies, and agents didn’t speak to each other,” Ackerman said. “But the vibe here is very different.”

She added: “So many of us have collaborative experiences working in the arts, and we’ve translated that directly to our real estate business. We work together on deals.”

Some Bohemia staff members will work on a Broadway show for several months, then come back to Bohemia. “The door is always open,” said Brian Letendre, a sales agent for high-end properties and an actor whose credits include featured and principal roles in the musicals “Urban Cowboy,” “Movin’ Out” and “Mary Poppins.”

“Working in real estate has allowed me choice,” he continued. “I can be more selective about what I want to audition for and the roles I want to take.”

And, Letendre insisted, he is relentless on both fronts. “I go after the property a client wants just the way I go after an acting job,” he said.

Not surprisingly, perhaps, a number of Bohemia clients are also in the arts. Among them are Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Benj Pasek, who helped write the Tony Award-winning score for “Dear Evan Hansen,” Laura Benanti, a Tony Award-winning actor who has a standing gig as Melania Trump on “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert,” and Celia Keenan-Bolger, who plays Scout in the forthcoming Broadway adaptation of “To Kill a Mockingbird,” as well as stage managers and ensemble members of musicals.

And who would know better than Saltzberg and her Bohemia colleagues how tough it is for a theater person to get approved by a bank or a co-op board?

“I’ll say to landlords, ‘Hey, I know that on paper this person looks like a risk, but let me explain what this means: This guy just got a job in ‘Hamilton.’ That show is not closing. He’s going to be in that show for a while,'” Saltzberg said. She is also able to tell potential clients which buildings have flexible management companies and board presidents.

“This is a relationship business the same as other businesses,” she said. “And when you specialize in a geographic area the way we do, and you really have an understanding of the people in the neighborhood and the people who are running things, you can get things done in a way that maybe you couldn’t do otherwise.”

Saltzberg got into the business in 2002 while helping to develop and raise money for a fledgling show that would grow up to become the Broadway musical comedy hit “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee.”

She had a featured role in the show as the lisping, pigtailed Logainne Schwartzandgrubenierre, “the daughter of two gay dads,” a character that she created (and that continues to provide her a few thousand dollars in royalty payments every year).

“A friend was like, ‘You should do real estate. Just do it for a little bit. It takes 40 hours to get your license. Make a bunch of money. Put it in your show, and then you can stop doing it,'” Saltzberg recalled. “And I was like, ‘That sounds pretty good.'”

Wendy Wasserstein, the playwright for whom Saltzberg was then working as a weekend nanny, urged her on as well.

Three weeks after becoming a sales agent, Saltzberg, who was living on Central Park West and 108th Street at the time, took note of the vacancies in her building. She phoned the landlord about showing them. He hung up. She dialed again. He hung up again.

“I kept calling until he finally listened to me,” Saltzberg said. “I was like, ‘I’m what you want: I’m young, I’m energetic, I’m an artist. Artists are OK with living in these parts of the city that are not fully developed yet, and I have tons of friends who would want to move into the vacant apartments.'”

It was a Thursday. The landlord gave Saltzberg the weekend to make good. By Monday, she had applications on all the available units.

Something clicked. “I found that it was all a lot like being an actor,” she said. “It was persistence and using improvisation to solve problems.”

Since then, she has seen the neighborhood evolve. “When I first started doing this, I walked through drug deals with clients all the time,” she recalled. “We’d get to the apartment, and I’d have to think fast, so I’d say things like, ‘Well, at least you know you don’t have to go very far.'”

Within months, she said, the formerly skeptical landlord opened his expansive portfolio of buildings in Upper Manhattan to her.

All the while, “Spelling Bee” was moving on a fast track to Broadway. “Once we opened, I was thinking, ‘I don’t need to do real estate anymore because I’m making a living wage with the show,'” said Saltzberg, who worked at several other agencies before starting Bohemia. “But I realized I loved it. I loved that what you put into it was what you got out of it. I loved the art of the deal, and I loved the neighborhoods I was working in. It was very exciting to be part of them.”

Between performances on matinee days, she showed properties, frequently to other actors, frequently in the company of “Spelling Bee” castmate Jose Llana, a future star of the David Byrne operetta “Here Lies Love,” who had gotten his real estate license, too.

“We were in Upper Manhattan, where a lot of Broadway people would be looking,” Saltzberg said. “And sometimes they would be like, ‘You look so familiar.’ And we’d say, ‘Well, have you seen “Spelling Bee”?’ There was so much trust because clients knew us from this other thing.”

Ferguson took due note as Saltzberg sized up the agents on the other side of the deal when he was looking for a pied-à-terre in Chelsea. “I watched Sarah figure out how to work with them based on what they brought into the room. She has this great ‘Yes and —’ skill.”

“As an actor, Sarah puts herself into other people’s shoes, and I think that makes her more attuned to her clients’ needs,” said Benanti, who turned to Saltzberg for assistance in finding a two-bedroom, two-bathroom co-op in Upper Manhattan.

If Saltzberg’s theater training has been a help in her real estate career, her real estate training has proved equally useful in the theater.

“I have learned things about business that I had never learned as an actor,” she said. “I could do a great Irish accent, but I couldn’t look at a contract and think, ‘This doesn’t make sense. I have to negotiate on this and this point’ and fight for what I want. And that’s a huge pitch we make to agents with an arts background who come into the firm.”

As both an actor/writer and a real estate broker, Saltzberg knows the importance of setting a scene. Shrewdly, she has made Bohemia’s offices a celebration of the neighborhoods they serve. Vintage photos of subway cars hang in the Bohemia outpost on Frederick Douglass Boulevard and 113th Street. The centerpiece of the reception area is a map of legendary Harlem nightspots. In the agency’s Washington Heights office, work by local artists is displayed.

By way of strengthening its community ties, Bohemia contributes money and time to the Harlem Children’s Zone and Morningside Park, and does adoption events for Bideawee.

“Sarah lives in Harlem and loves Harlem, and it comes across,” said Avi Feldman, a partner in Omek Capital, which develops rental buildings, mostly in the 125th Street corridor, and retains Bohemia as its exclusive rental broker. “She involves herself in neighborhood activities and is an integral part of the community.”

Saltzberg can be forgiven if she seems a little distracted at the moment. She is working on marketing for the Ammann, a condominium that has just opened in Hudson Heights; Bohemia is the exclusive agent for the development.

And come Monday, there will be another opening, this one on Broadway, for the musical “Gettin’ the Band Back Together.” Saltzberg is credited with providing “additional material” (and is pleased to report that two former Bohemia sales agents, Ryan Duncan and Tad Wilson, are members of the show’s ensemble).

“We’re offering discounts on tickets to friends and business associates in Harlem,” she said. “And to my son’s preschool.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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