MEDIASCAPE: Insights From Digital Changemakers

David Freeman on the Art of the CAA's Talent Acquisition and Digital Strategies

• USC Annenberg's MS in DMM • Episode 6

Share episode

Prepare to get a front-row seat to the digital transformation revolution with the masterminds at Creative Artists Agency (CAA). As we unravel the intricacies of talent acquisition in the era of influencers and gamers, our guest from CAA shares how personal branding and networking are key in an industry that's constantly seeking the next big thing. Through my lens, transitioning from Edelman to Matter Entertainment, we'll shed light on the innovative strategies that are shaping the future of media consumption and distribution.

Venture with us behind the scenes of deal-making in the digital media landscape, where learning the art of the pitch and understanding when to walk away from a deal are crucial skills. Our discussion dives into the complexities of content sales and brand partnerships, alongside the experiences that led to the recreation of MLK's iconic speech in VR. Networking emerges as the golden nugget, not just for career advancement but for pushing creative boundaries and forging groundbreaking collaborations.

As the curtain rises on the exciting advancements in XR, AR, VR, NFTs, and blockchain, we explore their potential to redefine entertainment, sports, and culture. From personal anecdotes to the parallels with the rise of social media, we stress the importance of embracing your career journey, seeking mentorship, and giving back. It's a panoramic view into the not-so-distant future, where technology meets creativity, and everyone has a part to play. Join us to discover how to navigate this thrilling landscape and make your mark.

This podcast is proudly sponsored by USC Annenberg’s Master of Science in Digital Media Management (MSDMM) program. An online master’s designed to prepare practitioners to understand the evolving media landscape, make data-driven and ethical decisions, and build a more equitable future by leading diverse teams with the technical, artistic, analytical, and production skills needed to create engaging content and technologies for the global marketplace. Learn more or apply today at https://dmm.usc.edu.

David Freeman:

I'm David Freeman and this is Media Escape.

Joseph Itaya:

Welcome to Media Escape insights from digital change makers, a speaker series and podcast brought to you by USC Annenberg's digital media management program. Join us as we unlock the secrets to success in an increasingly digital world.

David Freeman:

CAA is a place where you have executives, agents, who are super knowledgeable about what they do in their particular space, and the ultimate goal for CAA is to look at every facet of entertainment sports, pop culture I'll go even further and call it culture and make sure we can have the highest level of client service for our clients, who are artists at the end of the day, at the highest level, and we're fortunate to really represent with a 1% of the 1% of artists and why say artists in the biggest and broadest way?

David Freeman:

That's film, television, sports, speakers and now has transcended into influencers, gamers, personalities across all aspects of entertainment and sports, and that's really something that I didn't fully understand. There are the legacy departments inside of CAA film, tv, music, sports but then there's 15 other departments that a lot of people don't even realize, that are relatively new over the entire 45-year span of the company, that have been built because we all are experiencing these massive, massive changes in media, massive changes in entertainment, mostly from technology. So that's kind of who we and what we are, and it's gotten big. When I joined I think it was about 700, maybe 750 people. Now you're talking over 3,000 and it's a global platform around the world of experts in all these given areas.

Anika Jackson:

David, how did you see the frontier of digital media approaching?

David Freeman:

2007, 2008, 2009,. Working at Edelman and working closely with advertisers and other digital companies, I just had this sense that this tidal wave of change was going to happen. You could start to see the democratization of distribution and that, fundamentally, was going to change everything Right, and I start to see some of our advertisers shift some budgets from traditional television, traditional print, into digital. People starting to talk and online and grow personalities, some small audiences, and there were this, just these trends. Right, brands were starting to get back into, you know, things that they were doing in the 50s and 60s with content, being owners of content, and all these little things added up to us really going deep at Edelman when I had my company, matter Matter Entertainment, around digital. Right, we hired some smart folks around digital. We started to get ahead of the curve so that we could service the companies that we were working for.

David Freeman:

Being in LA, right, I got to build a network. We were helping our clients to buy talent, helping our clients to interact with all the different talent agencies no different than the studios and the film companies, et cetera. And I got to know the folks at CAA really, really well. We started to do some business there and you start to make friends and we're going to talk about your network, right. And CAA was a place that was hiring experts and they knew that, that their business was going to change, that technology was going to fundamentally change. So many different things for their legacy businesses, for the music business so we can go back and add all the different things that happened in music, for film, for television.

David Freeman:

I didn't exactly know. I'm not sitting here saying I knew everything that was going to happen inside of Hollywood, because I didn't but I knew there was this tidal wave coming and there was no digital department at CAA. It just didn't exist. And so as I continued to have these conversations and started to recognize that this was going deeper than your average business conversation, I started to sit back and really realize not only the capability that CAA had, but the clients that they represented at the highest levels. And the opportunity to start a division with what I believe would become one of the most important divisions inside of the agency was an opportunity that I just couldn't say no to, and it wasn't an easy decision. I had built matter, but to be able to work with the client base at CAA, with where they were investing, how they were moving was something that I couldn't say no to.

Anika Jackson:

How does CAA approach each day and each opportunity?

David Freeman:

We're in the service of our clients and we wake up every day thinking about how can we grow our clients' businesses? Right, it's not just follow the money, it's not just go and do deals for the sake of doing deals, to drive as much revenue so we can make as much money for our clients and therefore make as much money for ourselves. Right, because it's a commission-based business and we'll get into some other business models that I know you and I have talked about before, but fundamentally, that is what we do. However, there's a strategy behind it. Every single client, right? Whether you're the biggest gamer in the world like Ninja, whether you Will Smith, whether you're Vin Diesel, whether you're Katy Perry, every single client has different artistic goals, has different desires of what to expand from beyond their core business, and we're also seeing a big trend now that we can talk about a little bit later of talent, understanding the difference between a paycheck and a fee-based model, which they've been used to most of their careers and building their own companies, their own media companies, and understanding evaluations and what those differences are. So for us, inside of the agencies, we sit back and we think strategically for each client what are their goals? What are the objectives, okay.

David Freeman:

At the same time, we're thinking about how do we build our company right? What's coming down the pipe? Podcasts weren't around five years ago, right. Immersive media had a moment five, six years ago. Now it's back. Now we're building and we've been in the metaverse for a while, but obviously it's a buzzword right now.

David Freeman:

We're building around that, right, so we always have to keep it in front and center every day clients, how we're building the company, how we're bringing in the right new executive and Asian talent, how we're continuing to sign signings, the health of any talent agency, and so there's a number of different things that we're thinking about. Obviously, there's different roles. I run a department, so I'm thinking about a lot of different things at any given day, but that's kind of a little bit of breaking down a few of the different areas and there's connective tissue all the way through. But those are the kind of the everyday wake up right.

David Freeman:

In addition to them had not only our clients, but who we do in business with. I mean, we happen to call those folks buyers, right. So, across every different division, your connectivity to who you're doing business with, whether that's a CPG company, tech company, platform company, a streamer, a VR company, a gaming company, et cetera. We have to understand how to do business with them. We have to be constantly talking about them, about what they're looking for, so that we can be bringing them our talent right or the companies that we represent so clients, buyers, every day, every day.

Anika Jackson:

What is a 360 degree client?

David Freeman:

There's two sides of it. There's 360 degree. You know, clients, talent who can do multiple things Will happens to be one of them. Right, television, music, film, et cetera right. But what we're seeing now is the talent apply 362 their careers in all the different areas that they can build. When we started our influencer business seven years ago, the power of it was the audiences that these young digital creators were commanding right.

David Freeman:

Our traditional talent at that time was a little bit skeptical about wanting to be seen as digital creators, wanting to take that fourth wall down. Be authentic, be real. You know, usually you had only seen big motion picture or music talent doing deals overseas. You didn't see them doing as much activity here. So in the beginning our traditional talent was very much. That's a different YouTubers, viners, et cetera, our different subset of artists than we are.

David Freeman:

The reason I bring up the word creator is that social and the power of a direct to consumer business has changed things drastically. You look at Hello Sunshine and the exit that they just had. You look at the valuation of Westbrook or you look at Goop or you look at Honest or any of these celebrity built businesses. A lot of the value inside of those businesses. What is that celebrity's connection to their audience and how often are they talking to that audience? Right, and inside of that audience, no different than any other media company, is the data that comes along with that audience. Right, and you can now build businesses, whether those are e-commerce businesses or whether those are product businesses or whether those are media businesses.

David Freeman:

Right, there's a lot more opportunity for clients to be entrepreneurs. Covid helped that a little bit. Right, because we had clients that at home who couldn't be on stage, you couldn't be on the field, who couldn't be in front of a camera, so there was an opportunity for us to talk to our clients about the power of that. And now the most interesting part is a lot of those traditional clients, because our division works with digital endemic clients as well as our traditional clients actually are proud to call themselves digital creators. Right, and a guy like Will Smith steps back and says wait a second, I need to be on YouTube, I need to be on TikTok, I need to be on all these emerging platforms, because young, millennial and Gen Z audiences who are the fans who seem high movies or listen to my music or see my TV shows that's where they are right. And so we're having a different conversation with our talent, and it's an exciting one because we're helping them build. We're helping them build companies and build products.

Anika Jackson:

How might a recent graduate or young executive begin to build 360 opportunities?

David Freeman:

It starts with your network. It starts with who is in your universe right now and how can you start to build right. I always tell people when they're starting to look for a new job, think about it as 12 months right. And there's two types of interviews or get-togethers. One is an official interview, because you're interviewing for a job. But almost more importantly is how can you use your network to extract information, because information begets access in different situations.

David Freeman:

So, from a 360 perspective, I think your network is a big piece of the puzzle. And how are you constantly almost like a second job, beyond whatever you're doing thinking about how am I getting out in the world, talking about where I'm heading, what I'm doing and making connectivity across the board? I think understanding what makes each executive, what their superpowers are, how they're differentiated right when we hire that that's what we're trying to figure out. Even harder, hiring now. I've hired 20 people in the last two years without having actually met some of these people in person. So, being able to articulate who you are, what you do, what makes you unique, what are the things, what are the sensibilities we can't teach, even if you come into our company at an entry level or a higher up level. Those are the things that I think are the two most important pillars. It doesn't cover all the 360, but I think we could start there and have a discussion around those two things.

Anika Jackson:

How does someone get signed by an agency like CAA?

David Freeman:

Odds are, if you're ready to be signed by CAA or UTA or WME, we probably know you're out there and you're probably doing something right already. You have something unique, you have a business, you have an audience, you have that it thing because that it thing still is relevant in the entertainment business. Again, and hope this doesn't come off the wrong way, we do represent the 1% or the 1%, so we're not gonna represent everybody out there, but it comes down to can we do you have something, if we're signing you, that is unique in the marketplace? We're thinking about as we built our influencer network outside of our traditional talent. We're thinking about different categories General entertainment, lifestyle, comedy. Inside of a lifestyle, there's fashion, there's home, there's DIY, Because in terms of doing business, you want a very differentiated roster of talent. We got into our gaming business about five years ago and built that and we're spending a ton of time there. So I think it comes down to what makes you unique.

David Freeman:

The size of your audience is something we look at, no doubt about it, Not just from the size. It should really trickle down into that's just how big is it, but how engaged is it? There's a difference between audience and fans. Super fans. It's those hardcore super fans who most likely will endorse that product that you might be talking about or buy that product that you're actually marketing on your own behalf, and so those are some key things that we look at. But, trust me, if CAA is probably going to be thinking about signing you, we're probably tracking you. You're not really tracking us, just to be honest about that, but you know what else is interesting to that point, about being found, and this is what's changed.

David Freeman:

Technology has changed. There was an old way of being found you have to come up this way as an actor, or this way you have to get a record label, or have to get a record label to notice you in music and you could talk to that. There were very, for many, many years, very traditional ways of being identified as somebody who has, or can be, signed by a CAA. Right, Things changed. Right, Like, we do a few different things in my department, but one of them is digital endemic talent, right, and here you had technology that allowed people to be seen in a completely different way.

David Freeman:

You didn't have to wait for the callback for the audition or for the record label to call. You could now out of your living room and this happened right. I mean, we all know it. You can now make your mark by hard work with the technology on your phone period end right, and that was a massive shift. As people say, hey, I wanna be an actor, I say, well, what are you doing besides just going to auditions? What work are you putting up on all these sites? How can you get out there? Are you constantly in that flow, producing writing, putting your work out there for people to find it? Because it can be found? And that was a big shift in terms of the traditional ways that people were recognized by companies like CAA.

Anika Jackson:

What are the pillars of CAA's digital media department?

David Freeman:

I started at CA in 2010,. So you go back 10 years or 11 years, 12 years almost. Now the landscape of digital media is completely different. I mean, you're talking about no TikTok, no Snapchat. Netflix is just starting to get ramped up. Youtubers are just starting right. So it was a fluid. Those first three years was very fluid, but we matured and I'd say about seven, eight years ago, things came into focus Four core areas inside of digital media One content sales Backbone of CAA.

David Freeman:

Since it started, we are selling content to all the new digital platforms. Right, think about a pyramid. You got Netflix at the top and a lot of other premium content platforms at the top, but then I don't want to say that they're at the bottom. But then you've got Snapchat, who's buying content, and Facebook's who's buying content, and Twitch, and there'll be five other different platforms that are born in the next 12 to 18 months. Right, we're usually the first department in for any new platform, right, whether they are winning or eventually lose. Quibi, for example, we were very close with Jeffrey Katzlerberg as he launched that. Like revving that up, providing information throughout the company to go in and sell content. We are content sellers. That's one, two brand partnerships, so we have a whole team talking to brands every single day CMOs, vp of marketing understanding their needs, their desires to either come up with content and talent solutions for their campaigns or, on the advisory side, which we'll get to in a second, advising them on how to build and leverage entertainment, sports, pop culture.

David Freeman:

Next area is talent right, we talked about our digital endemic creators. We've got about 175 plus digital influencers, creators, right, and we're leveraging all aspects of their businesses, whether that's endorsements or crossing them over to traditional TV and film product when touring was around, leveraging the building and the expertise toward those audiences that they command. Outside of the talent group, we also work with a number of the Will Smiths I've mentioned the JLo's, the Vin Diesel's, like a go on or not or non, and we have some people who have over 200 million people following them and those are massive audiences, bigger than some of your average cable stations in terms of engagement. And then, about five years ago, we started an advisory practice. The advisory practice was built out of. It.

David Freeman:

Took us a little bit to get there and I had done that in a previous life but we realized we had so much institutional knowledge between Silicon Valley, madison Avenue and Hollywood and that intersection of the knowledge base that we had between talent, partnerships, access platforms, leagues and across the industry that we could provide companies with a higher level of service right. Those are retainer based relationships. Sometimes, if they're startups, they're retainer plus equity. There's different models we can play with there because there's a lot of great startups that we believe in. And those are the four areas. Inside of that, we also do VR, ar, we do gaming that fits in our talent and so anything probably new podcast started with us. Then there's a whole department, so there's a lot of new and innovations thinking inside of our group, and those are the four basic areas.

Anika Jackson:

How do you help your clients create digital strategies?

David Freeman:

Well, we onboard a client, right, we first determine what are the ambitions of that particular client and when I say client, it could be a company and it could be talent right, cause we do represent companies in talent More talent than we do companies. We're pretty selective about the companies that we represent, right, but it starts with what are the goals, or the objectives and objectives. Where are they at in their careers? Right, if it's a digital creator that's never had an agency, that's a different situation than a very well-known big talent who might've come from a different agency and they're probably leaving that agency because of certain things that they're not getting. But those first two months are a set of meetings to understand what do they want to achieve, what are the revenue streams that they want to exploit, getting to know them and understanding their flow of social that are desired to be entrepreneurs, their core business, and different teams are set up across each of the goals that that client has.

David Freeman:

And this I think and I've never been in a different town agency is what separates CA from other agencies, based on what I heard that it's a very team-oriented. There is a point for a given client, sometimes two people, and then you build expertise from the company, right? So if somebody wants to start a podcast, there's a podcast team. Somebody wants to go deep in scripted television? There's someone who's an expert there. An athlete who's really into gaming? There's a gaming expert on that person's team. And we build clients, client teams around that client. So it's really much more strategic than it is let's just go get as much money as possible. You gotta think long-term. We're signing clients that we believe we're gonna be with for 10, 20, 30 years and there are clients that have been at this agency exclusively for that amount of time, right Companies. It's a little bit different because usually there's specific reasons that they're coming to us for us to work on their behalf. But that's kinda how we think about talent.

Anika Jackson:

How is CAA supporting and promoting diversity?

David Freeman:

Listen, we're all going through changing how we see the world. I think Hollywood, right, has been front and center in terms of how are we making sure diversity is front and center. So I think we took a good hard look at how are we helping to promote diversity in our end product, right? Who's popping up on television, who's popping up in film, music, et cetera? So are we representing the right people, right? And so we took a long hard look at that. And how are we helping to move the industry forward in terms of making sure that there's much more diversity across everything we're doing? So that's for our artists first of all, and taking a look at the mirror on that. Then it's also looking internally on who are we hiring right and how are we making sure that we're doing this the right way?

David Freeman:

And I think we've had to really take that hard look and make sure that we're giving the right opportunities for all the diverse folks that are out there, right. So I think those two things are really important in terms of the work that we're helping our clients to get out there and representing the right folks. And then, internally, how are we making sure that we're thinking about our hiring practices and how we're promoting folks and making sure that we're really being honest about our place there. But it's a huge, huge commitment from CAA at the top, from our partners, in terms of what we're doing there.

David Freeman:

There has been a flood of introspection and hiring, like I said, of the right people to make sure that we're thinking about this stuff every single day. The great thing about our company is when they say they're gonna do something, they do it. It's not just talk. We started a conference called Amplify and that was specifically around what are we doing and how can we bring our more diverse voices to everything that we're doing. If I had to go online with it, but it used to be an in-person conference to really talk about these issues and get into it, so there's a real commitment there.

Anika Jackson:

How do deals come together and how do they fall apart?

David Freeman:

Yeah, I mean, look, if you're gonna be in my business, we're deal makers, but you gotta accept the fact that deals are gonna blow up, right, it's just part of the way that it is, and it's a hard thing to swallow because usually you're driving a handful of people to the goal line. I always liked it when I talk about deals talk about football or baseball analogies, right, and so we all get personally so involved. Right, You're managing the client, you're managing the buyer, you're managing the client's manager, the client's lawyer, the buyer's lawyer. There's a lot of things that have to happen, and this is the art of deal making, and along the way, a lot of things can fall apart. We're deal makers, right, and so you're not gonna close every deal. That's just the nature of the business. When things linger and things go on, usually there's something wrong. Right, there's something wrong. There are certain organizations that are slow, and you know that. We just got through a similar situation like that Went out for four or five months, and we knew in our hearts there was something fundamentally wrong, and there was. When you wanna close a deal, usually both sides wanna close and that's the right sign. The elements are usually that upfront piece of understanding what you're trying to accomplish.

David Freeman:

Let me give you a real world example that I'm really proud of. One of our clients is Time Studios, and they really wanted to celebrate Martin Luther King and they had a really ambitious idea of how could we recreate in virtual reality yeah, I have a dream speech, right? They actually came to us with saying we wanna do this. How do we put these pieces together? Right, so you have to sit back and think about what's something as ambitious as that? Right? How are we gonna fund this? What's the technology that we have to do behind it? How are we gonna attach talent into it and what does the distribution look like? Right, and I bring up this, obviously, because it was a successful.

David Freeman:

It took us two and a half, almost three years to pull it off, but we found the right technology partners in Verizon and in a group called Riot, who were the actual VR creators of it.

David Freeman:

We found Talon and Viola Davis and her company, JuV, who also had VR experience, and Viola was gonna narrate it, and we got it funded through a sponsorship model with American Family Insurance. So we created and rebuilt Martin Luther King on the steps of that memorial of him in Washington, actually doing this right, and this is what gets me up in the morning, because things like that that you can actually pull off, and when that happened right away is what's exciting. Unfortunately, we were gonna tour that experience to all a number of different African American museums and universities and then COVID hit, but we actually did pull it off and it was on the cover of Time Magazine. So usually any project has a number of different facets of what we call packaging, putting things together to make sure we're getting either a brand to buy it, a platform to buy it, and that's a big part of the art of what we do at the company.

Anika Jackson:

What makes?

David Freeman:

a good pitch. If you're gonna present via a deck, right? If you haven't set it in the first three to five pages, then it's probably not the right idea. People should know right away what are you selling, what's unique about it and how is this interesting? Right, we get a massive influx of people wanting to pitch us, pitch our clients, pitch the companies that we're representing, and so how do you differentiate? There you gotta be, I believe. In short, concise. Your pitch shouldn't be any more, in my opinion, than 10 to 12 minutes. You've got a half hour meeting, which is how we usually set them up. Maybe it's 45 minutes. You should be in and out of what you're pitching in that first 10 to 12 minutes, and if you get into a good dialogue, then you've got something. Then you know you're moving the ball up the field, to go back to that football analogy. So I'm a big believer in tightness, in when you're pitching, having two or three people at most sharing the insights and what it's gonna look like. But you kind of know, we kind of know, within the first, probably four to eight minutes whether we're interested in that for a particular client. That's the bottom line. There's no one way to do it.

David Freeman:

I'm a big believer in visuals and video. Getting people excited with visuals is certainly much easier. We're all visually driven. We all work in a visually driven medium. In space. It really depends what you're pitching right. Everything requires kind of a different way of thinking about it and how are you being strategic. But video, music, set of tones, set of pace or a deck that is visually there. I'm also a big believer in less words on the page and more of that team kind of pitching a story right. We represent storytellers and usually what we're giving back to an audience is a storytelling experience. So I think storytelling inside of a pitch is also really important.

Anika Jackson:

How can we become better at networking?

David Freeman:

Listen, it's the one thing I tell all of the young folks who I talk to, whether it's those assistants that we're hiring or whether it's a lot of the folks who come to me say, hey, can you talk to my friend's friend and is a senior in college, or anyone who's really looking at their career. Networking is in my business, which is all of our business to a certain degree. Is it the number one most important thing you can do? You don't always realize it when you're young, but everybody you're meeting between 20 and 30 at some point in the not so distant future. Everyone rises up together, right, and I realized that by the time I got to be 35, 36, 37, and I realized, wow, like all the people that I've stayed in touch with are now in decision making positions across the industry. Right, staying in touch with people, reaching out on LinkedIn, finding mentors that you can really kind of like bounce things off of, who you should be spending time with, it's a job onto itself.

David Freeman:

I have lists of people, whether I'm doing business with them or not, that I stay in touch with. How are you? What's going on? What's new at your job? If you're a brand, what are you thinking about? What are your challenges, et cetera. And even if there's not an immediate thing to transact down or do a deal with, I'm staying in touch with these people because I know at some point either they're gonna be at a different job that I wanna be able to connect with them about, or my clients are gonna call up and say, hey, what's my metaverse strategy? Tell me what I should be doing with Facebook or Fortnite or Roblox or any of these new worlds of just using metaverse, because it's a trend right now. But you gotta make it an active thing, an active exercise throughout your entire career period.

Anika Jackson:

What is one characteristic that your most successful clients have in common?

David Freeman:

I think it's the same characteristic that I've seen really successful business people Do the work, do the work, and I remind myself of that too when I have those moments, maybe, of insecurity or doubt. Do the works. They focused on the work. Yes, talent is part of whether you are an actual talent or whether you are an executive is part of it, no doubt about that, right. But what separates all these people and how do you rise up to it? Whether it's the 1% of executive or the 1% of talent, it's do the work. I think it's be authentic, be true to who you are. Don't try to be asked your way through it, you know. But those two things I always remind myself do the work and do the work.

Anika Jackson:

What's a common mistake people should avoid as they go through their digital media careers?

David Freeman:

I'm shocked, when people interview with me, that they don't do their research. I'm shocked. You know, I always ask the question tell me a little bit about what you know about our group or our department. Right, if you were to look up me on LinkedIn or anywhere else, you could connect to the people that are in our group. Right, we're all under digital media at CAA and when somebody can't just say, oh, I recently read about that deal you just announced, or the partnership that you just announced, or that CAA's in negotiations to acquire ICM or something, there's news out there across the board. I am shocked the lack of research that people do, either when they're interviewing or when they're pitching right To start a conversation, because you wanna know that someone has taken the time to understand what you're doing, what you do, who you represent, and it's mind boggling to me sometimes that people just walk into that situation cold.

Anika Jackson:

What do you see on the horizon of digital media that excites you?

David Freeman:

Five years ago I hired my first gaming executive right, just knowing that we needed to get into that space. The reason I got into digital was you felt, like I said, that tidal wave coming right. And when I say gaming and metaverse, it's not just the obvious things that are happening there, but the mentality of a new set of consumers who digest and consume their media completely differently than the way a lot of us have, certainly the way I have, and probably you have, joseph. Even I know we have a lot of young folks and that shift. I get excited about the big shifts.

David Freeman:

Right and XR, ar, vr, nfts, blockchain like this is gonna fundamentally change a lot of different businesses. But the impact it's gonna have on entertainment, sports culture, pop culture is gonna be so significant and we're not even in first inning, we're not even at all. We're in preseason of it. All right, but figuring it out, being on the front lines, being able to have some of the greatest storytellers that we can apply to all these new worlds that are gonna build, is exciting. You know, and I know it sounds a little cliche, but for me right now I have that itch and that desire to learn, cause anyone who says they're an expert here. No, it's just not there yet, right, it's just being born, no different than 2000,. No different than 2000 to 2012, when influencers were born and social media really became into existence. There are these moments. I think we're about to go through another one of them. That's what's got me really jazzed right now.

Anika Jackson:

What's the most important thing that carries you through your career?

David Freeman:

I wish I'm gonna say something that's gonna that people haven't heard before, but I believe in it and I think it's the only way. The only way you know it is after having a lot of experiences, and it's this the journey is the most fun part, far and away. Right, you always think I gotta get to the next level in my career. Okay, I'm here. How do I get here? How do I get here? How do I get from making this amount of money to that amount of money, et cetera. Right, before you know it, you're always just chasing your own tail right, and so being present, right, really present, and I'm not saying it that I'm some guru or Buddha who has mastered that, but I know the more present I am in my day, talking to a client, talking to a colleague, talking to you, the more I'm here and the more I can give in that moment, versus worrying about tomorrow, worrying about yesterday. There's nothing you can do, right, and so it's a little bit of appreciating the journey. Right, you're only young once, right, and I usually tell folks that are young like go see the world for the first five years, don't worry about your career.

David Freeman:

Easier said than done, because I did the opposite and you probably did the same. But how do you appreciate the journey? How are you being present and how are you mentoring other people? I'm a big pay it forward guy. I love mentoring. That's why I'm doing this right. When you called, I mean you saw I think you were a little surprised how excited I was, because it is about the next generation, it is about giving back right and we're all so busy. But how do you make sure you're doing that? It's kind of a combination of all three of those things, but we always think that we're gonna get to the end and look back. But it's actually the journey and I've realized that I wish I kind of knew it when I was a little bit younger, to appreciate all those different stepping stones along the way.

Joseph Itaya:

To learn more about the Master of Science and Digital Media Management program, visit us on the web at dmmuscedu.

People on this episode

Head Shot

Anika Jackson

Host
Head Shot

Joseph Itaya

Host