Build A Career In Immersive Visuals - Travel. Tech. Creativity

We talk with Joe Ness about building a career that combines filmmaking, travel, technology, and entrepreneurship. What started as a simple experiment with a vertical TV evolved into immersive video walls seen in casinos, hotels, healthcare facilities, and public spaces around the world.

Joe shares how he traveled to nearly 100 countries capturing extraordinary footage, the costs and risks behind creating world-class visual content, and why he believes authentic, real-world moments matter more than ever in an AI-driven world. We also discuss how he's using immersive visuals to improve healthcare and assisted living environments.

Connect with WOW: https://therealwow.com/

Visit howmuchcanimake.info and explore our Creative Jobs category for more career stories, income insights, and job ideas.

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Music credit: Kate Pierson & Monica Nation

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Transcript

A Gorilla Touches The Lens

SPEAKER_01 0:02

He was an 800-pound mountain gorilla while he walked right up to me and he walked right up to the camera. This is 100% true, and he touched the lens.

Photography Roots And The First Idea

Mirav Ozeri - Host 0:14

Hi, welcome back to How Much Can I Make, the podcast about jobs and careers. I'm your host, Miravozeri. What if a love of photography, travel, technology, and nature could become a multi-million dollar business? My guest today is Joe Nest, founder of Window of the World. Wow. He started in television and video production, but simple idea turned into a career that took him to nearly a hundred countries and be one of the first ones to build immersive video experiences seen in casinos, hotels, healthcare facilities, public places around the world. You can see some of his amazing video walls on his site, therealwow.com. It's in the show notes. So let's turn to my conversation with Joe Ned.

SPEAKER_01 1:07

I'm excited to tell you a little bit about what I do. Yes, let's just let's let's have some fun.

Mirav Ozeri - Host 1:15

So first I want to tell you I am so excited to talk to you because I looked at your footage and I actually think I saw some of your video walls in Vegas last year. And I always wondered what goes behind the scenes. So of course, I have tons of questions. Your work impressed me. Your business is called Wow. Your stuff is absolutely stunning.

SPEAKER_01 1:41

Thank you. Thank you, Mirave. I appreciate your kind words, and I've had so much fun in the last in the last 20 years creating this content.

Mirav Ozeri - Host 1:50

This is what I want to know. You started at MTV. How do you end up from that building a career in the largest format LED, in the immersive display? How did this happen? What was the journey like?

SPEAKER_01 2:04

It's interesting. I I've always had a passion for photography, not necessarily cinematography, but for to photography. And I started this endeavor probably about 20 years ago, Mirab. I was an audio video contractor at the time. Okay. And where we would put big video walls in casinos and in churches. We we did big stadiums, and uh, I had 25 employees. We were doing big stuff. So I bought this video camera. What I did was I put a plasma TV in my house. And I took the plasma TV and I rotated it, which was never ever done. This was 20 years ago, and that was when plasmas just first came up. I know. And you can never put a TV on the wall before a plasma. And I I want I wanted my content, and not to even sell at the time, but I wanted it to look not like a movie, not like a TV. I wanted it to look special. And by going vertical, that's what it did. I bought my own cameras and I would take the camera and lock it down just like a photo. One of my first shots, I went to Yosemite National Park, yeah, and I framed Yosemite Falls between two vertical trees, and it looked just like a photo, but all you saw moving was the waterfall. And it was HD, and no one was seeing that at the time. And I would play it just for my wife and my kids and my guests that would come over at my house at the time. And what happened was very truly amazing. I started, I built a small library, and I was working for an owner of a big casino conglomerate. They were privately held, and I worked directly with the owner. We were just playing music videos and sports. I had one of these playing in my office, and he came by and looked at it. And the funny thing is, he noted it, and then he signed some of my invoices, then he left, and then he came back five minutes later and he goes, Let me see that again. And then he asked me to could I put a couple of these TVs in my front desk area so I could calm and relax my guests while they're waiting to check in to the hotel. So I had to figure out how I had to figure this stuff out. He gave me a good budget and get this. Literally now, 20 years later, and over 65 million dollars invested. It has become the brand of this billion-dollar organization. They have hundreds of large LED walls now. I've traveled to nearly a hundred countries to create this content, and here I am, and that's what started this whole thing. And now I've retired from the casino and have started a new business called Windows of the World. Wow! And it's been quite a journey.

Building Windows Of The World

SPEAKER_01 4:56

Tell our audience what does WoW do? Wow is Windows of the World, and we deliver the healing power of nature and humankind. And we do that with beautiful imagery from around the world, and we deliver it right now. Our main market is healthcare, mental health, and assisted living. We have thousands of images. If you can imagine TVs and LED displays, and when people walk into, let's say, an assisted living, the gathering areas, we put 12-foot-wide LED displays in full 4K resolution, and we have a special app where they can display this content in any way they want. In the assisted living market, a lot of these patrons want to see something familiar. So even though we have shots from all over the world, from Tibet to Antarctica to all these places, we have what we call a 101, which is 101 mile radius of any place we install these things. And so we could put 80% of the shots 101 and 20% of the rest of the world or any combinations. We're delivering the healing power of nature and humankind. And I've decided to kind of move away from the casino realm and the hospitality realm and move it all towards something that has the highest impact.

Mirav Ozeri - Host 6:21

This is what impressed me the most about you. Because really, you could have gone not only casinos and sports and world events and all of that with those huge displays that are amazing. You chose to go into wellness. And first of all, did you actually see effect on in elder elderly or other people, the effect of the nature videos that they see?

SPEAKER_01 6:44

Oh, a hundred percent. It's documented. It's changing the people's lives. People come up to these screens and they look at these screens because of their mental position. They have a hard time following storyline. All they have to do is look and it brings memories. We were there, or my kids went to these locations. We're hearing constantly how this is changing the lives of these people. In fact, we have an advisory committee with major hospitals from all over the world. And one of my partners, his name's Terry Torak, he's on the United Nations Task Force for Mental Health, and they're giving us ideas of how to best create content that would most make the most impact for mental health. We can calm people or we can stimulate them. Wow. And it's one of the most amazing things to see the transformation of these participants. It's amazing.

Mirav Ozeri - Host 7:39

Do you decide what you're gonna shoot and what the piece will be? It's like basically you, the writer of the piece.

SPEAKER_01 7:46

Yes. When we started this about 20 years ago, we went back and forth on how we can have the best, biggest impact. And so we went, we started off with these long shots that were five minutes long, and then we did other things, but we ended up working on around 20-second clips, which by the way, right now that's short form video. And short form video wasn't even a term 20 years ago, it was about the perfect length. And then what would happen, Amarab, is we would play these randomly. So you'll see one shot of the Eiffel Tower in the fall, or of maybe a slow drone shot spinning around the Eiffel Tower. And the next shot is a little stream of grass, of wheat grass with a ladybug going up on it. And the next shot would be a penguins in Antarctica, and the next shot would be maybe a shot of Boston skyline at dusk. It was strictly a visual narrative. There was nothing to follow. Do you put music on it? No, no, no, because these are in public spaces, but we have the ability to put music. You can, if you have a Spotify account, then you can connect to licensed music that we provided. Now I am working with a gentleman who's a Grammy Award-winning composer, and he has done tremendous research in the healing power of audio. And we're working with him on licensing his content for audio that would match our stuff. And he's an amazing individual.

Mirav Ozeri - Host 9:15

So, what was the reason? There must have been a personal reason for you to get into the healing and the wellness and the mental health of people instead of going big commercial and zillions of dollars.

SPEAKER_01 9:27

To me, I'm in, I don't want to call it my final chapter. I'm 65 years old, but I don't want to call it my final chapter. But I'm entering a new chapter in my life. And I had worked with this casino for almost 20 years. And I'm not a casino guy. I don't eat, I don't gamble, I don't drink, I don't, I love to ride bikes, and I love nature is my thing. And I've always wanted to take my talents to a different audience, an audience where I could make a bigger impact. I made the decision to kind of move out of the casino space and move into the healthcare space. My partners, we looked into it really in depth, and we found that actually that space can be profitable and we can create an impact, especially now in the age of AI. There's so much fast-paced editing and so much content that has the intention of changing your ideas. How can we create content that has zero political agenda and it's real? It's not AI generated. That's the thing about our content. It's real. Our website, by the way, is therealwow.com. It's real. We are by the way, we are using AI to help us develop our apps and infrastructure, but our content will always be real. Moments in time. A photograph is an instant in time. We create these little windows of 20 seconds that are moments in

Wildlife Filming And Waiting For Magic

SPEAKER_01 10:53

time.

Mirav Ozeri - Host 10:53

I know. And I I wanted to go behind the scene because I saw amazing footage of lions and apes and uh gorillas and elephants. How long do you have to wait to get that shot? Those shots were unbelievable.

SPEAKER_01 11:07

One thing about wildlife that I've learned over the many years I've filmed, you have to let the wildlife come to you. And you have to wait. As soon as you see, let's say you see a beautiful elephant, if you try to chase those moments, all you'll end up getting is them walking slowly away from you. And you all you get is their their rear ends, which isn't good. Look, I've had to wait long periods of time, but most of the time, Miraf, it's the opposite. These little moments happen very quickly, and literally seconds. You have just literally two or three seconds to get your camera set up and go. Like in the case of some of the Africa stuff. A quick little story. We were in shooting the uh mountain gorillas in Rwanda, and we were up there and and we spent a ton of money. We actually had to spend over $50,000 just on permits to film up there. But all the money went towards the well-being of the gorillas. Anyway, so we'd go up there and you only get one hour with these magnificent animals. We had to hike these incredible mountains, and we had a whole crew of guys, and I actually had a reality show crew with me filming me while I was doing all this stuff. Because we spent that kind of money, we had the head of the national parks with us to make sure that we would get these great this great footage. The gorillas were behind us, behind a little uh bunch of bushes. So we had to get our cameras out, and I had lenses that cost more than a Land Rover. Here were there, and we had and my son was with us, and I had I had a whole bunch of people helping carry. And we got all of our cameras ready, and they literally started a stopwatch for one hour. So we go in in here, and the first thing I saw was this little uh gorilla running by me. It looked like a chimpanzee, but it was just a small young uh gorilla. And for the first 15 minutes, I was trying to chase these gorillas to get shots, but I was only getting their rear ends. And I'm and at the time, I'm thinking, oh my gosh, I've spent all this money and I'm only getting the rear ends with these gorillas. But here's the story I saw the big patriarch of the family, this big silverback gorilla. He was sitting behind these this bush, and I couldn't quite see him, but he but I had I zoomed in and I had this incredible picture. If he would only move the uh foliage away from his face, I would have this national geographic shot. I said, screw it. I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm going to uh focus on his face and hit record and just see what happens. And I hit record, and all of a sudden he pulled and looked into the lens, and I started crying. I couldn't believe it. I I casually looked down, made sure that my record light was working, and it was. And he looked at the camera, and the most amazing thing happened after that. He was the patriarch of the family. He got down and he walked right up to the camera. This is 100% true, and walked right towards me. And I wasn't scared. I just felt connected with this animal. He was an 800-pound mountain gorilla, wild. He walked right up to me and he touched the lens. I have it all on video. He touched the lens, and by the way, I kept that fingerprint on that lens, that $50,000 lens for two years. He touched the lens and he was, and I think what happened was he saw this big round, his lens was like six inches big, was this big professional lens. He might have seen a reflection, but he touched the lens. And after that, for the next 45 minutes, it took 15 minutes for this to happen of the one hour that we had. He must have said to his fellow gorillas that these guys are cool. Let's give them a show. And after that, I kid you not, it was like they posed for me. I if I could have had all these gorillas in my studio and I had an Academy Award-winning lighting director, I couldn't have gotten better shots. They just posed, they were doing all these little things, and I couldn't shoot enough shots. They were just all little babies hanging from, just looking into the lens and these big things, and then he would sit down and pose, look right at me and eat this root of this. It was the most amazing thing. And I felt this connection. I felt this connection with nature. And I and now every time I shoot wildlife, I need to get a connection with these animals. One little thing is at the end of the shoot, the patriarch grabbed a female and they made it in front of me. It was the most amazing thing. And I didn't use that. I photographed it, but I didn't use it on my final shots. But it was the most amazing thing. The head of the national parks that took us there said he's only saw that twice, and he's been doing this for 15 years. For some reason, we have this connection. And imagine this, Mirab. At the time, there were only 750 wild gorillas. Now they've gone up to, I think, 1,500 now. But what if that meeting resulted in a new silverback gorilla? I don't know if that happened or not, but it was the most amazing experience. And I've had many experiences like that filming all over the world.

8K Cameras Frame Rates And Finish

Mirav Ozeri - Host 16:03

I know. I think I saw the shot of the gorilla on your website that really made me stop. It is so sharp. Which brings me, I just want to ask a technical question. You use the Hasselblatt camera with a 5k plus. Is that the camera they took on Artemis 2 to shoot the space now?

SPEAKER_01 16:21

I think so. And that's the that's the still camera. The video cameras that we use, we shoot 8K with red. With these red cameras with big Cine lenses, and the Cine lenses are everything's manual. We shoot 8K and in 60 frames a second. What happens is when you play 60 frames a second of video back, especially on big large screens, it gives you unbelievable real feel. When you shoot 24 frames, that's a film standard. It became a standard way back in the 20s and when color film came out. But 60 frames, it's a true window of the world. And when you see this content on big screens with playing back on servers that will allow you to play 60 frames with 120 hertz uh refresh rate, it's like you're there. We color grade our footage, we spend 10 times more time than on just doing color grading and trimming our clips than we do shooting them. We call a secret sauce that we do. You see a lot of stuff on YouTube, but our quality is far superior. And we put put a lot of money into it, by the way, a finish to our content. Everything looks good on a phone, but when you expand these 30, 50, 60 foot screens, and you're right next to them, you see everything. We want to make sure that we don't finish anything more than what nature can deliver. That's like a little bit of what we do, and it's been just amazing. And I I can't tell you how excited. I just got back from a month and a half long trip with my drone and my red cameras. I traveled the whole western United States. I drove 9,000 miles without going on interstates. I made sure that my GPS avoided big highways. And I would, I'm a guitar player too, and I love playing guitar. And I found this little town called Clarksdale, Mississippi, and it's the home of the Delta Blues. And it's interesting, it's not a it's not a tourist place. It was just it was dilapidated and kind of poverty stricken. But all these blues players were playing on the street, and I got some amazing shots of that as well. And it was the heart and soul of America.

Mirav Ozeri - Host 18:35

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 18:36

And the world is so beautiful, and it holds billions and trillions of moments every day of these little moments that you can capture. I don't go out and try to shoot necessarily subjects. I try to shoot light and moments and try to find rare light, try to find that sunset light, or when the fog is rolling through a mountain. I find if I feel something when I shoot a picture, the audience will feel it too. You have to feel it. It's it's partially in your eyes, but mostly in

Travel Humility And Shared Humanity

SPEAKER_01 19:11

your heart.

Mirav Ozeri - Host 19:11

Yeah. So you've been to a hundred locations. Which location, beside that thing in Mississippi that obviously was emotional for you as a guitar player, what other location really blew your mind? And what did you learn about humanity from all those places that you go that people never go to?

SPEAKER_01 19:28

Oh, a great question. One place that touched me is when we were traveling through Tibet and Nepal, and we were going through these areas, and we were we were on our way to Everest on the Tibet side, and it was a very interesting trek. But on the way, we had a guide, and he was Buddhist, and he was such an amazing human. He was, we kind of learned his philosophy to a certain degree. It could take a lot longer than the time we had just to learn it all. But he was this incredible man that we fell and actually fell in love with. And he took us to these temples into these places and with such kind heart. And what we learned, and I say we, like it was my son was with me. And what we learned is it the world is this huge place, and I've been so fortunate to travel many corners of this world. But what I've learned is the more I've traveled, the more I realize what I don't know. Interesting. It makes me humble. I grew up on a farm in South Dakota, and I have some friends that have never traveled, barely out of leaving the state, and they're great people, but they seem to have the answers for everything, and they haven't seen the world. And I've seen a lot of the world, and I have no answers. All I know is people are the same everywhere. No matter what they're political, we are so much more the same than we are different. And if there's any way my images can show that, I want that to happen. I remember seeing this girl in Nairobi. She was doing all the work. The young girls do all the work. The men kind of sit around because in the past they were warriors. So these young women are doing all the carrying the water and doing all the stuff. And I just saw her when we were filming that area for eyes, just for something bigger and better. She just wants to have a life. We were in the middle of a village. It was nothing but grass huts, but they had a big table with solar panels with a hundred phones. These villages, they all have cell phones, they're connected, but they had they had no way of charging them. So they are all charging them on this table. I got a picture of it, it's amazing. They all want their burdens lifted any way possible. And if there's any way we can do that, we we're

WoW Academy And Global Creators

SPEAKER_01 21:40

trying. And one way we're trying, and one thing we're doing with Windows of the World, we have a little side thing on our website. It's called the WOW Academy.

Mirav Ozeri - Host 21:48

I was gonna ask you about that. I want you to tell me about it.

SPEAKER_01 21:51

Yeah, thank you, Mirab. We're really proud of it. Every quarter I get online, we do a video presentation to students from all All over the world. The last one we had, I think 150 students, and they were from Kenya, India, Vietnam, Thailand, they're from all over. And we're teaching these young filmmakers and students how to create images. And I give them inspiration, how to shoot it, and how to get the best quality. And you can do it with phones. You don't need these big cameras all the time. And I was always asked, what's your favorite camera? I always say the camera that's with me at the time. And a lot of times it's your phone. Now, obviously, we want the best quality and all that. But anyway, we're teaching these students how to create content. And then if they make the grade, we pay them. We actually pay them and buy their footage. And it gives them a lift. And as a matter of fact, right now I'm working with my partner Terry Torok. During the World Cup in Sao Paulo, we're going to have a contest, and the winners of WoW Academy will have their footage shown on the big screens in the World Cup.

Mirav Ozeri - Host 22:58

So wait, it's very important. If any of the listeners want to get into the Wow Wow Academy, how can they do this?

SPEAKER_01 23:05

Just go to the website, click on the WoW Academy, it explains it all. And there's a page that you can upload your footage unedited because then we take the footage and we put our secret sauce on it. We can make cell phone footage look incredible. The key is it gives them a sense of community, it gives them a sense of pride in where they come from and where they live. And find these little moments. Let's take this Wow Academy and let's fill our library with moments of the world from all over, from Russia, Iran, to wherever. Let's open the world to the beauty it

Designing Massive LED Video Walls

SPEAKER_01 23:44

has.

Mirav Ozeri - Host 23:44

I saw that for the casinos, you worked on a hundred-foot video wall. Is there special preparation when you shoot for something as large as that?

SPEAKER_01 23:55

Yes, and there's a lot to that. And by the way, part of what our business does, and we also design these video walls too. And so we do the design and we make wraparound columns and interesting shapes and all that kind of stuff for certain installations that require it. But yeah, when you're shooting for these video walls, this is ultra panoramic. And it was curved, if I'm correct, right? Exactly. What we do on that is we would segment certain video scenes into this wall. You might have five or six 4K images playing on different servers, right? Different video servers in 4K, and you would superimpose those on the screen and move those around in a way to get the most impact. We have an installation where we have two big columns. They're four foot on each side and they go up, I think, 30 feet high. I saw that. So there are these columns that are that have our four-sided, seamless video. You don't see the corners. And what we've done is we created drone shots wrap around the columns that all move in one direction. And so it's constantly resolving from a shot flying over a ridge in the Alps to a shot going through the rocks of Sedona to shots of the Eiffel Tower in Paris. And they're constantly moving forward. So it's just you're constantly flying through the world.

Mirav Ozeri - Host 25:18

Do you own all your footage?

SPEAKER_01 25:21

Yes. Great question. When I worked at the casino for the last 20 years, they paid me really good money. We'll talk about that over the years. And they own the footage. And so part of the deal when I retired from the peppermill and started my new business, that I could not use that footage at least until I build a big enough library where we can trade footage. Oh and we're in the middle of doing that now. I created for the peppermint some 20,000 beautiful images. My new company, Windows of the World, which we only started back in August, we've already got up to 5,000 of our own images. So we're already a quarter of the way there in less than a year. And I've put a lot of my own money into it, buying trips, buying cameras, buying drones and all that kind of stuff. That's a huge investment. Yeah, it's a it was a big investment. The beauty is I have the rest of my life to build this library and maybe some help with the WoW Academy. It's a bit of a challenge right now. When you work for an operation like I did with the casino for so many years, that had almost an unlimited budget. And I worked with the owner and I made all the decisions. I decided where we go, and I decided who would come. And I had no one above me except for the owner. All he would do, he would want me to go as much as I possibly can, and he would just pay for whatever. I remember and we had the opportunity to go down to Antarctica, and I brought it up to his attention. He goes, Let's just do it. And so we went to Antarctica and I couldn't believe shooting penguins. I got this shot of this Emperor penguin coming out of the water, walking in front of a whale skeleton in incredible low light. When you get to Antarctica or to Alaska in the summertime, the sun stays low, 24 hours almost. And that magic hour.

Mirav Ozeri - Host 27:09

What was the most amazing location you went to?

SPEAKER_01 27:12

I would probably say the South Island of New Zealand. There's some areas in New Zealand around Mount Cook. I remember laying down, looking at the stars after a great day of filming. I looked up and then we saw the Southern Cross constellation. We just sat there and almost fell asleep at the beach, and we just watched the Southern Cross dip into the horizons, and it was the most amazing experience. And I just felt, what did I do to be so lucky to be sitting here in the world making good money? The thing about video production, and I worked for MTV and I worked for all these places and worked on movies and all that stuff. And you never get that kind of freedom. You're always, you're always answering to someone, you're always a small part of this big picture, right? And but I came up with this little idea of creating this content to put on screens that is so simple. How could anyone think it was worth anything? But it was, and enough that I was able to change my life and the people around me.

Mirav Ozeri - Host 28:17

I looked on your website, I was surprised. It wasn't so much drone, it but drones were the big game changer, right?

SPEAKER_01 28:23

Yeah, they were a big game changer, and some of those shots were actually shot with a drone, but I got the right position and just hovered, didn't move at all. If I do use drone shots, I usually like to go slow and forward. For instance, the Eiffel Tower, we you know, I did it at night. So it's unbelievable to do a slow little wraparound. But usually if it's a drone shot, I try to make them really slow. Try not to have the motion of the drone take over the emotion of the shot.

Mirav Ozeri - Host 28:52

So you said you shot the Eiffel Tower at night. You can shoot with a drone anywhere in the world. Do you have a license for that?

SPEAKER_01 28:58

We had to get special permits. In the case of Europe, I had to get another European license. And then you have to let the air force know what you're doing and all that stuff. And so it's it costs money to get good shots. How high are you allowed to fly the drone? Usually you stay within 400 feet of height. There's times I've flown up to 3,000 feet. We were in Patagonia and I was with the top drone guys and top aviators of the country. We had to pay for the permit. They were with us, and he showed me how to take my drone to 3,000 feet, no flights or anything in the area, and that gave us the ability to get these unbelievable shots. But you we had the guys with us that allowed us to do that.

Mirav Ozeri - Host 29:39

Now, those drones are not a $2,000 drones. How much a drone like this cost?

SPEAKER_01 29:44

We have drones that we spend as much as $30,000, $40,000 with, but those are so big. Our drones that we do most of our work with is about $5,000. They're not crazy expensive. Wow. But they're amazing what they do. The goal with a great footage is to get high resolution, four, five, six K resolution, but it looks smooth, it looks crisp, but it has a lacquery feel to it, not over harsh. Your phone can shoot great stuff, but if it's blown up, it can look kind of harsh. It shoots 4K, but it can look kind of harsh. And that there's reasons why people spend so much money on good cameras.

Money Risk AI And The Next Market

Mirav Ozeri - Host 30:22

So you said that you went on your own in August. Were you afraid? Was there a big money risk to do that?

SPEAKER_01 30:30

Yeah, I was making over $300,000 a year with this casino for years. And I was saving money doing all this stuff. And also now that's gonna go away. I had to spend hundreds of thousands of my own dollars to buy drones, to buy permits, to buy insurance, to buy cameras, not only drones, but nice red cameras and lenses and tripods and with nothing guaranteed. I didn't have a market. Yeah, it's a huge risk. I haven't pulled in any outside money at all yet on this thing. And we'll probably give be looking for investment here in the next few months, but we've done everything ourselves.

Mirav Ozeri - Host 31:05

And they the immersive video industry is at the beginning of it.

SPEAKER_01 31:09

100%. We put a lot of time into the market and where it's going, and it's getting really big. We have a niche in what we're doing with our market and with our quality, and more importantly, how we curate our shots. When you go online to YouTube, they have great looking stuff. What you typically see is like a series of the same location, a shot of the Grand Canyon, and it's 20 minutes of Grand Canyon shots. But with our content, you're seeing a different shot every time.

Mirav Ozeri - Host 31:40

So you manage a team of 60 people all over the world. I saw people in Brazil, in Australia. It's really crazy. I don't even know how you do it. What is a typical range of a project that you work on the lower end and the higher end?

SPEAKER_01 31:55

Let's say we do a trip to Australia. I can do it as low as $10,000 by hiring local guys that I've already worked with. And for $10,000, maybe I'll get a few dozen really good shots. Or I could spend $50 or $60,000, take a team of three or four people and spend a couple two or three weeks and shoot everything ourselves and then get 500 great shots. So there's a big range. I've spent as much as 300,000 on a big trip to South America. It was about a month long. I had a team of six guys, and then we hired guides all over the place.

Mirav Ozeri - Host 32:34

You have a secondary market, right? You have footage you can send to sell to films and commercials and 100%.

SPEAKER_01 32:42

We do sell. As a matter of fact, it's funny, at the Nona Impact Forum, one of the Shark Tank guys was there. I talked to him afterwards because I was thinking about maybe I can pitch my windows of the world on Shark Tank. Oh. My company has a piece of footage that's displayed when the contestants are walking through the little alleyway and they see these sharks on the TV monitor on the side. That's my footage. That's my underwater footage. And I sold it to the casino. We sold it to them early on, right? When they were first starting Shark Tank. And we sold it to them and they're still using it. So yes, we can't we do we can sell the footage. We're not a stocked footage company. Our business model is licensing. And video wall sales is part of what we do because that's one thing that we got really good at. We do all the drawings and the schematics, and we can design very intricate video wall systems.

Mirav Ozeri - Host 33:34

So let's say I want to build a 20 feet by 30 feet video wall. What would it cost me? What would you charge me? That's a big one. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 33:42

I would say it by the time you get it, it all depends on where you do it to, because the permits and contractors, but probably would be half a million, probably.

Mirav Ozeri - Host 33:51

Oh yeah, I can see that. You mentioned AI before. Your footage is so perfect and it's so stunning. I'm sure some people will say this was shot by AI. How do you make sure people don't think that AI did it and it was those hard work and sweat that did it?

SPEAKER_01 34:08

That's the $64,000 question. Where is any content going? There's programs you can give them about two paragraphs of context and they can create a song that sounds professional and it's free, basically free, and it just spins for about two or three minutes and then it spits out this content, right? And people are starting to, and I'm hoping this is my answer to your question. People are starting to push back a little bit. What is real and what isn't? And people want to know. There's companies out there, Morav, right now, that are working on tagging videos and music, real or not real. Oh, good. In fact, that's why I got this new phone and got these microphones and I got all this stuff. So we're documenting our travels. But let's be honest, even those could be AI if one wanted to. But I don't know where all this is going to end up. I don't know. Nobody does. All I know is we're going to continue doing our stuff and we're going to create real content. The real wow.com. That's us. I know there'll be a market. Is it at one point we looked at it? Can we create an app like Calm? I don't know if you're familiar with Calm. Oh, of course. I love it. By the way, Calm had a market cap, and I think it still is a market capitalization of $4 billion, that app. What? I didn't know that. Yeah, $4 billion with a B. And they have just very limited video. Our library is way bigger than the Calm library as far as video goes. So we're thinking, could we build this thing that big and make it what we call an OTT, which is an over-the-top app? That's what YouTube is. It's basically delivering video over the top of standard table TV and broadcast. And could we build this thing into something like Calm? Or do we build it to something we have WoW Academy in full swing? We have 10,000, 20,000 images, and Google or Apple want to add that to their collection or Samsung or LG. And then they buy you for two, 300 million.

Advice To Younger Self And Dream Build

Mirav Ozeri - Host 36:06

That would be nice. What would you tell your 18-year-old self, given all your accomplishment?

SPEAKER_01 36:13

Oh my gosh. Oh, I love that question. When I was 18, I was living on a farm in South Dakota. And I was, and I had two brothers and a sister. We had a thousand head of cattle. We had a thousand acres. We had the big trucks and we had the combines and all this big stuff. I was going to be a farmer. And I loved it. Future Farmers of America is one of the largest youth organizations. And I was the president of our FFA chapter. And I was a leader in the farming community. And I had already had my own projects where I bought my own cattle when I was 18 and rented my own little plots of land. And I was starting to learn the business. My dad made sure I did that. And then what happened was the farm crisis happened of the mid-80s. And you've probably heard of farm aid and all that kind of stuff. And by the way, the farm crisis was just as bad as the Great Depression, but only for a small group of farmers. Anyway, we lost the whole farm by the time I was 21. And I was going to college as an agricultural major. I changed my major to communications, grew my hair long, learned how to play guitar, and learned how to DJ, close DJ. And I moved to Reno and I started DJing. I was in bands and I started mixing sound and I got into this whole other business. That's what started this whole thing. But I always wondered what was over the hill. And I'll never forget, I went to San Francisco with a friend of mine. I'd never seen that ocean. So I went to what they call land's end. It's right at the edge, and you could see all the rock and the big waves were crashing and watched the sunset. And I was probably 22 years old then. And I just wondered what was on the other side of that ocean. And now being 64, almost 65, going to and hitting almost 100 countries and seeing it all, I wouldn't in a million years would have thought I could have come up with this simple idea of locking down a camera and creating content when I was sitting on that tractor in South Dakota. I never would have thought that all I would tell him, that 18-year-old guy, follow your dreams, do what you love, and work hard. It's all about hard work. Luck only allows your hard work, gives the hard work a little better chance. Your hard work on finding the location and rushing and doing when that great spot of light comes down and it only lasts two minutes and you have 30 trying to get a 30-second shot. That's your luck. But you better be darn sure that your camera's ready to go and you your tripod's ready. And so you're constantly looking around. So luck has something to do with it, but hard work and perseverance and passion.

Mirav Ozeri - Host 38:52

What is your dream project that you would like to do? Or you're already doing all your dream projects.

SPEAKER_01 38:58

No, we're working on it. Right now, I'm working with the people with the Cleveland Clinic organization. And they've grown to, I think, 800 contributing hospitals around the world. Oh, wow. And they just they built a huge facility in Abu Dhabi. They have one in Las Vegas here where I'm located. Incredible facility. It's the Cleveland Clinic, the Lou Rouville Center for Mental Health. It's a leader in mental health research. And we put together an amazing proposal. That project would be a dream project for me. We where we would build incredible-looking displays based on art. By the way, this Cleveland Clinic in Vegas is an amazing place. The architect was Frank Gary. He didn't want to go to Vegas. All these casinos, Steve Wynn and all these people wanted him to design their casinos. He wouldn't do it. He thought it was cheap. But he designed this place, his last big place is before he died last year. So we designed some displays to pay homage to him and the artwork that they put into this building, where their curved screens and the frames are built out of these stainless steel, look like little windows. And so we've pitched three times to those guys, and it's it's moving. And I'm actually going to be showing the CEO and all the head guys of the Cleveland Clinic the peppermint here in a couple of weeks. That one contact will kick this new business off that we'll never have to look at. And that's what we're working on right now. That would be a dream job to provide content not only for their building, but to but their one of their mottos and one of their mission statements is to teach and help the caregiver. And so we're working that we can provide the the Cleveland Clinic outpatient screens for like just regular TVs and licenses that that can be specifically curated for that particular patient. And anyway, that sounds amazing. That's where we're at. I know I'm going on and on. That's amazing, though.

Mirav Ozeri - Host 40:56

I love what I do. Oh, yeah, I can tell your footage. I used to be a photographer, so I know what it is. I know what it is to get the light, to get the expression, to wait for the shot, I know to lose the shot because it's so fast. I know. I was so impressed with your work. And basically, what you did in this conversation, you proved that you can have a career that combines entrepreneurship, travel, creativity, purpose. It's a dream for so many people, and you did it.

SPEAKER_01 41:25

Anyone can do it if when you do things for the right reasons and you have a high integrity, and then find a way to make money. That's a big part of it. You have to find a way to make money because that's the sustainable part of your dream.

Mirav Ozeri - Host 41:38

Right.

SPEAKER_01 41:39

And and you can, and it can't happen. Who would have thought this farm boy from South Dakota would have been able to do this stuff? And now, in my I'm not gonna call it my final chapter, but in my next chapter to do it on my own, who would have thought?

Mirav Ozeri - Host 41:52

And it's been just it has been a dream come true, and I were living a great really more power to you, and I can't thank you enough for this interesting conversation. And I learned a lot as an ex-photographer, especially. Oh, thank you so much. Thank you for your interest and thank you for your kind work. Oh good. That's it for today. And if you're interested in other creative careers, visit how muchcani.info and explore our creative careers category. You'll discover what different jobs are really like, how to break into the field, what skills you need, and how much you can earn. I will see you next week with another episode of How Much Can I Make.