Hollywood Is Lying | Evan Shapīro | Full Battery Media

I sat down with Evan Shapiro, the man the internet calls the media cartographer, and this conversation completely reframed how I think about building an audience right now. 

Evan has spent years mapping the entire media universe, and he was sounding the alarm on traditional television's collapse long before Hollywood wanted to admit it was happening. 

We get into why big media basically handed itself the noose, why YouTube quietly became the number one channel on actual television sets, and why chasing reach and followers is a losing strategy compared to what Evan calls the affinity economy.

 He breaks down how creators like Curry Barker and Kane Parsons are outperforming legacy Hollywood studios with a tiny fraction of the audience, and why nine people who genuinely love what you make matter more than nine thousand who barely notice you exist. 

If you only had 50 true fans right now, what's the first thing you'd build for them?

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

No, no, no, no, no, no. Traditional media committed suicide. Big tech handed them the noose, but traditional media did it to themselves. They took all their best content and sold it to Netflix without realizing that Netflix was out to destroy them. They took the early cash, the easy cash, rather than building their own version of it. And then they partnered on Hulu and fucked that up by not really leaning into it. So, no, no, big tech was the weapon that consumers used to destroy big media, but big media let it happen. They they saw the brick wall off in the distance. And as it kept getting closer, and I was out there screaming from the mountaintops, telling them you're running into a brick wall. Stop. And they're like, no, no, no. Everything's fine. Look, we launched streaming services. It's going so well. How did that work out? So it wasn't big tech. Big tech is happy to take the attention, time, and money, but they didn't do it. Uh big tech, big media allowed big tech to be the weapon of their own destruction.

SPEAKER_00 1:18

Welcome everybody to the Full Battery Media Podcast. I'm your host, Sean Trace, and I have an awesome guest with me today. Would you like to tell people who you are and a little bit about what you do?

SPEAKER_01 1:27

My name is Evan Shapiro. People call me the media cartographer. I take the data that is in the fire hose around us about the media ecosystem, and I turn it into hopefully digestible insights on Substack, on LinkedIn, on a podcast called the Media Odyssey Podcast and across the internets.

SPEAKER_00 1:49

That's awesome, man. How did you get into the whole media landscape? Like what started you down this path? What was the thing that got you into this?

SPEAKER_01 1:56

Um, well, I've been uh working in media since, you know, I was a kid. I was in theater as a kid. Uh, and then after I dropped out of college, I moved to New York. I started in uh the arts uh on Broadway. I helped launch Lion King and Rent and a whole bunch of uh Chicago. And uh then uh I started an agency and we went into predominantly live performance, but then we moved into film and television, and then the internet launched and we were in that. And then I worked in television after that. I sold my agency, worked at Core TV, IFC, I ran IFC and Sundance, and then eventually I worked my way up to being head of digital enterprises at NBC Universal, and then they promptly fired my ass, and I needed to figure out what to do next. And I always wanted to be a creator. I always wanted to create with my own hands. I produced a show called Portlandia when I was running IFC and I produced a lot of other things out there, one a couple of Emmys, uh, couple of Peabodies. Um, but I was not making it myself. And really, uh, after I got fired uh by Comcast and they gave me a really nice runway, I decided to become a creator myself. Um, and then I started uh a little while after that writing on LinkedIn every day. Um, that generated a tremendous amount of uh traffic that I did not expect. And then I launched this map of the media universe about six years ago, um, really to teach in my NYU class at the time. I taught at NYU for almost 20 years. And this map of the media ecosystem, the media universe map, really blew up. Deadline published it, and someone called me the media cartographer. And from that day on, uh, I've really been publishing my insights and uh making predictions, many of which have come true. And uh yeah, it's it's kind of ballooned from there.

SPEAKER_00 3:47

That's that's interesting, man. They've got so many things that I would like to ask about. But you know, you have been looking at media for a while, you've been in media, and I was reading a lot of what you post. You said the house is on fire in media. What does that actually mean for someone trying to build an audience right now?

SPEAKER_01 4:04

I mean, the map that I dropped in 2020 was meant to be the fire alarm. It was not meant to predict anything. Uh at that time, I created this map that where all the big deck comp big tech companies were shown in juxtaposition with traditional media. And my point was at that point, six years ago, big tech had already overtaken the center of gravity in the media universe. Um, if you think about how you access a lot of your media, a tremendous amount of it is through your phone. In fact, people today, we just did a survey, say that they use their phone more for video than they do their television. And when you think about the world's smartphones, it's that market is controlled by just two companies, Apple and Google. And so the the this concept that traditional media could continue as is at the time without altering its trajectory or its strategy was just bonkers. And that was really me ringing the fire alarm. Um and what's happened, and and what happened in 2019-2020 when all the major media companies, particularly Disney, started this, went direct to consumer following Netflix, but they went with an ad-free model. They ceded 100% control to the consumer. Suddenly, consumers were not subscribing through the cable bundle, but they're subscribing directly from Disney and Warner Brothers Discovery and NBC Universal. And the undoing of the bundle, I I don't know that uh everyone understands this, that the media ecosystem, the media industrial complex for the 40 years leading up to 2018-2019 was really driven by these massive margins in the cable bundle, which were not sustainable. Disney used that money to produce massive movies and build out their infrastructure, et cetera, et cetera. ESPN, but just the profits alone from the ESPN and Fox News and all these others. As the cable bundle began to disintegrate, so did the foundation of the traditional media ecosystem. And now consumers spend more time, more screen time is spent right now on social media than entertainment.

SPEAKER_00 6:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:13

And uh and when when Gen Z tells us, and they did in a survey we did recently, that their third favorite place to watch video is the toilet. 40% of them said the toilet is a top three place to watch video. You know, the the world as we knew it, sitting on a couch watching television at, you know, Sunday night at seven o'clock, that's just over. And you have to design everything differently around the habits of today's consumers. And that's another thing that traditional media does really poorly. It does not pay attention to the audience at all. Yeah, you know, the traditional media ecosystem is I'm gonna make something, put it on the TV, and you will watch it. And that's just not how it works anymore. And um, you know, the the the disintegration of the push model into a pull model um is really what you're seeing all around us. I mean, this past weekend, the top two movies at the box office were made by YouTubers who put their first version of the films up on YouTube. It they beat Star Wars by by a lot. And, you know, when that happens, you you have to really undo everything that you've been thinking up until this point. 70% of the world's population are millennials and younger. I think I say that in rooms with senior executives at media companies, and that blows their mind as if math isn't a thing, right? Like, right? Just do the fucking math, man. And and and there was this perception in traditional media, and I just kept hearing it that well, millennials and Gen Z, when they grow up, they'll just watch TV. Like we're gonna suddenly get a taste for coffee and beer. It's not how it works. And the reverse is actually happening. The media habits of millennials, Gen Z, and Gen A are becoming the media habits of the rest of us. YouTube is the number one channel on TV, on TV, not just the number one video channel in the world, which it is, but the number one channel in the US on TV. 60% of YouTube is watched on TV. And the fastest growing demographic for YouTube usage is 55 plus. So the way we designed the media ecosystem as we when you and I were growing up, it that's over. It's over. We can put it aside now. The good news is there are great examples of what to do now. Yeah. Obsession and and backrooms are two really good examples of that. So, you know, that's what I mean. That was a very long answer, so I apologize for that.

SPEAKER_00 8:41

It's awesome. I I love long answers because they're full of gems and gold nuggets that I think are awesome to kind of dive into afterwards. But like a couple things that I um I had an interesting experience before I got into media. I taught, I taught kids, and it was a side hustle for many years while I was in Asia. I was teaching. And one of the wildest things that I saw as I witnessed the transition of understanding from younger generations of like who were they were aware of, right? So it's wild now. Kids don't even know the Avengers. Like some of these kids, like they're they're just like, who's that? But like they're like, oh, my daughter's like, to we have a pet rat over here. And my daughter's like, it's really fast. I should name it, I chose speed. I said, We're not doing that, but I okay, you know, and then she's like, Well, she's climbing from the walls. And she's like, My daughter also knew Spider-Man because we watch a lot of movies. She's like, Oh, Gwen Stacy, you know, and I was like, Okay, cool, but the name of the rat is neither here nor there. But she can name all of the people on Mr. Beast's crew, she can name all of the top YouTubers. But if I were to show her any of the more, like, even like the things that you would think that she would know, she doesn't. We went to watch um, but I was fascinated because it's not that they don't like that stuff. We like, we went to watch um Star Wars 4DX. We went to watch Mandalorian and Grogu 4DX. And my daughter was just like, dude, this is awesome. First of all, 4DX is awesome, chairs shaking and everything. But you know, she didn't know any of the characters. And she was like, she was open to it. And what I thought was interesting was that I think the the studios, everyone has to sit there and go, okay, because you what you just described, people are not thinking about that. I still work with people creating YouTube channels and like, well, I'm trying to think about what I want to create. And I said, Well, hang on, who are you making videos for? Have you thought about what they want to consume? But I want to think about what I want to create. And I was like, well, you're thinking about it wrong, you know?

SPEAKER_01 10:44

Yeah. And and I mean, look, you can make what you want to make, but then when the audience gives you feedback, adjust for that. Yeah. Um, and by the way, this is happening now in real time. Love Island behaves like a creator. Love Island, which is produced by ITV, they behave, that show behaves like a creator. Bluey, which is owned by BBC Studios or run by BBC Studios, that behaves like a creator. And just like Mr. Beast, it's transmedia. It's huge on YouTube, it's huge on all their social platforms, but it's also the number one most streamed show on the planet Earth, Bluey. Love Island programs, what they say is they program in-between seasons. They actually also produce that, they they use the community to change the way they produce the show. Um, but you know, today's today's audiences they have infinite choice at their fingertips.

SPEAKER_00 11:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:38

Um, and that screen that is our remote control, you know, brings us the entertainment we need built around our own tastes. YouTube isn't is the number one uh channel on TV, not because it makes the best television. It doesn't actually make any TV. It's because there are 1.2 billion hours of content on YouTube and it personalizes itself around my experience every time I turn it on. Netflix doesn't do that, HBO Max doesn't do that, Disney Plus doesn't do that, Hulu doesn't do that. And it's and it it always works too, wherever I am in the world. Those are that's a different experience. So, yes, today's audiences are much more uh inclined to know who Sean Evans and Amelia de Moldenberg and Mr. Beast are than or KS uh uh uh KSI or someone like that, the sidemen, than they are to know who Reese Witherspoon or The Rock or any of these other uh stars are.

SPEAKER_00 12:35

It's interesting too, and it's interesting to watch creators try to figure it out. I I watch, you know, you're you described as well some of the people that are YouTubers that are crossing in traditional media, and then there's also people just going all back and forth, and you see some people that are winning at it, you know. Um, Beast Games was really interesting to me to watch as Mr. Beast crossed into like the more traditional format. But I've also seen people that did it tried to cross over and it went a weird direction. Like one of the channels that I thought was really weird, and I I would love to get them on and ask why they did this, but Coyote Peterson and Brave Wilderness, a couple years ago, were crushing it online, and then he decided to step away from his YouTube channel so he could sign uh an Animal Planet contract. And he went and started doing an Animal Planet show, and his YouTube channel suffered horribly from it, you know, and it was interesting because they tried to pass the YouTube channel off to one of his buddies that was in the videos too, and it didn't go the same way because people wanted Coyote, people wanted his reactions. But it seems that like what I see is like people are still trying to figure out this shift and like there's still this enamored nature that we have with big cinema, big screens in Hollywood, you know?

SPEAKER_01 13:49

Yeah, I mean, the what I find fascinating. So a couple of different things there, you can't just pour a YouTuber into a television show and hope that it works. It's not that's not how it works. You actually have to give them control of the show.

SPEAKER_00 14:01

Right.

SPEAKER_01 14:01

And you have to, and that, and that YouTuber or that creator has to make the show that they know their audience wants, but also putting a show on the television. I mean, a lot of creators are still obsessed with that because they grew up loving television and they want that kind of, you know, verification from, you know, uh from Hollywood. Um, you got to give that up. It you really do. But then you watch what Beast did with Beast Games. Um, and there are some other examples of that that that are working. The collaborations, Ms. Rachel, uh, and the collaboration there, I think is is is working out really well for them. Um the the interesting thing about movies is um, you know, movies are really driven by young people. Um the median age for movie theaters is much younger than almost any other media, other than like TikTok. And that's because young people, they they meet up online, they get obsessed with something like Barbenheimer, and then they show up to the theater en masse together as a as a social uh uh you know meetup. And um, and and it's become and then they go post about it and then they have conversations about it afterwards. And that's how obsession and backrooms and frankly Barbie and a couple of other big hits, uh uh Weapons, um, Sinners, uh a lot of the uh a lot of the bigger films from the last couple of years that became surprising hits. They didn't become surprising hits if you followed them online first. Um, so there is this obsession with the big screen, but Hollywood has lost the thread. They really do not understand how uh consumerism works uh these days. It's why they're always that's why they were surprised this past weekend. I knew this was gonna happen. And anybody who really follows YouTube knew exactly what was gonna happen. Thursday, they did uh uh backrooms did $34 million at the domestic box office just in preview screenings. And we all, you know, those of us who track this all knew like, oh, this is over. And then what I've heard this week since is that Hollywood is fucking on fire right now. They're all like, oh my God, the paradigm has shifted. It's like, no, it shifted five years ago. You fucking narcissistic, navel gazing, like smell your own farts, like it just every euphemism you would want to use, they just they only see the insides of their own brains and they don't adjust uh as a result of that. But I think we're we're at a critical moment here. I think you're gonna see with a new CEO at Disney, a new CEO at Apple, I think you're gonna see a paradigm shift over the next five years where actually the the fastest growing segment of the creator economy are gonna be big studios and big IP holders rushing to try to replicate what's been happening over the last couple of years for themselves. If Disney unleashes its library, I did a study about this at the beginning of this year, that if they all they did was turn on ads for the 500 films that they rent on YouTube, they have 500 films that they rent through movies and TV on YouTube. If they monetize those free with ads, they'd make a billion dollars. Billion dollars, 140 million dollars a year for 10 years, over a billion dollars, $1.4 billion. And they're not doing that. That's just 500 films. That's not their television shows, that's not a lot of their other, you know, Pixar stuff and things like that. So I think you're gonna see uh an awakening in Hollywood. Um, and I think those who do awaken properly can make the transition. BBC Studios is a great example of this, ITV Studios is a great example of this, ZDF Studios in Germany is a great example of this, but you're seeing many more. Hallmark has recently gotten into the game of uh releasing their films uh on YouTube, and in part because I worked with them and convinced them to do that. And they're seeing a tremendous reaction as a result of that. And that's gonna happen more and more and more.

SPEAKER_00 17:57

Interesting, man. That's so interesting. I I wanted to ask you this though, too, because um big tech killed traditional media, right? So we've established that. But does for the the Korean No, no, no, no, no, no.

SPEAKER_01 18:10

Traditional media committed suicide. Big tech handed them the noose, but traditional media did it to themselves. They took all their best content and sold it to Netflix without realizing that Netflix was out to destroy them. Right. They took the early cash, the easy cash, rather than building their own version of it. And then they partnered on Hulu and fucked that up by not really leaning into it. Um, so no, no, big tech was the weapon that consumers used to destroy big media, but big media let it happen. They they saw the brick wall off in the distance, and as it kept getting closer, and I was out there screaming from the mountaintops, telling them you're running into a brick wall, stop. And they're like, no, no, no. Everything's fine. Look, we launched streaming services, it's going so well. How did that work out? So it wasn't big tech. Big tech is happy to take the the attention, time, and money, but they didn't do it. Uh big tech, big media allowed big tech to be the weapon of their own destruction.

SPEAKER_00 19:18

Let me ask you this then. You know, as big tech has um facilitated traditional media is just absolute, you know, hardcurry. Uh, does actually actually that would be voluntary. They just were idiots about it, but does that make things easier or harder for a regular person trying to grow online?

SPEAKER_01 19:39

I mean, the pro the problem. So there's two things here. Uh when I was growing up in media, it was easy. The hardest part was, you know, having a relative in the business and then having them get you a job, which I didn't have. I had to break in myself. But the vast majority of people who run the media business were past it down from a relative or a friend or a fraternity brother or sister. 54, uh, you're 54 times more likely to run a media company if you went to an Ivy League than the average college student in the United States. Not the average American, but the average college student. And only 40% of Americans go to college. So it's, it's a, it's a oligarchy. It's a it's a royalty that runs Hollywood. Um, so that you know, that's that lack of diversity of thought at the top of these ecosystems is is really a part of it. But as we were coming up, the media ecosystem was easy because there were very few competitors. You competed against a very small club. Today the competition isn't a few cable channels or a couple of streamers, it's 7 billion people with a phone. The good news is the consumer base or the buyers are also those same 7 billion. Um, and the rules of the creator economy have also changed. You're you're not gonna become Mr. Beast. There is never going to be another Mr. Beast. What's gonna happen is Curry Barker and Enox Tag and Markiplier, these are the new creator stars. They don't have 400 million followers. I think Curry Barker has a million and a half followers, and yet he has a massive hit in Hollywood. Kane Parsons, I think, has a million followers, and yet he opened with $85 million at the box office. The metrics are no longer those vanity metrics of the last era, even for creators, for Hollywood too, but for especially for creators, it's about a small, passionate cult. It's about engagement and fandom. It's about super serving the super fan, not trying to get scale for scale's sake. So that's really crucial. Breaking through no longer means getting to 100 million subscribers. It means getting a thousand people who fucking love your shit and then go out and evangelize for you. And then you have to flip the monetization model as a result of that. My model, I'm a creator, I'm an influencer. I know it seems Weird for this old Jewish dude from you know from the upper west side of Manhattan to call himself an influencer, but that's what I do for a living.

SPEAKER_00 22:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:06

I don't have a big audience. I really don't have a big audience. I have a I have a passionate cult. I have a hundred percent share a voice of the community that I love. That's the model. I call it the affinity uh economy, not the creator economy. That's the new model where fandom and loyalty and passion and engagement are the metrics, not reach and frequency and CPMs.

SPEAKER_00 22:28

There was a book I read a couple years ago called Trust Agents when social media was just getting going. I love that book. And it was just it talked about this get people to trust you, get people to buy in, get people to invest in what you're creating. And I mean, at any like given point in time, if you can do that, you have the power to like, you know, maybe you let's go back a couple years of people who liked a certain actor in a movie. They might show up, you know, kind of, yeah, the guy's got a new movie out. Do we show up? I don't know, we can watch it next weekend. But like some of these fandoms, like we were uh, I was thinking about um this one concert that my wife had here in Asia. And it was like a huge concert. And these people worshipped some of these, these, these creator singers. And like they showed up like BTS style, just like people were freaking out. And like, I think one of the people that was such a transitional that I saw that I just was like, I've never seen anyone do that before, like since Michael Jackson was like Psy. Have you ever seen one of Sai's concerts in Korea? It was crazy, crazy, absolutely crazy.

SPEAKER_01 23:35

And like, and and and and you say, and and most people our age have no idea who the fuck that is. Right. And he just left the side man uh this week. And I mean, it's it's a it's a it's a crazy, crazy uh uh uh uh transition from where we were, where you could put a commercial on television and a hundred thousand people would show up. That's not how it works anymore. Um, it is about passionate uh uh cults, small, you know, small cults. The ask yourself why rot the rock can't open a movie by himself.

SPEAKER_00 24:09

Right.

SPEAKER_01 24:10

Why can't Will Smith do anything uh anymore? It's because they bought their followers, those followers were not earned. You can and we charted the creator ecosphere last year and we charted it based on engagement. Billy Eilish has the highest engagement of any creator on the face of the earth. 9% engagement. 9%. That means 9% of the people, and she has like 80 million followers on on TikTok and a bunch on Instagram, and and 9% of her 72 million or 80 million. Uh uh Taylor Swift has crazy engagement. If you want to understand the difference between Taylor Swift and The Rock, look at their engagement rates. And it's it's a paradigm shift. There's a great comparison in Brazil. Globo has a as their national broadcaster of Brazil. They have a massive sports channel. The number one sportscaster in Brazil has nothing to do with Globo. It's a YouTuber called Kaze. And he has 104, all 104 FIFA World Cup matches will be on his YouTube channel. Only about 50 of them will be on Globo's. He has 16 times the engagement of Globo. He also has many more followers. He's this, you know, schlubby guy who talks about football. And he's the biggest sportscaster in all of Brazil, perhaps maybe even in the world. And that's that engagement uh without any production values. He does it from a kind of teeny little studio without all the fancy graphics and all the bullshit and all the you know Tom Brady's. Um, he does it all by himself. He started as an intern for live mode. That's the paradigm shift that we're going to, which is I'd rather feel like I know the person making my entertainment. Um, it's not, it's it's the difference between having a social relationship with your fan base and having a parasocial relationship with your fan base. And that's the shift.

SPEAKER_00 26:03

It's wild, man, and it's wild because it's happening in real time. And, you know, I wanted to ask you this because for people that are trying to build, like, what's the single biggest creator mistake that that kills their growth before it starts?

SPEAKER_01 26:18

Trying to please everybody. Um, they think they have to become Mr. Beast. They think they have to become, I'll give you a, I'll give you a comp just from my own life. So I'm a LinkedIn influencer. That's my number one platform, and I have a pretty decent following there. Um, and so I talk to people who are kind of getting into the consulting business and things like that, and they're like, well, I should just, you know, I should try to do what you do, which is get a built-up big audience on LinkedIn. I'm like, it the day you try to shoot for everyone is the day you get no one.

SPEAKER_00 26:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:44

You should start with the with the cult that already loves you. Even if it's a hundred people, super serve them, and then they will talk about you, super serve that circle, and they will talk about you, and it grows and it grows and it grows. And use the feedback loop to adapt and learn and test and learn and change and keep pleasing the audience. It isn't about trying to get to a hundred million people. That that other other than the Super Bowl and World Cup and Eurovision, there aren't that that era is over. Yeah. Um, the Academy Awards are going to YouTube in 2029. So it is about igniting the base. I mean, and if you want the best example of this on the planet Earth, and I'm really sad to have to say this, look at Donald Trump. Right. You know what I mean? When he ran, when he descended that golden uh escalator and said, I'm running for president, everybody, including myself, said, that's fucking nuts. But he knew, he knew something the rest of us don't, which is or didn't, which is I have a cult and I can ignite that cult. It's a racist, crazy, lunatic cult, but I there are enough of them that I can knock everybody else out and I'm gonna super serve them and world wor will word will spread. And he did it. He doesn't have the biggest voting block. He doesn't. He keeps losing, yeah, keeps winning without necessarily winning the popular vote. And he does that because he can motivate people who are hard to reach and they feel seen by him. I hate to say that he's successful, but he is. And there's a lesson to be learned from that. And Kamala Harris didn't learn it, Joe Biden didn't learn it, Hillary Clinton didn't learn it, all of the other Republicans didn't learn it, and no one in Hollywood is learning it. And no one, you know, film schools are littered with film students who think, I'm gonna make the next apocalypse now, and I'm gonna sell it at Sundance. Nothing sells at Sundance. 16,000 films applied to Sundance last year. Four got picked up. Four out of 16,000. Only about 100 got in to Sundance. Think about those odds, right? Now, 11,000 of those were shorts, but 4,500 of them were features. 4,500 films, 4,500 film students whose parents sent them to film school and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to teach them how to make film, went out and made a feature film, submitted it to Sundance, and are now staring at that film on their shelf, doing absolutely nothing because they didn't build an audience first. Right.

SPEAKER_00 29:20

I I I love something that you do, and because it's something that makes sense to me. Why, like you give away your best content for free. And to me, this is like it's that core of like building trust. But like, why does that work? And why do most people get that backwards? Like every time I I make videos for people, like I have a production company and I coach people with how to get stuff done. But the crazy thing is, is everyone's like, I want to make money right away. I want to charge for this. And I was like, How many people do you have currently paying attention to what you do? Well, I haven't built an audience yet. And I said, and you want to charge like right away? Okay. I mean, I don't think that's a good idea, but talk to me about that, man.

SPEAKER_01 30:01

Yeah, I I mean it is that kind of cliche rule of the 80-20. Right. Um, you know, 80% of your audience will will choose free and 20% will choose pay. And you have to build your model on the pay model, to be honest with you. Not to say that you don't want to cater to the free audience. You want to cater to the free audience. And I'll I'll use my own model as an example. So I have the newsletter where I have about 75,000 followers there. Then I I'm sorry, I have LinkedIn. Sorry. I have LinkedIn where I have about 75,000 followers there, and then I have the Substack where I have about 28,000 subscribers, um, a subset of whom pay. Now, the paid subscribers are nice. I love them. Please keep coming back. They're incredibly loyal. And one of the benefits I give away for subscribing is you get to meet with me whenever you want. And people take advantage of it. Um, but in reality, my business model is built on using the free as a funnel, not for paid subscribers, but for customers who are going to pay me money to do other things. So, for example, I get paid to reach my audience, my free audience. You know what I mean? On my podcast and on my newsletter, both of which are free, Media Odyssey Podcast, um, uh, the uh Media War and Peace newsletter, there is a paid version of it, but there's also a free version of it and then LinkedIn as well. That's my marketing base, and people pay me to reach that. That's actually one of my biggest revenue streams. Then I get paid a decent amount to come speak around the world because I can draw an audience. So my model is very different from, you know, the the uh there are Substacks that are doing really well with paid users. That's not how, you know, Semaphore and and Status and a whole bunch of others. That's not my model. Um, so the reason it works is you you give it, you ship the value for free and the value will come back to you, but you want a big audience because you want sponsors on one hand and then you want buyers on the other.

SPEAKER_00 32:01

That's really interesting. I I was in thinking about this because, you know, as I grow, I'm I'm one of those people that I came up, I started working with movies in Hollywood, and then right away I got out of it, you know, I dude, I started like my career was really funny. I was like, I want to get into Hollywood. And so I went up to LA and I started out like I got a role doing background work for a Ron Howard movie, Angels and Demons. And I just like I was there and I was like, dude, this is the weirdest thing. 15 days on set, and I was like, okay, this is weird, but this is not what I was expecting. My friend was like, hey, one day he's like, hey, Sean, how tall are you? So I they they slid me over to working as a back uh Standin'. And Standin was rad because they kept me for the whole production, which means that the lighting team was sitting there and they lit the cameras on me for people who don't know. Now, the cool part was is I got to watch all of these people work firsthand experience for six months. I was on set every day watching these people. And then I after that, I got out of of acting and I moved behind the camera because I started going and I yet I wanted to make movies, but then I realized, dude, the like the the gatekeepers were pretty intense, and they we are that's not the way it's done. And do you have and then finally, so I was like, when YouTube came around, I was like, dude, I've got a camera, I've got a computer, let's make our own stuff. And so I right away started creating video content for people. And I mean, I helped a lot of people make a lot of money really early, and it was just like fun. And I I saw the writing on the wall that like things were changing, and I kept telling people this. And I was like, why don't you make this into a web series? No, I want to make my movie, I really want to make my movie, and I'm gonna have it in theaters. And I was just like, Well, or you could make a series and put it on YouTube. I don't, YouTube's not respected. I remember when people were telling me YouTube's not a respected place to put movies and videos and things, and I was just like, well, it seems to be growing and doing pretty damn good, you know? But like there was that. But if someone has 500 followers today and wants to be taken seriously in two years, what do they start doing on Monday?

SPEAKER_01 34:14

Go out and get just give one of those, you know, rousing, and I'm gonna, and this is a metaphor, but rousing speeches to that 500 followers and say, I'm gonna do this. Are you are you with me? Are you in this with me? We're gonna take that hill. And if you do that and they and you and you're authentic and they do really love you, they'll go with you on that journey. Oh yeah. And they'll they'll help you and they'll and they'll give you what you need. And that's that's exactly what I've done over the last six years or seven years, actually nine years, is is is just try it out, look at the reaction, answer comments. I I try to answer every single comment in every single post. Not just for the algorithm, but I want that person to be seen. That person took the time to read the post and then comment on it. And so I want to reward that. I want to give positive reinforcement to the people who who show me support. And that is the single best way to be successful on this point forward. Watch the Curry Barker interview on NBC News that he gave about um obsession uh this week. It's a really, really, really great lesson in what to do right now. He's been making sketches on YouTube and on the internet for a very long time, building a very loyal fan base. And then he put a test version of this film up on that he made for I don't know how very little money up on his platform, and it got a, I think, about a million views. And then, you know, he went out and made his own movie for $750,000. The midnight screening at Tiff went bonkers, and then he got a $10 million check from Focus Features. Um, but what he said was, you know, when I went to film school, everyone was like, you gotta put a this is the only way to do it. And he said, Well, I don't think so. This YouTube thing looks pretty cool. I can make a movie and put it up on YouTube and get a reaction that fucking day. And that, you know, so much of the Hollywood ecosystem is about talking about making shit. Right. It's not about making shit.

SPEAKER_00 36:26

I think one of the best movies that I've ever seen about the Hollywood bullshit and how it can be used in different ways is a really weird movie to reference, but Argo, how they used a fake movie as a front to actually do this whole CIA like thing, man. But the fact is, is that they talked about making this movie and everyone believed it. No one questioned, everyone bought it because they knew that Hollywood just talk, knock, knock. We're here and we're gonna do all of this stuff to do it. And it was just wild because the whole system has been built on all the talk. And then when the movie was killed at the end, no one questioned anything because that's what they do, you know?

SPEAKER_01 37:10

It is. It's a it's a it's a it's a it's a bullshit economy in Hollywood. The whole the whole ecosystem is built on falseness. I'm not saying lies, but faux. Yeah. And it's everybody pretends to be happy, everybody pretend, you know, all the all the all the stuff, right? But at the end of the day, it's really uh uh a club. It's a very small, limited club of people who get to do stuff and they all help each other. Uh and by the way, that's not limited to Hollywood.

SPEAKER_00 37:41

That's pretty much every every major business.

SPEAKER_01 37:44

Banking, automotive, we can go down healthcare, education. They all are very, it's it's it's it's the it's the Ponzi scheme. At the top, we all make all the money, and everybody down below gets gets shat upon. Um and that's kind of one of the biggest problems with late-stage capitalism. But in Hollywood in particular, there's this kind of ecosystem of of blood suckers that takes all the money out of the ecosystem and none of it trickles down to the crew, the security guards. I mean, look at how badly they're all treated. And this and this micro drama movement is kind of almost the personification of it, where the the talent on set is actually being treated so badly. Now that's morphing into something else right now, into this what I call vertical premium television. But the the micro drama ecosystem as it exists today is kind of the worst of Hollywood uh in in being expressed in in telenovela softcore porn. And and and and and that, and and then everyone's lying about how much money it's making. It's not make those micro drama companies aren't making a lot of money. Real short is not profitable. It's making $1.3 billion a year, but it's spending $1.3 billion in marketing to make that money. Right. Um, and so we all and everyone is rushing to replicate it. That's not where premium vertical is gonna go. It's gonna go into something different. And and you're seeing this. There, this independent uh company made built, uh made uh Roomies for Built, uh a sponsored uh microcomedy that was uh distributed exclusively on TikTok and uh and Instagram. And and now you're seeing this mad rush towards premium vertical television. So the the concept of the people at the top know what they're doing, you we have to stop believing that. That's that is no longer true in in many corporate ecosystems right now, but especially in Hollywood, which is so insular. I can't even do they breathe or do they just breathe each other's breath? It's it's it's like a human centipede of narcissism. And we need to break that. And you're seeing people break it. Amelia de Moldenberg, Sean Evans. There's uh uh Stapleview is this really interesting new um creator-led studio that we're gonna be talking to uh in in Denver Extreme TV uh really, really soon. Toonstar, Animation Plus. I can go down the long list, but even Frontline at PBS is understanding this because they're putting their full features up on YouTube the day after it's on PBS and they're getting sometimes larger audiences than the than the movie got on PBS. And it's two, three generations younger than the than the audience's own broadcast. So this hardcore belief that the they the people in the C-suite must know what they're doing. That's why they're in the C suite. No, they got in the C suite because they were fraternity brothers with someone. Because they, they, they, you know, look at the Warner Brothers discovery disaster, just uh, you know, setting billions of dollars on fire, losing thousands of people, their livelihoods. And it's all because this very small club of dudes who love each other decided to make millions for themselves, hundreds of millions for themselves, at the expense of shareholders, employees, and the public.

SPEAKER_00 41:02

For someone who's like sitting there going, wow, guys, this is a lot going on. There's like a dumpster fire in media right now. For someone who's like, I want to build something. Is it too late to build something real on LinkedIn, YouTube, or Instagram, or is the window still open?

SPEAKER_01 41:19

The window is very much open. In fact, it's open. There are more windows open than there were five years ago. There are more windows open today than there were two years ago. This past weekend was a a crossroads seminal epiphany moment for the media ecosystem on the planet Earth with those two films and those two YouTubers, yindi films, I like to call them, YouTubers plus indie film. Um, yes, you can, but you have to understand that it's it's not about um becoming the next Mr. Beast. It's about super serving a choose to do something for a specific audience. You said this earlier, choose to do something for that specific audience and then listen to what they say in response. Rinse, repeat. Rinse and repeat. That it's a it is not easy. If it was easy, everybody would fucking do it. But if you stick at it and you and you and you hammer away at it, I was talking to Valerie Bertinelli, who just launched a brand new direct-to-consumer streaming service called Valerie's Place and uh working with um a company, really interesting company called Visible Things. And their model isn't to get all five million of her followers to subscribe. Their model is to get 50,000 people to subscribe because 50,000 people times five dollars a month times 12 months a year is a real set of income. Yep. Uh Dropout is doing a great job of this right now. The Tri guys who are massive YouTubers, they're also doing this. So it it I'd rather be nine people's favorite thing than 9,000 people's ninth favorite thing. That is the rule of the moment.

SPEAKER_00 43:00

I was um working with this this guy who has a financial um financial firm. He helps people with their money, right? And he was like, I want to build a podcast, but you know, I only have 50 followers right now. And I was like, dude, 50 people that are tuning into you every week. If you signed all 50 of those people as like customers, how would your business be doing? And he says, Well, I'd be crushing it if I had all 50 of those people. And I said, then shut up and stop complaining and get to bit get to work, you know? Make them really fall in love with what you're creating and what you're doing, you know.

SPEAKER_01 43:38

Yeah, people ask me, they're like, why do you put your map up for free? This the media map that you put up for free on the internet. I'm like, because if someone likes it, they're gonna share it with someone. Yeah. And that's the best marketing I will ever have. And it's exactly that. If you please, if you really surprise and delight those 50 people, by next week you'll have a hundred. If you surprise and delight those hundred, the next week you'll have 200. And if you keep doing that, you know, it's that old shampoo commercial, and they told two friends, and they told two friends, and they told two friends. That is how it fucking works. Paid media on on the internet is not the way to grow an audience. It is all, it is about organic growth. It is about super serving and surprising and delighting the people who love you best.

SPEAKER_00 44:27

100% agree. If you could go back and give a younger creator, uh version of yourself some advice, what would it be?

SPEAKER_01 44:37

I think it would be be more patient. Be more patient. Um, I you know, my impatience has always been my undoing. My impatience has always been if someone thinks I'm an asshole, it's because I'm being impatient that day. And my lack of ability to listen and and take feedback, those have been the things that have been the biggest blockers in my career. When I listen to feedback, doesn't mean I have to agree with it or accept it. But if I listen to it, yeah, um, and I'm more patient with myself and with others, those are my best days.

SPEAKER_00 45:14

Yes. Yes. I love that, man. Where can people go to find out more about you and what you do and to join your newsletter and to get be part of your community, man?

SPEAKER_01 45:25

Sure. Thank you. Uh LinkedIn is my daily platform. I posted something today on it. Um, and uh, but my newsletter is Media War and Peace. It's on Substack. Just Google Media War and Peace, it will come up first. Uh, and then our podcast is the Media Odyssey Podcast. Again, anywhere you get your podcasts, type in Media Odyssey, it will come up. And then uh this summer, uh in a couple weeks, I'm running the Media Universe Summit in Denver at Stream TV. And then I'll also be at IBC, uh, where I'm actually gonna unveil my new creator map, and then at Mipcom in the fall.