September 27, 2021 • 38 mins
This week David sits down with Jordan Elizabeth Gelber, to discuss her life as an actress, producer and launching her startup companies, including Starbaby Enterprises.
Jordan is an award-winning actress, producer, creative business strategist, and the CEO of Starbaby Enterprises, a marketing and production firm specializing in creating and curating content at a grassroots level.
Starbaby has a highly selective client roster, geared towards young and experienced professionals in both the entertainment and creative industries, and beyond.
Jordan has personally launched several startups, working directly with CEOs, and expanding their businesses from $1K-$2M in 6 months through the power of content creation and digital marketing.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
I'm David Grosso and you're listening to follow the profit.
So you've probably noticed that TV has changed lately. It's
no longer what it used to be. You know, you
used to turn on the Boom Tube and you would
surf channels. These days, you're probably dealing with a widget
(00:20):
that's already on your smart TV and you surf endlessly
to find the right content. But let's face it, it's
an absolute mess right now, and the user experience leaves
a lot to be desired. And we thought we were
saving money by not having cable, but now it turns
out we have so many subscriptions that were probably spending
as much as we used to on cable. So here
(00:43):
to talk about this crazy, wild wild West of streaming
is Jordan's how you doing. I'm good, Thanks so much
for having me. So most of our audience knows about HBO, Max, Netflix,
and Hulu, But what is over the top O T
T streaming platforms? We never hear that word unless you're
in the industry, So what does that mean. It's so
(01:04):
funny you ask that, because O T T is something
that we deal with on a regular basis, but people
have never really heard it before. Um O T T
means over the top or over the transom. People used
to send scripts over the transom in l A back
in the day. And O T T basically means out
of the box. It's off the t V. It's not
a conventional way of watching media. We all watch media
(01:24):
through streaming services now, like our rokus or are smart
devices like our cell phones, and streaming sites like our computers.
But that's O T T O T T s our
networks like Netflix, Hulu, HBO, Max, Disney Plus, UH Peacock.
There's a whole list of them that we deal with
on a daily basis. And you know what's really interesting
is that these days we see hardware dictate what we're
(01:46):
going to watch, which has never been like that before.
It's almost like buying a car. If you buy a Ford,
you know you're locked into their little ecosystem. When you
buy a Sony or Samsung TV, they have their own
little widgets to watch streaming, don't they. Yeah, they do.
And there's there's so many plugins and new devices coming
out every day. I think I find a new company
that's built something new that you can watch something on it.
(02:08):
There's there's so many things like Roku has another plug in,
Goo Chrome Cast is another plug in. There's a million.
So what is there space for people like you who
want to create their own platform in this you know,
crazy changing world that it seems like there's no standard,
nothing's one out yet. It seems like Roku might be
the first O T T platform that people are widely adapting.
(02:31):
But is there a room for startups like yours? I
think there is. I think, like you said before, O
T T is the wild West before people were trying
to make content putting it on platforms like YouTube and
Facebook watch and Vimeo. But now people don't realize that
you can wake up tom own morning and build your
own network. I didn't realize that until I really got
into the game, noticing that I could create my own
(02:53):
ecosystem of content that I could share with people the
way that I want to share it, and I can
control how people watch it, what access they have all
over the world. Roku is a perfect example because Roku,
I think, has such an initiative for unique and innovative
content creators that different verticals of business can use O
T T networks and put them on Roku to spread
their message. So tell me, tell me a little bit
(03:16):
about you know what you want to do because your
app is a little different, right. Aperture which is what
you're calling it, And you know it's interesting because it's
almost like the aperture of a camera. Correct, correct, it's
it's spelled a funky way, aperture. I wanted to take
two words and combine them together that really meant something
between the gap of filmmakers and those that are writing
(03:39):
the content, are creating the content in front of the content.
The traditional way of filmmaking has changed. Aperture is two words.
It's aperture like on a camera, and the word autour,
which is a U t e u are, which basically
means the author of a film, so filmmaker. So I
wanted to open up the possibilities in media through storytelling,
and I want to do that through the lens of
an OTT platform. So one of the things about content
(04:00):
that lately it seems like we tend to watch stuff
that's already been a thing for a long time. A
lot of the big blockbusters at the theaters are superheroes
that were well acquainted with. It doesn't seem like there's
any revolutions in content. Why is that I think what's
happened is over the last last decade or so, Marvel,
(04:21):
which we love, Marvel's really come in. It's a huge
fan base. We've made all these legacy films based upon
a massive amount of graphic novels and comic books that
people were dying to see live action. It's really pushed
the way we watch content and create content and storytelling.
But for the indie film world, it's been something that
people are more excited about. But even indie film has
(04:41):
become very commercialized, like production studios like which we used
to be very small and independent and find diamonds in
the rough have now become huge commercial locations that people
want their film to be made by or distributed by.
And the world of indie TV. It's a brand new
market and that's what I'm really passionate about. I think
last year, because everything was put on pause, especially these
(05:02):
big blockbusters that cost millions and millions of dollars and
the amount of money would cost to make them like
compliant to shoot, they all put on pause. So people
took to their own devices like their phones or's things
that they had around and made new indie film and
indie TV to share with the world. I think there
was a need for it. I think people wanted to
take a need to take a breather and open up
(05:23):
room for people to make unique storytelling versus competing with
these big commercial blockbusters that they felt they had to
achieve to be Yeah, and one of the things we've
seen this year is kind of an awakening that content
doesn't really represent us, right, And that's one of the
things that whether you're a woman, an ethnic minority, or
even a rural person right actually tend not to hear
those stories. How can elevating indie storytellers kind of helped
(05:47):
disrupt the system a little bit. I think indie storytelling
has been able to shine a light on so many
niche cultures and so many cultures that we wouldn't be
able to deal with unless we were googling them, which
is very sad. I think storytelling is something that we
has down from generations. Yet how can we transform our
way of telling stories to one another and sharing it
versus now with video and film? And I think that
(06:09):
different cultures specifically um in several different countries, Like I
knew that when I went to Israel few years ago,
there was beautiful Israeli films being made talking about the
culture clashes between different sectors of Judaism, between Syrian Jews
and Israelis and showing that kind of culture. I would
never have been able to see that here in the
States had that not been presented to me directly. But
(06:30):
even now, we've noticed that we need to shine a
light on these under undiscovered voices. And the reality is
that there are people we interact with daily, like why
isn't somebody's voice or face being seen in mainstream media?
That needs to change, And indie TV and indie film
has been able to do that because the real voices
are making the content and they're not waiting for somebody
(06:51):
else to put out there. They're saying, we deserve to
be heard, and we want to tell it our way,
and we want to share it with the world. And
that's why I think that platforms like mine really need
to exist. Well, you're describing something that's afflicting all of society,
which is everything is massive. Now we only do try
it in true formulas, and the people who tend to
be in charge, let's face it, you're a little over
the hill. Sweet it. There are parents age plus right,
(07:15):
they don't really have a lot in common with today's culture.
Do you feel like there's a disconnect there between, you know,
the culture that's actually happening that we see more on
social media, might we say, and the stuff we see
on the big screen. Yeah. I think that's where the
big gap is, and I think social media has parnessed
the gap so people don't think they can get in
there or fix it. Social video has been a wonderful
(07:37):
way people to connect and spread their voice and find
people like them in groups and everything, and also even
distribute content. I mean YouTube is in its own way
a social media platform, um and Facebook Watch is Facebook's
on Facebook watches on Facebook, which is social platform, and
Instagram is i g t V. Social video has become
this need for virality and this needs to make a trend,
(07:59):
and it doesn't really. It's not so much about entertaining
for storytelling purposes, but entertaining for laughs or entertaining for
influence and influencing. And I think that a lot of
these gatekeepers in the mainstream media look at um, younger
generations using social videos like oh that's too young for us,
or oh they just care about trends. But what we've
(08:19):
noticed is no, there's this area where content creators want
to learn from these people who have become successful. Um,
there are Like when I was in college, entourage is
huge and people are starting to go to school to
become an agent. That was never a thing before. Yet
now a lot of younger generations are aspiring to be
content creators, to aspire to um, be performers with their
own platforms. That's never a thing ten years ago, twenty
(08:42):
years ago. And um, so what needs to happen is
these people who become successful over the last twenty to
fifty years that Hollywood has been around, and these people
that are new and are making content anyway they can
uh really need to come in the middle and communicate
with one another. And I think that's where the problem
is that a lot of people don't think that, UM,
(09:03):
creative people educate themselves about business, which is true. Um,
there's an element to that that it's very true. And
on the flip side, content creators are afraid that these
big Hollywood executives want to dilute their artistic integrity. So
instead of you know, sharing it, they walk into a
room already um, ready to have an argument, ready to
be to have a conflict. So there's a huge amount
(09:24):
of disconnect and a huge amount of miscommunication. What's interesting, though,
is we see with the big news channels, right, they say, oh,
we had two million viewers, but then in the target demo,
we had three thirty thousand. Right, And the target demo
might remind our listeners. Our parents are the lion's share
of people watching traditional TV, and it seems like there's
(09:46):
no business plan to onboard young people. It's just like, oh,
they're on TikTok. They're not worth their time, they don't
have the purchasing power. But the future is now. I
mean like cord cutting is is a thing that happened
a long time ago. A lot of us have never
had cable, nor will we ever have cable, and it's
come a time that we can't ignore young people anymore.
(10:10):
I just made me catch my breath by saying there's
a whole generation that never had cable and never had
to flip through pay per view. It's true. I I
you know, I turned my nose up at TikTok last year.
I was like, oh, this is silly, this is stupid,
this is so not in my age range. But as
I've been watching it, and one of my close friends
became a TikTok star for the most part, really showing
(10:30):
that TikTok is based on people who want authentic voices.
If you try to do something clever or try to
do something super trendy. What I've noticed on TikTok is
the audience doesn't believe you and doesn't want to watch you.
But when you authentically show who you are and what
things mean to you and why you are passionate about
showing something, people respond to that. And and TikTok has
(10:51):
been a wonderful amount of influence for people putting their
voice out there, for people highlighting problems in the world.
There's a huge initiative of people showcasing lot of um
you know, I mean, put put in perspective the whole
Gabby Potito thing. Right now, somebody showed a video they
were camping, they were blogging about vlogging about travel, and
they were able to help authorities because they've logged about that,
(11:11):
and it spread like wildfire on TikTok. We can't ignore
these platforms that are being used on a daily basis
just because we don't see them as traditional media, and
we have to look at these younger generations because they're
the people of the future. They're the people who are
going to make a massive amount of impact and know
how to change the world and connect to each other.
Where we are finding a way that we can't We
don't know how yet. It's very interesting because the TV,
(11:44):
much like politics, much like some other sectors, are stuck
in the past. But it doesn't seem like anything. And
you would think the profit motive would be enough to
push them into the future, but for some reason it doesn't.
Is it cultural? Is it lack of understand ending, is
that lack of interaction? Like, what do you think it
is at the root cause there of this disconnect. I
(12:05):
think it's all of the above. On the creative side,
I remember because I'm I'm an actor, obviously, That's why
I started my own business, making my own stuff. I
wanted to make my own way in the world, and
I was sick of being you know, no, we hear
a lot that, oh you're an entertainer, you here know
a lot of rejections. A big thing it is, but
it's about overcoming obstacles that people make change. Um. So
many of the best business people in the world, they
(12:28):
solved problems that they were dealing with and became successful.
But yet in some of the creative areas, like actors
and even models and writers and filmmakers and artists and painters, uh,
you know, when they do something and they're told that
they can't do something innovative, So they don't know how
to solve these problems because the biggest problem they have
is how can I sell my work without being a sellout?
(12:50):
And how can I be respected by the industry without
having to make myself into something that I'm not? And
and I think that we need to empower these people
to take ownership of their words and their ideas and
their thoughts and they're brilliant storytelling abilities and break down
(13:10):
the door this there's this huge phantom wall that's been
built up, like oh, these gatekeepers like I can't get
to that executive, he's too far away from me, or
I can't get my stuff distributor, or how am I
going to get on the next c W show or
make my show the next c W show? And I
had an old mail but before you had to make
(13:31):
your content, put it in a festival, hope it's seen
by somebody, or go to some random pitch fests that
somebody's assistant might be there to pay attention to you
maybe maybe, and if that, you know, you go to
this event and then you don't even follow up with
them because they don't know how to. Yet, we know
and go into any business conference. If I went to
a regular pitch product conference, or if I went to um,
you know, a speaker's assembly, or I wanted to learn
(13:53):
from another an entrepreneur in the technology space, there would
be so many ways for me to follow up with them,
ways that I can learn, way that could educate myself.
Yet when it comes to the business side of show business,
there's such a disconnect that instead of trying, people are
just giving up being angry about it. And I think
there's a lot of anger in the industry and that's
where the big disconnect is. Well, that is, as I
understand it, the central premise of your platform, and you're
(14:16):
trying to create a place for artists to put their work,
specifically a pilot driven uh, and really getting rid of
pilots right, putting them on the platform and actually exposing
their work to real audiences and not letting their work die.
Is that correct? That is very correct? Uh? You know,
I was really inspired when I was in college about
the movement of YouTube. YouTube was just a thing when
(14:37):
I was graduating. It was starting to build people there
that old feel very old. I'm just so tired all
the time. But you know, YouTube ten years ago, uh
was something that was making musicians a thing. And I
was very fascinated how social platforms like my Space for
all those people who had that, we're using um my
space and YouTube to launch their music careers. And I
(14:59):
was really fascinating how the was happening. And a huge
part of that was the fact that YouTube had analytics.
You could build an audience directly. You could find your
audience that connect to you. They didn't have to go
to the record story, they didn't have to wait for
the biggest label. They could go on the platform and
listen to your stuff. And then over the last decade,
we've seen shows like broad City and shows like High
Maintenance become massive hits because people discover them on YouTube.
(15:22):
Yet YouTube in the last couple of years have been
only an influencer platform, and there's been there hasn't been
something like it since at least I don't believe there's
been something like it since and so what I wanted
to do is create a platform that supported creators in
the same way. A lot of people I know make pilots,
and what happens is they spend a lot of money
making these pilots, sometimes not with any talent attached, or
not really an understanding on why people should watch it.
(15:44):
They try to be clever, They try to think like, oh, well,
this is a cool idea, but they don't say, oh,
this is a cool idea. I think that this could
impact people in the world when they watch this, it
will give them joy. When they watched this, they'll be
inspired to do something else. They're just a lot of
it becomes self serving. I don't think that's on purpose.
I think it's a lack of acumen honestly. And and
I wanted to put a platform that would help people
screen themselves because most pilots, they go to festivals and
(16:07):
they die. They don't they don't go anywhere. Unless it's
so sad to talk about a population that doesn't have many,
you know, roads to economic prosperity. Exactly, artists, the tortured artists.
It's like the most you know, typical thing we hear
about artists. They blow up after they die. Specifically, speaking
to painters, they go right mail and ear before you
(16:29):
make any money. So you know, it's one of those
things that, like creating any sort of path to success
is such important work, especially for artists, because we depend
on artists. The businessman needs the artists. Yeah, it's weird,
like we have to suffer so much to get to
a certain point. Yeah. If I looked at any other
business vertical, there are so many practical ways to be seen,
(16:50):
and we're stuck in this trope of being a tortured artist.
Or Oh, I'm gonna make this but no one's going
to see it anyway, or oh, I'm just gonna spend
money on these festivals and get all these come I
have no talent, just read right. I'm not depending on
anyone to distribute my work or anything like that, because,
let me tell you, it's a really, really hard road.
And I'm imagining that during the pilot and pitching process,
(17:12):
oftentimes the artists themselves are replaced arth oh completely. And
and that's where the fear comes in is I'm afraid
I'm going to be replaced. I'm afraid that my idea
is gonna be stolen. From me UM. A good example
of that is the woman that wrote I May Destroy You.
She didn't sell it to Netflix as Netflix didn't want
her to own her own property, and she ended up
making a great deal with Hrio Max. And now look,
she just one for Best Writer at the Emmys the
(17:33):
other day. And but that's what people's concerns are that
more a company, more big corporate media companies are gonna say, oh,
just sell it to me, I'll take it from here
and thanks by and and so there's a concern there
and a fear there that you're going to lose something
that you worked so hard. It's like your baby. But yeah,
I feel that now there's places like O T T
that can really showcase um indie content, whether that's a
(17:56):
pilot or already completed series. Because around the world many
America may not know, is that around the world, digital
short form series or the taboo word web series is
a huge thing. They make stuff all the time, and
it's high quality and it's got great storytelling, and it's
from different pockets of the world. Yet here we're just
learning that's okay and that's something that people want to see.
I'm surprised there's not a new word like wearies. Here
(18:20):
are my wearies. So I see a lot of web
series though they're everywhere, we don't really have a word
for them, but people catch on to them and they
get cult followings. What is the typical path for a
web series? Like? Does somebody pick them off? And then
that's it? Um? There are three ways that people can
have their web series you made. One is having a
great pitch deck, having your business plan which is your
pitch deck, and outlining what you want what you see
(18:43):
the future seasons to be, even before you go to
camera um, which I recommend doing. You should have you
know your thing forwards and backwards and where it's going
to live in five years. And then going to different
business place business um pitch fests and festivals and meaning
people and pitching it to them or using LinkedIn as
I love to do and pitching them directly and setting
up a meeting with people saying I have this great
idea to take very underestimated places so much especially for
(19:06):
the entertainment industry. And and that was really odd to
me because I've had LinkedIn since Lincoln became a thing.
Yet a lot of entertainment professionals they don't realize that,
like you can book jobs through LinkedIn the way that
everybody else does exactly exactly, But we also feel comfortabl
pitching people because we don't care, like we want to
work with people. I want to work with you. I'm
(19:27):
gonna show up and say hi. You know. The interesting
thing about LinkedIn is that LinkedIn is like the most
socially appropriate media network because it feels appropriate to reach
out to people because it is a business first network.
And I think people forget that they do. And I
think that Lincoln is so powerful because you already go
there with the assumption that this is a business deal.
Like where I'm going here to make business decisions. I'm
(19:47):
going to find people in my community that should that
I should be a part of. I deserve a seat
at the table everyone's sitting at LinkedIn. Who do I
need to talk to to get to the next place
in the next place? And you can build great communities.
I've made great relationships through platforms like LinkedIn and even Clubhouse,
but utilizing them together, not just being like, oh, I'm
gonna put a picture of me on set on Instagram
right now and hope somebody sees it. I can find
(20:07):
that person on LinkedIn and say, Hi, I just was
on set. I'm really inspired by you. Let's have a meeting.
So one of the things about Aperture that jumped out
at me was that you want these series to graduate
to an even bigger platform. That's unusual because I get
pitched a lot by other platforms and they want to
just monopolize what I give them, And in your business model,
you want to sell these two a big fish. Yeah.
(20:30):
When I was making this network, I knew a while back,
when I started getting into um production and pitching shows
and pitching films, that I was going to end up
having a network because a lot of people I wanted
to work with I wanted to be on networks, and
I want to understand how it was working and how
it was made. And Uh, I realized, I need to
have one, and I don't want to be Netflix. If
I wanted to be Netflix, that would be so silly.
Netflix is already think. So I need to come up
(20:51):
with a differentiator. And I wanted to solve a problem,
which technology can do. Technology can solve many problems, and
so what I created was a way for a content
pipeline for content creators to be seen be distributed already
with their content. And on the back end, I have
a whole marketing team because I've been a digital marketing
expert for a decade, and a whole team working together
on their materials and their business proposals, and then on
(21:12):
the back end having a huge sales agent team who
are taking those items and actually pitching them to network.
I decided that I needed to find people who had
success selling shows and what they've done is I had
a successful career in the industry, and I wanted them
to see these projects that I found and helped pitch
for us, and therefore we close the loop. No one's
closing the loop right now, and I wanted to use
(21:34):
that with my platform, so there to graduate. Yeah, so
what do you think the next big trend is in entertainment?
Because you know, we have this idea that people don't
consume anything, right, and I've heard that many many times
from older people, Like young people don't watch anything, they
don't watch news, they don't consume any content. And what's
funny is young people consume a lot of a lot
(21:55):
of content. Well, what exactly are they consuming? Is it
a decentralized world? Is that good? Is that bad? What
are your feeling? I think it's a big question mark
because even I'm learning, and I think the fact that
I want to learn is why people are consuming so
much because for a long time, people weren't searching for answers.
They were just Google whatever, I know something or I'll
(22:15):
watch something here. But now with content, we're learning about
the news through the media, through social video and different
OTT platforms are learning about our peers were learning about opportunities.
But the big question mark is who's watching? Because I
think people haven't had accessibility. So maybe somebody in Brazil
who's nineteen is learning how to build a business or
(22:36):
something through an NOTICEC platform that's available to her. But
in the States, uh, a girl who lives in the
you know, the backwoods in Mississippi doesn't have access to that.
And I think it's really understanding different culture areas in
different countries, and we don't know yet because because media
and distribution is such a wild West, the way the
Internet was considered a wild West over the last twenty years,
that we're trying to understand what people are watching, how
(22:58):
they're watching it, what do they do after they watch it,
what how do they feel when they're doing it, what
platforms are they almost engaged with? Uh? You know, I
I go back to YouTube a lot because I think
YouTube is such an interesting, um solution to video and
to how to use and and creating platforms of influence
and with YouTube, you know, Um, I think what was
it like maybe ten fifteen years ago the big guy
(23:21):
at Hasbro Toys or I've probably been the wrong company,
but the big guy one of the like one of
the big toy Companies'm gonna say has Row for now
made less money than this like six year old YouTuber
that was just unboxing toys because they attacked the demographic
that is the hardest, which is like ages four to
six or three to six, because they found a way
to communicate to people just like them. So I think
(23:44):
we need to look at what is everyone's wishes right now?
What are they trying to be passionate about? And I
think we're not taking enough of a listen or a
look to kids like twelve to twenty, And I guess
I consider twenties still a kid, but like twelve to twenty, like,
what do they want to do? How do they to
change the world? And a lot of them are showing
their missions through creating content like on TikTok And I
(24:06):
think Tiktok' where a lot of people are. Well, I'll
tell you because I work with them all the time,
and I live in a neighborhood out in Los Angeles.
It's full of them because I lived by c l A.
There radically different than we are. Yeah, there's been a
big generational shift. They're a lot more open minded. Um,
they're very familiar with older content. Remember in our era,
we grew up with a singular culture, right, Like there
(24:27):
was the culture right and it was the radio and
MTV and t r L and slightly older than you
or yes, Terro is a big thing. When I came
to college, you're trying to go to TRL and TIRO
is not here anymore. So and now that doesn't seem
like there's a singular culture anymore. It seems like it's
a culture distributed and it's kind of whatever you wanted
(24:47):
to be. And I guess the business models don't get
reflect that difficult reality. Not at all, not at all,
not at all. It's it's just so we had this
big generational gap because I feel, you know, I'm considered
a millennial but I feel like there's a there's a
gap between the millennials and even like the gen z
ears that's there that hasn't even been shown very well,
(25:08):
and I like they are totally different and acceptable and
talking about topics that I would have been that would
have made me blush when I was a kid, blush
all the time. I wasn't going to mention that, but
it makes me blush all the time. Yeah, I I
think that, you know, identity has been something that's been
well shown. Every fluid, very fluid sexually. It seems like
(25:30):
everything's fluid now, and it seems like that's the new
norm is happening moments. Yeah, working go us. We're somewhere
so technologically savvy. We've made it all work. So what's
it like being a female entrepreneur? I know, entertainment for
(25:54):
its females, right, I remember when Shonda Rhymes became big,
you know, as a black female writing all these It's right,
that was a really big deal. Oh yeah, Shonda Land
has paved the way for so many I piece and
Tyler Perry too, But like Shana as a female creator, Yeah,
Like Shonda Land is such a place that so many
people want to be a part of which is such
(26:16):
a wonderful thing, because that wasn't a thing twenty years ago.
It wasn't a thing. And just I was watching Hollywood
on Netflix. It was a horror show. It was it
was a horror show until recently, as we learned through
the Harvey scandal. Yeah. Yeah, I think as a female entrepreneur,
you know, not just in media but in general, have
(26:37):
let me even go back being a young female entrepreneur
because I've been an entrepreneur since my early twenties, like
I started the worst discriminations age discrimination. Yeah, forget that
it is, and it's it's weird. For the longest time,
I a lot of my clients have always been like
much older older men because I wasn't afraid to talk
to them, and I knew a lot of girls in
my age were for some reason. And I don't know
if maybe it's because my upbring, I didn't feel I
(26:59):
was never told to fear anything. I am an only
show that probably was it all the time. Up. Yeah,
I think I have a harder harder time talking people
my own age than I do about older people. Uh.
But being being a young female entrepreneur who's been in
business for now over a decade. The hardest things being
young have been people thinking that I don't know enough,
(27:20):
or that I haven't taken the time to understand how
things have worked yet. So many of the reasons I'm
successful is because I've used strategies that were popular in
the eighties and I've used them in the two thousands,
and it may be successful, like sending mail like real
male not just like sending random emails and stuff, finding
specific people to talk to. People are just throw stuff
(27:40):
at the wall. Sometimes I find a lot of people
my age they just kind of throw stuff at the
wall and wait for someone to pick it up and say,
oh I like this, and like, oh pick me, pick me,
pick me. It's not There's not a lot of a
lot of strategy I have found as I've gone through
the way, and maybe it's because I haven't met a
lot of people like that. But being a female in
the business, the hardest thing is that, um a lot
(28:00):
of people assume that I've just you know, I'm gonna
make it all about being a woman. I know it
sounds bad, but it's more than just that. I don't
want to just be powerful of just because I'm a woman,
and I'm a young female or I'm a female or whatever.
I need specific identify of who I am. But I
want to pay the way for everybody that hasn't had
that's been restricted in in media, have been restricted in
business verticals, to have a voice, because if we don't
(28:23):
support people that have similar problems to us, how can we,
you know, solve our own problems. We need to come
together as a community. If we came together as a
community or voice to be loud enough, and we could
break through more barriers and break through more walls. And
you know, being a female entrepreneur, you know there's a
lot of Harvey Winding situations. I can't say I haven't
experienced them myself, but i I've looked them in the
(28:44):
face and I've I've let the fact that they forgot
how intelligent I was, and I celebrate my brains over
my beauty. So one of the things that people constantly
mentioned is the need for change in society, and we
(29:04):
tend to look at politics for change, and we know politics,
you know, the opposite of progress, right. One of the
best ways to initiate changes through culture. Through culture, So
what role do you think entertainment plays in looking forward
without being you know, over the top, because we tend
to see that in these days, to the amount of
virtue signaling out there is mind boggling. Oh it's crazy.
(29:26):
I think a very small way to show how powerful
entertainment can be to change Um you know this, David,
because your friends. But my guilty pleasure right now is BTS.
I listen to them in Quarantine Korean the Korean not
behind the scenes for all my filmmaker friends, but yeah,
the Korean pop group. And I was fascinated by them.
And I know I can help all my friends making
(29:46):
fun of me right now. But the reason why I've
been so fascinated by them is they just went to
the u N. And they went to the u N
because the president of the country realized that they held
such a power over younger generations that they could inspire
younger generations around the world, like around the entire world.
It's massive. But as entertainers who are constantly putting out content,
(30:08):
constantly spreading campaigns to talk about self love and and
how the climate and how you know, as a younger generation,
where the future we need to provide for our future,
not pretend that the world's already dying. Uh, And it's
amazing how they came. And one million people watched the
u N General Assembly when they performed the other day
and spoke at the General Assembly talking about trying to
(30:30):
bridge the gap between the old politicos and around the
world and the younger generation who can create change. The
right crowd must have been all blue hairs out there, exactly,
but in such a you know, unique way that has
pushed so much change. And an entertainment across the board.
If it's a TV show, if it's a uh, you know, music,
(30:54):
if it's an influencer, those at the top who really
want to make change can use their platforms to create
change or create um influence. I hate the word influencer,
even though I am one myself, but I like to
change inside to be a platform of influence. We have
the ability with media in any any medium to create change,
whether that's buying power or uh, you know, changing the
(31:18):
way people say things, change the way people look at things.
I mean, there's so many different ways that entertainment molds
those who digest it that if we do we could
go anyway, positively and negatively. But I think we're looking
at a way to use that as a connector amongst
different audiences and pave the way for the future. And
it's really interesting these days because there isn't that singular culture, right,
(31:40):
So the culture is whatever you want it to be,
and is that good or bad? I think that's great.
I think we need to stop thinking that everyone looks
like a white bulb like I. I want everyone to
realize we're all different shapes and colors and voices and
have different likes and dislike and mommies always say that's
why they make different flavor lollipops. Yet everyone thing said, oh,
you need to only like this, or you need to
(32:02):
only do this. Yeah, me too, good on the same
on the same plane. Uh yeah. I think that we
should highlight all these cultures because we need to educate
people that there's more than just you. And I think
once you can realize there's a bigger world out there,
you can understand what other people go through, or you
could learn about how you arrive to where you're at.
(32:22):
We you know, you and I can chase our trace,
our heritage all the way back to different countries. Many
people in the States cannot. And I think that it's
because that I come from different cultures. That makes me
who I am. And I think the fact that we're
amplifying all these different cultures is a wonderful way to
learn and experience different things that we wouldn't have unless
we had access to them. And because of social media
(32:43):
and because of media distribution and platforms like O T T,
we have access to that when we weren't before. I mean,
I think that there are libraries in the world that
are still restricted on what you can read and what
you can say and what music you can listen to
fortune of those places exactly. But you know, there are
different states that restrict certain things, like religiously, and I
think you know now you can go online and find communities,
(33:06):
especially for a lot of its sexual identity groups. I
mean that is huge. You can go online and find
someone who lives in a similar situation and say, hey,
I'm having a hard time. Can you talk to me
about it? And you can find someone when before you
had to wait until you've got a certain age you
have to move out. But you know, you're we're finding
a deep, deep undercurrent here and it's not really an undercurrent,
(33:28):
it's over. We live in the age of narcissism. That's
the worst thing, the worst thing. We're all self obsessed, right,
and stepping out of this world where we're not the
only thing is actually very difficult for many people. In
social media has actually made that much worse, so much worse.
And it's sad because social media, which we used to
be a great way to connect and share like minded things,
(33:50):
has become a way to say, well, I'm better than you,
and I'm so much better than you. You should listen
to what I have to say. Yet I want to
do things and be there for you, and this is
how I like to do that. Does that something that
you want? How can I be a better representative of you?
And I think that's what we need to shatter. Is
this narcissism. And it's it's sad because we see it,
(34:14):
you know, through reality TV, which has become where the
actress wants to dash narcissism. Yeah, you know as an actor. Yeah,
for the longest time, I was like, you're allowed to
say actor actress. I know people that prefer actress over actor.
I'm an actor. It's one of my many talents that
(34:34):
I have. But yeah, I think narcissism is something that
needs to be obliterated. And the way that you obliterate
that is that you put different people in a room.
We start talking about your different problems and realize that
everyone has something similar to you. Incredibly to forget that
in this environment, and that's what I love the most
about last year. Even the last year was awful, I
(34:54):
think the thing that rose out of that as we
realize that everybody feels very lonely, and everyone feels like
their voicesn't being heard and unless they do something clever,
no one's going to take notice of them, and we
all connected and made beautiful things from that. I mean,
so much unique content was made last year out of
that need to to connect with different people and show
that your voice and who you are so someone could
(35:16):
watch it and be like, oh, that's someone like me.
I'm not alone, I'm not I'm not ugly or I'm
not smart enough because I don't see myself on TV.
Oh there's someone just like me. Who Oh my dad,
he said this thing. I have that problem too, and
talk about it amongst fans. Well, that sounds like you've
been reading like Aristotle and trauma, right, Yeah, you know,
(35:41):
it's it's one of those things that like entertainment is
supposed to inspire us, and I feel like a lot
of times we don't. We watch stuff that really doesn't resonate. Yeah,
I realized that when I wanted to make um this
new venture that I had, I had to do it
for a very specific reason and a reason that wasn't
for myself. And that's how because being an entrepreneur, you know,
(36:01):
the first thing you do is you make a business
because you have to make money. I mean, I started
my own business because my marketing business because I needed
to make money. I need a job, and and and
I was sick of waiting for somebody to give me
a job, which was my inspiration for all my businesses.
None of us have been on the right end of that.
We had to create in our own job exactly. But
in the entertainment industry, one thing that was really pissing
(36:22):
me off is that all these people made stuff or
did stuff for self serving purposes, and that to me
was such a problem and it made me feel really
disgusted being part of that. And I didn't want to
be part of that. So I want to find people
where they really felt that they were doing something different
or they were changing the world. In a smaller, big
way even just make somebody laugh and do something stupid,
(36:44):
but big or small to do that with what they
were creating. So I wanted to create a business that
was in the entertainment industry that wasn't just for me.
I'm not. I didn't create Aperture just to become successful.
I did it because I wanted to help a lot
of people become successful. And I really love that I
help people. And I saw that. I saw all this
entertainment noise and different verbiage and different problems, and it
(37:06):
made sense to me where I would talk to one
of my friends and be like, I have no idea
how you did that, and I and I was helping
a lot of people get careers. I mean, I've helped
so many people get jobs the entertainment industry. And I
did it because I wanted to, not because I felt
like it's going to come back to me make me
look good. And I realized that I could do that
in a much global scale, in a bigger way through
creating this platform. Well cool, so we can check it
out on aperture dot tv. Is that correct? Yes, Aperture
(37:28):
dot tv. And remember it's a P E R. T
EU are not t you are like Louis Pasteur aperture apture.
On that note, thank you so much for your time, Jordan,
thank you so much for having me. Yeah, and thanks
to all of you for joining me as we all
followed the profit. And a big thanks to my friend
Jordan Gelbert. She has a million titles, actress, producer, and entrepreneur,
O T T expert and just a good person. She
(37:51):
gives us all the inside scoop about streaming, the content
wars and how creativity is desperately needed in Hollywood. I'd
like to thank my team up users, including Rob and
Scott and our executive producers New Gingrich and Debbie Myers.
I'm your host, David Grosso. If you're liking the show,
give us five stars and give us a review so
others can learn what the show is all about. Follow
The Profit is a production of Gingriich three six and
(38:13):
i Heeart Radio. For more podcasts for my heart Radio,
visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or whatever you
get your podcasts part of the Gingwich three six network
I'm David Grosso and you're listening to follow the profit.
So you've probably noticed that TV has changed lately. It's
no longer what it used to be. You know, you
used to turn on the Boom Tube and you would
surf channels. These days, you're probably dealing with a widget
(00:20):
that's already on your smart TV and you surf endlessly
to find the right content. But let's face it, it's
an absolute mess right now, and the user experience leaves
a lot to be desired. And we thought we were
saving money by not having cable, but now it turns
out we have so many subscriptions that were probably spending
as much as we used to on cable. So here
(00:43):
to talk about this crazy, wild wild West of streaming
is Jordan's how you doing. I'm good, Thanks so much
for having me. So most of our audience knows about HBO, Max, Netflix,
and Hulu, But what is over the top O T
T streaming platforms? We never hear that word unless you're
in the industry, So what does that mean. It's so
(01:04):
funny you ask that, because O T T is something
that we deal with on a regular basis, but people
have never really heard it before. Um O T T
means over the top or over the transom. People used
to send scripts over the transom in l A back
in the day. And O T T basically means out
of the box. It's off the t V. It's not
a conventional way of watching media. We all watch media
(01:24):
through streaming services now, like our rokus or are smart
devices like our cell phones, and streaming sites like our computers.
But that's O T T O T T s our
networks like Netflix, Hulu, HBO, Max, Disney Plus, UH Peacock.
There's a whole list of them that we deal with
on a daily basis. And you know what's really interesting
is that these days we see hardware dictate what we're
(01:46):
going to watch, which has never been like that before.
It's almost like buying a car. If you buy a Ford,
you know you're locked into their little ecosystem. When you
buy a Sony or Samsung TV, they have their own
little widgets to watch streaming, don't they. Yeah, they do.
And there's there's so many plugins and new devices coming
out every day. I think I find a new company
that's built something new that you can watch something on it.
(02:08):
There's there's so many things like Roku has another plug in,
Goo Chrome Cast is another plug in. There's a million.
So what is there space for people like you who
want to create their own platform in this you know,
crazy changing world that it seems like there's no standard,
nothing's one out yet. It seems like Roku might be
the first O T T platform that people are widely adapting.
(02:31):
But is there a room for startups like yours? I
think there is. I think, like you said before, O
T T is the wild West before people were trying
to make content putting it on platforms like YouTube and
Facebook watch and Vimeo. But now people don't realize that
you can wake up tom own morning and build your
own network. I didn't realize that until I really got
into the game, noticing that I could create my own
(02:53):
ecosystem of content that I could share with people the
way that I want to share it, and I can
control how people watch it, what access they have all
over the world. Roku is a perfect example because Roku,
I think, has such an initiative for unique and innovative
content creators that different verticals of business can use O
T T networks and put them on Roku to spread
their message. So tell me, tell me a little bit
(03:16):
about you know what you want to do because your
app is a little different, right. Aperture which is what
you're calling it, And you know it's interesting because it's
almost like the aperture of a camera. Correct, correct, it's
it's spelled a funky way, aperture. I wanted to take
two words and combine them together that really meant something
between the gap of filmmakers and those that are writing
(03:39):
the content, are creating the content in front of the content.
The traditional way of filmmaking has changed. Aperture is two words.
It's aperture like on a camera, and the word autour,
which is a U t e u are, which basically
means the author of a film, so filmmaker. So I
wanted to open up the possibilities in media through storytelling,
and I want to do that through the lens of
an OTT platform. So one of the things about content
(04:00):
that lately it seems like we tend to watch stuff
that's already been a thing for a long time. A
lot of the big blockbusters at the theaters are superheroes
that were well acquainted with. It doesn't seem like there's
any revolutions in content. Why is that I think what's
happened is over the last last decade or so, Marvel,
(04:21):
which we love, Marvel's really come in. It's a huge
fan base. We've made all these legacy films based upon
a massive amount of graphic novels and comic books that
people were dying to see live action. It's really pushed
the way we watch content and create content and storytelling.
But for the indie film world, it's been something that
people are more excited about. But even indie film has
(04:41):
become very commercialized, like production studios like which we used
to be very small and independent and find diamonds in
the rough have now become huge commercial locations that people
want their film to be made by or distributed by.
And the world of indie TV. It's a brand new
market and that's what I'm really passionate about. I think
last year, because everything was put on pause, especially these
(05:02):
big blockbusters that cost millions and millions of dollars and
the amount of money would cost to make them like
compliant to shoot, they all put on pause. So people
took to their own devices like their phones or's things
that they had around and made new indie film and
indie TV to share with the world. I think there
was a need for it. I think people wanted to
take a need to take a breather and open up
(05:23):
room for people to make unique storytelling versus competing with
these big commercial blockbusters that they felt they had to
achieve to be Yeah, and one of the things we've
seen this year is kind of an awakening that content
doesn't really represent us, right, And that's one of the
things that whether you're a woman, an ethnic minority, or
even a rural person right actually tend not to hear
those stories. How can elevating indie storytellers kind of helped
(05:47):
disrupt the system a little bit. I think indie storytelling
has been able to shine a light on so many
niche cultures and so many cultures that we wouldn't be
able to deal with unless we were googling them, which
is very sad. I think storytelling is something that we
has down from generations. Yet how can we transform our
way of telling stories to one another and sharing it
versus now with video and film? And I think that
(06:09):
different cultures specifically um in several different countries, Like I
knew that when I went to Israel few years ago,
there was beautiful Israeli films being made talking about the
culture clashes between different sectors of Judaism, between Syrian Jews
and Israelis and showing that kind of culture. I would
never have been able to see that here in the
States had that not been presented to me directly. But
(06:30):
even now, we've noticed that we need to shine a
light on these under undiscovered voices. And the reality is
that there are people we interact with daily, like why
isn't somebody's voice or face being seen in mainstream media?
That needs to change, And indie TV and indie film
has been able to do that because the real voices
are making the content and they're not waiting for somebody
(06:51):
else to put out there. They're saying, we deserve to
be heard, and we want to tell it our way,
and we want to share it with the world. And
that's why I think that platforms like mine really need
to exist. Well, you're describing something that's afflicting all of society,
which is everything is massive. Now we only do try
it in true formulas, and the people who tend to
be in charge, let's face it, you're a little over
the hill. Sweet it. There are parents age plus right,
(07:15):
they don't really have a lot in common with today's culture.
Do you feel like there's a disconnect there between, you know,
the culture that's actually happening that we see more on
social media, might we say, and the stuff we see
on the big screen. Yeah. I think that's where the
big gap is, and I think social media has parnessed
the gap so people don't think they can get in
there or fix it. Social video has been a wonderful
(07:37):
way people to connect and spread their voice and find
people like them in groups and everything, and also even
distribute content. I mean YouTube is in its own way
a social media platform, um and Facebook Watch is Facebook's
on Facebook watches on Facebook, which is social platform, and
Instagram is i g t V. Social video has become
this need for virality and this needs to make a trend,
(07:59):
and it doesn't really. It's not so much about entertaining
for storytelling purposes, but entertaining for laughs or entertaining for
influence and influencing. And I think that a lot of
these gatekeepers in the mainstream media look at um, younger
generations using social videos like oh that's too young for us,
or oh they just care about trends. But what we've
(08:19):
noticed is no, there's this area where content creators want
to learn from these people who have become successful. Um,
there are Like when I was in college, entourage is
huge and people are starting to go to school to
become an agent. That was never a thing before. Yet
now a lot of younger generations are aspiring to be
content creators, to aspire to um, be performers with their
own platforms. That's never a thing ten years ago, twenty
(08:42):
years ago. And um, so what needs to happen is
these people who become successful over the last twenty to
fifty years that Hollywood has been around, and these people
that are new and are making content anyway they can
uh really need to come in the middle and communicate
with one another. And I think that's where the problem
is that a lot of people don't think that, UM,
(09:03):
creative people educate themselves about business, which is true. Um,
there's an element to that that it's very true. And
on the flip side, content creators are afraid that these
big Hollywood executives want to dilute their artistic integrity. So
instead of you know, sharing it, they walk into a
room already um, ready to have an argument, ready to
be to have a conflict. So there's a huge amount
(09:24):
of disconnect and a huge amount of miscommunication. What's interesting, though,
is we see with the big news channels, right, they say, oh,
we had two million viewers, but then in the target demo,
we had three thirty thousand. Right, And the target demo
might remind our listeners. Our parents are the lion's share
of people watching traditional TV, and it seems like there's
(09:46):
no business plan to onboard young people. It's just like, oh,
they're on TikTok. They're not worth their time, they don't
have the purchasing power. But the future is now. I
mean like cord cutting is is a thing that happened
a long time ago. A lot of us have never
had cable, nor will we ever have cable, and it's
come a time that we can't ignore young people anymore.
(10:10):
I just made me catch my breath by saying there's
a whole generation that never had cable and never had
to flip through pay per view. It's true. I I
you know, I turned my nose up at TikTok last year.
I was like, oh, this is silly, this is stupid,
this is so not in my age range. But as
I've been watching it, and one of my close friends
became a TikTok star for the most part, really showing
(10:30):
that TikTok is based on people who want authentic voices.
If you try to do something clever or try to
do something super trendy. What I've noticed on TikTok is
the audience doesn't believe you and doesn't want to watch you.
But when you authentically show who you are and what
things mean to you and why you are passionate about
showing something, people respond to that. And and TikTok has
(10:51):
been a wonderful amount of influence for people putting their
voice out there, for people highlighting problems in the world.
There's a huge initiative of people showcasing lot of um
you know, I mean, put put in perspective the whole
Gabby Potito thing. Right now, somebody showed a video they
were camping, they were blogging about vlogging about travel, and
they were able to help authorities because they've logged about that,
(11:11):
and it spread like wildfire on TikTok. We can't ignore
these platforms that are being used on a daily basis
just because we don't see them as traditional media, and
we have to look at these younger generations because they're
the people of the future. They're the people who are
going to make a massive amount of impact and know
how to change the world and connect to each other.
Where we are finding a way that we can't We
don't know how yet. It's very interesting because the TV,
(11:44):
much like politics, much like some other sectors, are stuck
in the past. But it doesn't seem like anything. And
you would think the profit motive would be enough to
push them into the future, but for some reason it doesn't.
Is it cultural? Is it lack of understand ending, is
that lack of interaction? Like, what do you think it
is at the root cause there of this disconnect. I
(12:05):
think it's all of the above. On the creative side,
I remember because I'm I'm an actor, obviously, That's why
I started my own business, making my own stuff. I
wanted to make my own way in the world, and
I was sick of being you know, no, we hear
a lot that, oh you're an entertainer, you here know
a lot of rejections. A big thing it is, but
it's about overcoming obstacles that people make change. Um. So
many of the best business people in the world, they
(12:28):
solved problems that they were dealing with and became successful.
But yet in some of the creative areas, like actors
and even models and writers and filmmakers and artists and painters, uh,
you know, when they do something and they're told that
they can't do something innovative, So they don't know how
to solve these problems because the biggest problem they have
is how can I sell my work without being a sellout?
(12:50):
And how can I be respected by the industry without
having to make myself into something that I'm not? And
and I think that we need to empower these people
to take ownership of their words and their ideas and
their thoughts and they're brilliant storytelling abilities and break down
(13:10):
the door this there's this huge phantom wall that's been
built up, like oh, these gatekeepers like I can't get
to that executive, he's too far away from me, or
I can't get my stuff distributor, or how am I
going to get on the next c W show or
make my show the next c W show? And I
had an old mail but before you had to make
(13:31):
your content, put it in a festival, hope it's seen
by somebody, or go to some random pitch fests that
somebody's assistant might be there to pay attention to you
maybe maybe, and if that, you know, you go to
this event and then you don't even follow up with
them because they don't know how to. Yet, we know
and go into any business conference. If I went to
a regular pitch product conference, or if I went to um,
you know, a speaker's assembly, or I wanted to learn
(13:53):
from another an entrepreneur in the technology space, there would
be so many ways for me to follow up with them,
ways that I can learn, way that could educate myself.
Yet when it comes to the business side of show business,
there's such a disconnect that instead of trying, people are
just giving up being angry about it. And I think
there's a lot of anger in the industry and that's
where the big disconnect is. Well, that is, as I
understand it, the central premise of your platform, and you're
(14:16):
trying to create a place for artists to put their work,
specifically a pilot driven uh, and really getting rid of
pilots right, putting them on the platform and actually exposing
their work to real audiences and not letting their work die.
Is that correct? That is very correct? Uh? You know,
I was really inspired when I was in college about
the movement of YouTube. YouTube was just a thing when
(14:37):
I was graduating. It was starting to build people there
that old feel very old. I'm just so tired all
the time. But you know, YouTube ten years ago, uh
was something that was making musicians a thing. And I
was very fascinated how social platforms like my Space for
all those people who had that, we're using um my
space and YouTube to launch their music careers. And I
(14:59):
was really fascinating how the was happening. And a huge
part of that was the fact that YouTube had analytics.
You could build an audience directly. You could find your
audience that connect to you. They didn't have to go
to the record story, they didn't have to wait for
the biggest label. They could go on the platform and
listen to your stuff. And then over the last decade,
we've seen shows like broad City and shows like High
Maintenance become massive hits because people discover them on YouTube.
(15:22):
Yet YouTube in the last couple of years have been
only an influencer platform, and there's been there hasn't been
something like it since at least I don't believe there's
been something like it since and so what I wanted
to do is create a platform that supported creators in
the same way. A lot of people I know make pilots,
and what happens is they spend a lot of money
making these pilots, sometimes not with any talent attached, or
not really an understanding on why people should watch it.
(15:44):
They try to be clever, They try to think like, oh, well,
this is a cool idea, but they don't say, oh,
this is a cool idea. I think that this could
impact people in the world when they watch this, it
will give them joy. When they watched this, they'll be
inspired to do something else. They're just a lot of
it becomes self serving. I don't think that's on purpose.
I think it's a lack of acumen honestly. And and
I wanted to put a platform that would help people
screen themselves because most pilots, they go to festivals and
(16:07):
they die. They don't they don't go anywhere. Unless it's
so sad to talk about a population that doesn't have many,
you know, roads to economic prosperity. Exactly, artists, the tortured artists.
It's like the most you know, typical thing we hear
about artists. They blow up after they die. Specifically, speaking
to painters, they go right mail and ear before you
(16:29):
make any money. So you know, it's one of those
things that, like creating any sort of path to success
is such important work, especially for artists, because we depend
on artists. The businessman needs the artists. Yeah, it's weird,
like we have to suffer so much to get to
a certain point. Yeah. If I looked at any other
business vertical, there are so many practical ways to be seen,
(16:50):
and we're stuck in this trope of being a tortured artist.
Or Oh, I'm gonna make this but no one's going
to see it anyway, or oh, I'm just gonna spend
money on these festivals and get all these come I
have no talent, just read right. I'm not depending on
anyone to distribute my work or anything like that, because,
let me tell you, it's a really, really hard road.
And I'm imagining that during the pilot and pitching process,
(17:12):
oftentimes the artists themselves are replaced arth oh completely. And
and that's where the fear comes in is I'm afraid
I'm going to be replaced. I'm afraid that my idea
is gonna be stolen. From me UM. A good example
of that is the woman that wrote I May Destroy You.
She didn't sell it to Netflix as Netflix didn't want
her to own her own property, and she ended up
making a great deal with Hrio Max. And now look,
she just one for Best Writer at the Emmys the
(17:33):
other day. And but that's what people's concerns are that
more a company, more big corporate media companies are gonna say, oh,
just sell it to me, I'll take it from here
and thanks by and and so there's a concern there
and a fear there that you're going to lose something
that you worked so hard. It's like your baby. But yeah,
I feel that now there's places like O T T
that can really showcase um indie content, whether that's a
(17:56):
pilot or already completed series. Because around the world many
America may not know, is that around the world, digital
short form series or the taboo word web series is
a huge thing. They make stuff all the time, and
it's high quality and it's got great storytelling, and it's
from different pockets of the world. Yet here we're just
learning that's okay and that's something that people want to see.
I'm surprised there's not a new word like wearies. Here
(18:20):
are my wearies. So I see a lot of web
series though they're everywhere, we don't really have a word
for them, but people catch on to them and they
get cult followings. What is the typical path for a
web series? Like? Does somebody pick them off? And then
that's it? Um? There are three ways that people can
have their web series you made. One is having a
great pitch deck, having your business plan which is your
pitch deck, and outlining what you want what you see
(18:43):
the future seasons to be, even before you go to
camera um, which I recommend doing. You should have you
know your thing forwards and backwards and where it's going
to live in five years. And then going to different
business place business um pitch fests and festivals and meaning
people and pitching it to them or using LinkedIn as
I love to do and pitching them directly and setting
up a meeting with people saying I have this great
idea to take very underestimated places so much especially for
(19:06):
the entertainment industry. And and that was really odd to
me because I've had LinkedIn since Lincoln became a thing.
Yet a lot of entertainment professionals they don't realize that,
like you can book jobs through LinkedIn the way that
everybody else does exactly exactly, But we also feel comfortabl
pitching people because we don't care, like we want to
work with people. I want to work with you. I'm
(19:27):
gonna show up and say hi. You know. The interesting
thing about LinkedIn is that LinkedIn is like the most
socially appropriate media network because it feels appropriate to reach
out to people because it is a business first network.
And I think people forget that they do. And I
think that Lincoln is so powerful because you already go
there with the assumption that this is a business deal.
Like where I'm going here to make business decisions. I'm
(19:47):
going to find people in my community that should that
I should be a part of. I deserve a seat
at the table everyone's sitting at LinkedIn. Who do I
need to talk to to get to the next place
in the next place? And you can build great communities.
I've made great relationships through platforms like LinkedIn and even Clubhouse,
but utilizing them together, not just being like, oh, I'm
gonna put a picture of me on set on Instagram
right now and hope somebody sees it. I can find
(20:07):
that person on LinkedIn and say, Hi, I just was
on set. I'm really inspired by you. Let's have a meeting.
So one of the things about Aperture that jumped out
at me was that you want these series to graduate
to an even bigger platform. That's unusual because I get
pitched a lot by other platforms and they want to
just monopolize what I give them, And in your business model,
you want to sell these two a big fish. Yeah.
(20:30):
When I was making this network, I knew a while back,
when I started getting into um production and pitching shows
and pitching films, that I was going to end up
having a network because a lot of people I wanted
to work with I wanted to be on networks, and
I want to understand how it was working and how
it was made. And Uh, I realized, I need to
have one, and I don't want to be Netflix. If
I wanted to be Netflix, that would be so silly.
Netflix is already think. So I need to come up
(20:51):
with a differentiator. And I wanted to solve a problem,
which technology can do. Technology can solve many problems, and
so what I created was a way for a content
pipeline for content creators to be seen be distributed already
with their content. And on the back end, I have
a whole marketing team because I've been a digital marketing
expert for a decade, and a whole team working together
on their materials and their business proposals, and then on
(21:12):
the back end having a huge sales agent team who
are taking those items and actually pitching them to network.
I decided that I needed to find people who had
success selling shows and what they've done is I had
a successful career in the industry, and I wanted them
to see these projects that I found and helped pitch
for us, and therefore we close the loop. No one's
closing the loop right now, and I wanted to use
(21:34):
that with my platform, so there to graduate. Yeah, so
what do you think the next big trend is in entertainment?
Because you know, we have this idea that people don't
consume anything, right, and I've heard that many many times
from older people, Like young people don't watch anything, they
don't watch news, they don't consume any content. And what's
funny is young people consume a lot of a lot
(21:55):
of content. Well, what exactly are they consuming? Is it
a decentralized world? Is that good? Is that bad? What
are your feeling? I think it's a big question mark
because even I'm learning, and I think the fact that
I want to learn is why people are consuming so
much because for a long time, people weren't searching for answers.
They were just Google whatever, I know something or I'll
(22:15):
watch something here. But now with content, we're learning about
the news through the media, through social video and different
OTT platforms are learning about our peers were learning about opportunities.
But the big question mark is who's watching? Because I
think people haven't had accessibility. So maybe somebody in Brazil
who's nineteen is learning how to build a business or
(22:36):
something through an NOTICEC platform that's available to her. But
in the States, uh, a girl who lives in the
you know, the backwoods in Mississippi doesn't have access to that.
And I think it's really understanding different culture areas in
different countries, and we don't know yet because because media
and distribution is such a wild West, the way the
Internet was considered a wild West over the last twenty years,
that we're trying to understand what people are watching, how
(22:58):
they're watching it, what do they do after they watch it,
what how do they feel when they're doing it, what
platforms are they almost engaged with? Uh? You know, I
I go back to YouTube a lot because I think
YouTube is such an interesting, um solution to video and
to how to use and and creating platforms of influence
and with YouTube, you know, Um, I think what was
it like maybe ten fifteen years ago the big guy
(23:21):
at Hasbro Toys or I've probably been the wrong company,
but the big guy one of the like one of
the big toy Companies'm gonna say has Row for now
made less money than this like six year old YouTuber
that was just unboxing toys because they attacked the demographic
that is the hardest, which is like ages four to
six or three to six, because they found a way
to communicate to people just like them. So I think
(23:44):
we need to look at what is everyone's wishes right now?
What are they trying to be passionate about? And I
think we're not taking enough of a listen or a
look to kids like twelve to twenty, And I guess
I consider twenties still a kid, but like twelve to twenty, like,
what do they want to do? How do they to
change the world? And a lot of them are showing
their missions through creating content like on TikTok And I
(24:06):
think Tiktok' where a lot of people are. Well, I'll
tell you because I work with them all the time,
and I live in a neighborhood out in Los Angeles.
It's full of them because I lived by c l A.
There radically different than we are. Yeah, there's been a
big generational shift. They're a lot more open minded. Um,
they're very familiar with older content. Remember in our era,
we grew up with a singular culture, right, Like there
(24:27):
was the culture right and it was the radio and
MTV and t r L and slightly older than you
or yes, Terro is a big thing. When I came
to college, you're trying to go to TRL and TIRO
is not here anymore. So and now that doesn't seem
like there's a singular culture anymore. It seems like it's
a culture distributed and it's kind of whatever you wanted
(24:47):
to be. And I guess the business models don't get
reflect that difficult reality. Not at all, not at all,
not at all. It's it's just so we had this
big generational gap because I feel, you know, I'm considered
a millennial but I feel like there's a there's a
gap between the millennials and even like the gen z
ears that's there that hasn't even been shown very well,
(25:08):
and I like they are totally different and acceptable and
talking about topics that I would have been that would
have made me blush when I was a kid, blush
all the time. I wasn't going to mention that, but
it makes me blush all the time. Yeah, I I
think that, you know, identity has been something that's been
well shown. Every fluid, very fluid sexually. It seems like
(25:30):
everything's fluid now, and it seems like that's the new
norm is happening moments. Yeah, working go us. We're somewhere
so technologically savvy. We've made it all work. So what's
it like being a female entrepreneur? I know, entertainment for
(25:54):
its females, right, I remember when Shonda Rhymes became big,
you know, as a black female writing all these It's right,
that was a really big deal. Oh yeah, Shonda Land
has paved the way for so many I piece and
Tyler Perry too, But like Shana as a female creator, Yeah,
Like Shonda Land is such a place that so many
people want to be a part of which is such
(26:16):
a wonderful thing, because that wasn't a thing twenty years ago.
It wasn't a thing. And just I was watching Hollywood
on Netflix. It was a horror show. It was it
was a horror show until recently, as we learned through
the Harvey scandal. Yeah. Yeah, I think as a female entrepreneur,
you know, not just in media but in general, have
(26:37):
let me even go back being a young female entrepreneur
because I've been an entrepreneur since my early twenties, like
I started the worst discriminations age discrimination. Yeah, forget that
it is, and it's it's weird. For the longest time,
I a lot of my clients have always been like
much older older men because I wasn't afraid to talk
to them, and I knew a lot of girls in
my age were for some reason. And I don't know
if maybe it's because my upbring, I didn't feel I
(26:59):
was never told to fear anything. I am an only
show that probably was it all the time. Up. Yeah,
I think I have a harder harder time talking people
my own age than I do about older people. Uh.
But being being a young female entrepreneur who's been in
business for now over a decade. The hardest things being
young have been people thinking that I don't know enough,
(27:20):
or that I haven't taken the time to understand how
things have worked yet. So many of the reasons I'm
successful is because I've used strategies that were popular in
the eighties and I've used them in the two thousands,
and it may be successful, like sending mail like real
male not just like sending random emails and stuff, finding
specific people to talk to. People are just throw stuff
(27:40):
at the wall. Sometimes I find a lot of people
my age they just kind of throw stuff at the
wall and wait for someone to pick it up and say,
oh I like this, and like, oh pick me, pick me,
pick me. It's not There's not a lot of a
lot of strategy I have found as I've gone through
the way, and maybe it's because I haven't met a
lot of people like that. But being a female in
the business, the hardest thing is that, um a lot
(28:00):
of people assume that I've just you know, I'm gonna
make it all about being a woman. I know it
sounds bad, but it's more than just that. I don't
want to just be powerful of just because I'm a woman,
and I'm a young female or I'm a female or whatever.
I need specific identify of who I am. But I
want to pay the way for everybody that hasn't had
that's been restricted in in media, have been restricted in
business verticals, to have a voice, because if we don't
(28:23):
support people that have similar problems to us, how can we,
you know, solve our own problems. We need to come
together as a community. If we came together as a
community or voice to be loud enough, and we could
break through more barriers and break through more walls. And
you know, being a female entrepreneur, you know there's a
lot of Harvey Winding situations. I can't say I haven't
experienced them myself, but i I've looked them in the
(28:44):
face and I've I've let the fact that they forgot
how intelligent I was, and I celebrate my brains over
my beauty. So one of the things that people constantly
mentioned is the need for change in society, and we
(29:04):
tend to look at politics for change, and we know politics,
you know, the opposite of progress, right. One of the
best ways to initiate changes through culture. Through culture, So
what role do you think entertainment plays in looking forward
without being you know, over the top, because we tend
to see that in these days, to the amount of
virtue signaling out there is mind boggling. Oh it's crazy.
(29:26):
I think a very small way to show how powerful
entertainment can be to change Um you know this, David,
because your friends. But my guilty pleasure right now is BTS.
I listen to them in Quarantine Korean the Korean not
behind the scenes for all my filmmaker friends, but yeah,
the Korean pop group. And I was fascinated by them.
And I know I can help all my friends making
(29:46):
fun of me right now. But the reason why I've
been so fascinated by them is they just went to
the u N. And they went to the u N
because the president of the country realized that they held
such a power over younger generations that they could inspire
younger generations around the world, like around the entire world.
It's massive. But as entertainers who are constantly putting out content,
(30:08):
constantly spreading campaigns to talk about self love and and
how the climate and how you know, as a younger generation,
where the future we need to provide for our future,
not pretend that the world's already dying. Uh, And it's
amazing how they came. And one million people watched the
u N General Assembly when they performed the other day
and spoke at the General Assembly talking about trying to
(30:30):
bridge the gap between the old politicos and around the
world and the younger generation who can create change. The
right crowd must have been all blue hairs out there, exactly,
but in such a you know, unique way that has
pushed so much change. And an entertainment across the board.
If it's a TV show, if it's a uh, you know, music,
(30:54):
if it's an influencer, those at the top who really
want to make change can use their platforms to create
change or create um influence. I hate the word influencer,
even though I am one myself, but I like to
change inside to be a platform of influence. We have
the ability with media in any any medium to create change,
whether that's buying power or uh, you know, changing the
(31:18):
way people say things, change the way people look at things.
I mean, there's so many different ways that entertainment molds
those who digest it that if we do we could
go anyway, positively and negatively. But I think we're looking
at a way to use that as a connector amongst
different audiences and pave the way for the future. And
it's really interesting these days because there isn't that singular culture, right,
(31:40):
So the culture is whatever you want it to be,
and is that good or bad? I think that's great.
I think we need to stop thinking that everyone looks
like a white bulb like I. I want everyone to
realize we're all different shapes and colors and voices and
have different likes and dislike and mommies always say that's
why they make different flavor lollipops. Yet everyone thing said, oh,
you need to only like this, or you need to
(32:02):
only do this. Yeah, me too, good on the same
on the same plane. Uh yeah. I think that we
should highlight all these cultures because we need to educate
people that there's more than just you. And I think
once you can realize there's a bigger world out there,
you can understand what other people go through, or you
could learn about how you arrive to where you're at.
(32:22):
We you know, you and I can chase our trace,
our heritage all the way back to different countries. Many
people in the States cannot. And I think that it's
because that I come from different cultures. That makes me
who I am. And I think the fact that we're
amplifying all these different cultures is a wonderful way to
learn and experience different things that we wouldn't have unless
we had access to them. And because of social media
(32:43):
and because of media distribution and platforms like O T T,
we have access to that when we weren't before. I mean,
I think that there are libraries in the world that
are still restricted on what you can read and what
you can say and what music you can listen to
fortune of those places exactly. But you know, there are
different states that restrict certain things, like religiously, and I
think you know now you can go online and find communities,
(33:06):
especially for a lot of its sexual identity groups. I
mean that is huge. You can go online and find
someone who lives in a similar situation and say, hey,
I'm having a hard time. Can you talk to me
about it? And you can find someone when before you
had to wait until you've got a certain age you
have to move out. But you know, you're we're finding
a deep, deep undercurrent here and it's not really an undercurrent,
(33:28):
it's over. We live in the age of narcissism. That's
the worst thing, the worst thing. We're all self obsessed, right,
and stepping out of this world where we're not the
only thing is actually very difficult for many people. In
social media has actually made that much worse, so much worse.
And it's sad because social media, which we used to
be a great way to connect and share like minded things,
(33:50):
has become a way to say, well, I'm better than you,
and I'm so much better than you. You should listen
to what I have to say. Yet I want to
do things and be there for you, and this is
how I like to do that. Does that something that
you want? How can I be a better representative of you?
And I think that's what we need to shatter. Is
this narcissism. And it's it's sad because we see it,
(34:14):
you know, through reality TV, which has become where the
actress wants to dash narcissism. Yeah, you know as an actor. Yeah,
for the longest time, I was like, you're allowed to
say actor actress. I know people that prefer actress over actor.
I'm an actor. It's one of my many talents that
(34:34):
I have. But yeah, I think narcissism is something that
needs to be obliterated. And the way that you obliterate
that is that you put different people in a room.
We start talking about your different problems and realize that
everyone has something similar to you. Incredibly to forget that
in this environment, and that's what I love the most
about last year. Even the last year was awful, I
(34:54):
think the thing that rose out of that as we
realize that everybody feels very lonely, and everyone feels like
their voicesn't being heard and unless they do something clever,
no one's going to take notice of them, and we
all connected and made beautiful things from that. I mean,
so much unique content was made last year out of
that need to to connect with different people and show
that your voice and who you are so someone could
(35:16):
watch it and be like, oh, that's someone like me.
I'm not alone, I'm not I'm not ugly or I'm
not smart enough because I don't see myself on TV.
Oh there's someone just like me. Who Oh my dad,
he said this thing. I have that problem too, and
talk about it amongst fans. Well, that sounds like you've
been reading like Aristotle and trauma, right, Yeah, you know,
(35:41):
it's it's one of those things that like entertainment is
supposed to inspire us, and I feel like a lot
of times we don't. We watch stuff that really doesn't resonate. Yeah,
I realized that when I wanted to make um this
new venture that I had, I had to do it
for a very specific reason and a reason that wasn't
for myself. And that's how because being an entrepreneur, you know,
(36:01):
the first thing you do is you make a business
because you have to make money. I mean, I started
my own business because my marketing business because I needed
to make money. I need a job, and and and
I was sick of waiting for somebody to give me
a job, which was my inspiration for all my businesses.
None of us have been on the right end of that.
We had to create in our own job exactly. But
in the entertainment industry, one thing that was really pissing
(36:22):
me off is that all these people made stuff or
did stuff for self serving purposes, and that to me
was such a problem and it made me feel really
disgusted being part of that. And I didn't want to
be part of that. So I want to find people
where they really felt that they were doing something different
or they were changing the world. In a smaller, big
way even just make somebody laugh and do something stupid,
(36:44):
but big or small to do that with what they
were creating. So I wanted to create a business that
was in the entertainment industry that wasn't just for me.
I'm not. I didn't create Aperture just to become successful.
I did it because I wanted to help a lot
of people become successful. And I really love that I
help people. And I saw that. I saw all this
entertainment noise and different verbiage and different problems, and it
(37:06):
made sense to me where I would talk to one
of my friends and be like, I have no idea
how you did that, and I and I was helping
a lot of people get careers. I mean, I've helped
so many people get jobs the entertainment industry. And I
did it because I wanted to, not because I felt
like it's going to come back to me make me
look good. And I realized that I could do that
in a much global scale, in a bigger way through
creating this platform. Well cool, so we can check it
out on aperture dot tv. Is that correct? Yes, Aperture
(37:28):
dot tv. And remember it's a P E R. T
EU are not t you are like Louis Pasteur aperture apture.
On that note, thank you so much for your time, Jordan,
thank you so much for having me. Yeah, and thanks
to all of you for joining me as we all
followed the profit. And a big thanks to my friend
Jordan Gelbert. She has a million titles, actress, producer, and entrepreneur,
O T T expert and just a good person. She
(37:51):
gives us all the inside scoop about streaming, the content
wars and how creativity is desperately needed in Hollywood. I'd
like to thank my team up users, including Rob and
Scott and our executive producers New Gingrich and Debbie Myers.
I'm your host, David Grosso. If you're liking the show,
give us five stars and give us a review so
others can learn what the show is all about. Follow
The Profit is a production of Gingriich three six and
(38:13):
i Heeart Radio. For more podcasts for my heart Radio,
visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or whatever you
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