Latest / The Action Catalyst / The Outcome of Now, with Vinnie Potestivo (Television, Entertainment, Media Strategy, Content)

Transcript

The Outcome of Now, with Vinnie Potestivo (Television, Entertainment, Media Strategy, Content) · The Action Catalyst

• 0:20
  Stephanie Maas: Hi, how are you?
• 0:24
  Vinnie Potestivo: I'm good. Am I too early? Sorry.
• 0:26
  Stephanie Maas: So what about you in Brooklyn? I know you're
• 0:28
  from there. So are you usually based out of there?
• 0:30
  Vinnie Potestivo: Yeah. I'm from originally from Staten Island.
• 0:33
  So I didn't move too far. But yeah, I stayed in Brooklyn. I've
• 0:36
  been working from home for about like, five, five years. Now.
• 0:39
  Everyone's like, You're so lucky. And like, No, I had to
• 0:42
  learn how to work with somebody else. In a space. It wasn't like
• 0:46
  everything just continued as as norm but but virtual producing a
• 0:51
  lot of like consulting with beauty brands and celebrities
• 0:54
  that have sort of other types of apparel brands or beauty brands,
• 0:57
  skincare brands, that was like my pandemic gig, turning like
• 1:00
  Instagram studios into podcast studios. It's been fun, by the
• 1:04
  way of helping brand owners that don't identify as being
• 1:07
  creators, you know, they're they're chemists as dietitians
• 1:10
  by trade. And now they get to be creators. And then I just give
• 1:14
  them like powerful tools, like Instagram.
• 1:19
  Stephanie Maas: You know, there's this new thing out, it's
• 1:20
  called Instagram. It's called the gram.
• 1:23
  Vinnie Potestivo: I geek out, get excited about this. It's
• 1:25
  like the creative toys are so much better now than when I was
• 1:30
  a kid. You know, I had to be an intern and get approved by UC
• 1:34
  and network executive. And you know, no, no, people with an
• 1:37
  iPhone are like fallen executive producers. Here I am like the
• 1:41
  pied piper or whatever, Paul Revere. Instagram guides are
• 1:53
  changing, Instagram guides are changing.
• 1:56
  Stephanie Maas: This is gonna be like pulling teeth. I can tell.
• 1:59
  Okay, you obviously have a ton of recognition. I think I read
• 2:04
  you have an Emmy or two or three. So that makes you seem
• 2:07
  super cool. And like you have this super cool job. From your
• 2:12
  perspective. What is cool about your job? I know what the world
• 2:15
  thinks.
• 2:16
  Vinnie Potestivo: Yeah. Do you know how I described my job just
• 2:19
  earlier to a family member, made me laugh. I said, I've been in
• 2:23
  unpreferred media, my entire life. Ooh, you worked for MTV?
• 2:29
  Ooh, Bravo. Really? You did that housewives thing that's like, I
• 2:34
  got to work with awesome storytellers that had to go
• 2:36
  through a television network to get their stories heard by
• 2:40
  hundreds of millions of people globally worldwide. And MTV was
• 2:44
  a brand that had that reach. So because of where I was at the
• 2:47
  timing of when stories became an economy in and of themselves,
• 2:52
  they became a commodity. I think inherently I think there's
• 2:55
  something cool and helping the underdog. I think that's cool.
• 2:59
  Everything I've done has always been helping someone who felt
• 3:02
  under something, get over something. And usually it was a
• 3:05
  creative way to do it. And I think what might be interpreted
• 3:09
  cool about that are maybe the people that I got to help for
• 3:13
  sure, because they changed culture. So for example, the
• 3:16
  challenge on MTV, you know, when it came time to host the
• 3:20
  challenge, I knew it had to be an athlete, and we had Johnny
• 3:23
  Mosley and Dave Mirra gotta wrestle host and we met TJ
• 3:27
  Lavin, TJ was an athlete, a BMX, or at a time where BMX as the
• 3:31
  sport itself, was getting landed on the map. So he was one of the
• 3:34
  front faces for that. And we had this really probably be very
• 3:39
  politically incorrect and super inappropriate, not safe for work
• 3:42
  conversation. Once that changed our career that changed, changed
• 3:46
  our careers literally changed our careers, we're gonna save
• 3:48
  lives, but it changed our careers. First, I felt heard and
• 3:51
  seen as a gay guy by an athlete. And I felt that in a room where
• 3:55
  I wasn't going to be, and I had an ally and someone who wasn't
• 3:59
  even asking to be, he just showed up that way. And there
• 4:02
  was a conversation we had that just made me I remember the
• 4:05
  feeling of being so respected and so safe at a time where in
• 4:11
  the media, well, I don't even have to get into the sexism in
• 4:14
  the media we look at, you know, what it did to Britney and some
• 4:17
  of the females but what drove Jessica Simpson to having a show
• 4:21
  called newlyweds was literally her way of slowing the story
• 4:25
  down and TV used to give artists three minutes to tell their
• 4:28
  story and music videos. She asked for 30 No one was asking
• 4:32
  for that. So when you ask for things, you get them. And then
• 4:35
  also I learned from the audience's perspective, the
• 4:37
  thing you know, that they support things they love, and
• 4:40
  they support things they love to hate to.
• 4:42
  Stephanie Maas: Do you still keep in touch with Jessica?
• 4:44
  Vinnie Potestivo: I do. Yeah. And yeah, so empowered by her
• 4:49
  story, and she's, he's done it again. And, and it amazes me by
• 4:54
  the way, this is the best part is if you would have asked Mandy
• 4:58
  Moore, Jessica Simpson, Christina Aguilera and Britney
• 5:00
  Spears, if you were to ask the four of them who's going to be
• 5:03
  the billionaire? I promise you, Jessica most, I don't want to
• 5:06
  say probably, she would not have been top three back then. But
• 5:09
  she, she had the gift of reality TV at a point in time where we
• 5:14
  were, we didn't have until 2007 Social media, where we couldn't
• 5:18
  understand feedback about things we were saying. And she was
• 5:22
  lucky to get that in 2000, where she had some control and not all
• 5:25
  but some control over what ultimately got on air.
• 5:28
  Stephanie Maas: So let me ask you this, one of the things that
• 5:30
  is said about you is that you're the man behind reality TV.
• 5:35
  Vinnie Potestivo: That's not fair. I gotta give a big shout
• 5:37
  out to Jonathan Marie Mary and Mary Ellis Burnham, who was his
• 5:41
  partner in crime.
• 5:42
  Stephanie Maas: So I'm assuming then the inspiration for you
• 5:45
  behind reality TV came from the Blair Witch Project.
• 5:49
  Vinnie Potestivo: By the way, that's hysterical you said that.
• 5:52
  To be honest, my job at first was to hire hosts. So the first
• 5:56
  big moment for me beyond discovering talent was talent.
• 6:02
  We're not touchable or approachable at MTV until my
• 6:05
  department got there. So first off, when MTV was created, the
• 6:08
  power was in creating a platform that required a new form of
• 6:13
  media. That's, that's cool that MTV empowered artists to be able
• 6:16
  to create these three minute music videos, MTV supported, it
• 6:20
  paid 1000s of dollars to the labels to help offset the cost
• 6:23
  of that. And then I think 20 years later, that's when our
• 6:27
  audience left to YouTube. That's when they found YouTube. By the
• 6:31
  way, I have to point out shout out to the first VJ, Adam curry
• 6:34
  at MTV who also created iPodder, which is the first podcast he
• 6:38
  like invented Really Simple Syndication RSS and the this
• 6:42
  idea of of podcasting.
• 6:45
  Stephanie Maas: What have you seen from a talent perspective,
• 6:50
  talent 10 years ago that you went looking for versus talent
• 6:53
  today?
• 6:54
  Vinnie Potestivo: Well, the economy's funny, 10 years ago,
• 6:57
  we're talking about the real people economy, maybe we
• 7:00
  certainly wouldn't have called it the Creator economy, then the
• 7:02
  real people economy predated the expert economy predated the
• 7:08
  entrepreneur economy, which has now turned into the influencer
• 7:14
  economy. I think we're currently in the crater economy right now.
• 7:17
  By the way, predicting the future. I think editors haven't
• 7:20
  had their shine yet. And I don't know if you've read the Bible or
• 7:22
  not the King James is a pretty famous name. And he's not even
• 7:25
  in it just a really famous editor. So like the power of
• 7:29
  editing, I'm telling you, it's out there the power of editing,
• 7:32
  what changes 10 years ago, the responsibility of networks, how
• 7:36
  about that, for starters, 10 years ago, there was lash back
• 7:39
  to what certain networks were allowing to happen on their air,
• 7:43
  and there is now a sense of, of needing more control. retention
• 7:49
  becomes the biggest issue in television. So that changes
• 7:53
  talent immediately, by the way, TV networks aren't trying to get
• 7:56
  you to tune into their network for the first time. They're
• 8:00
  trying to keep you on their network as long as possible. So
• 8:03
  you're gonna see a lot more of like cross channel talent,
• 8:07
  familiar faces throughout the entire network, what Disney did
• 8:10
  with Marvel and how they built these separate audiences, right?
• 8:13
  Because you want to feel identified and recognized in the
• 8:16
  right audience. When When multiple audiences come
• 8:19
  together, that's community, multi demographic retention,
• 8:23
  talent becomes a game that even on the agency level, agents are
• 8:28
  no longer looking for new talent to bring in new streams of ROI,
• 8:31
  they've got existing talent, and they're leaning on that talent
• 8:35
  to create additional streams of ROI.
• 8:38
  Stephanie Maas: Ok, so let's take this a little bit broader
• 8:40
  here. Because one of the things I think I've heard you mentioned
• 8:42
  a couple of times, I think, is really interesting. I'm running
• 8:45
  a company, or you know, I run a team 20 years ago TV was it. I
• 8:50
  mean, we had a few other platforms. But now we've got all
• 8:53
  these different things. So speak to me about I have a brand now
• 8:58
  there's so many things talk me through that.
• 9:00
  Vinnie Potestivo: Yeah, the answer is time. First and
• 9:02
  foremost, that's where I go to a blank piece of paper. I'm
• 9:06
  literally going to draw a timeline. I'm going to put
• 9:08
  today's date I'm going to put the end of the year I'm going to
• 9:10
  figure out what I'm capable of creating and doing and impacting
• 9:12
  the next two to three months. And we're gonna look at that
• 9:15
  schedule and multiply it by four. So I can figure out what
• 9:18
  an annualized plan is. By the way, this is a weird way to
• 9:21
  answer the question when I was trying to lose weight. I didn't
• 9:25
  want to lose weight. I didn't want to be a pound less than
• 9:28
  where I was yesterday. I wanted to be a pound less from where it
• 9:31
  was last year. It was way more fun for me to compare myself to
• 9:35
  last year and what it does is it gives me the time to refine and
• 9:39
  slowly competently and more importantly sustainably get the
• 9:45
  results that I ultimately want to get to so So you mentioned at
• 9:49
  the top of this the my I have won Emmy It is my first Emmy. I
• 9:54
  won my first Emmy last year from this guest bedroom that I'm
• 9:57
  working in now but by the way madrone I spent 25 years of my
• 10:01
  life crawling on people's kitchen counters hiding from the
• 10:04
  you know, hiding from the camera, so you don't see me in
• 10:06
  the shots. And I realized that the content I was working on the
• 10:11
  position that I was playing in those in those in those
• 10:13
  productions didn't qualify me. I went in any because I went out
• 10:17
  and looked for an opportunity, I actually found an opportunity.
• 10:21
  And then I thought to myself, well, I want to be mindful boy,
• 10:23
  when we're winning with because I'm going to be grouped with
• 10:26
  these people forever. And I also want to make sure it's the right
• 10:28
  project, because people are going to say, what did you win
• 10:30
  it for? I want it for it's called red flags. It's a it's a
• 10:34
  documentary series about a woman who comes out of rehab. And if
• 10:38
  the red flags that we might spot, you know, the 60 days that
• 10:41
  she's coming out of it, the importance of credits, you know,
• 10:43
  I mentioned earlier, how awesome how powerful it is that as a
• 10:47
  podcast owner, not only can I can I get credit for being an
• 10:51
  executive producer and get creative credit, but more
• 10:54
  importantly, I can give it to the people who have touched my
• 10:56
  project. And that's that's a data point that Google will not
• 10:59
  know unless you tell it, you your podcast being on someone's
• 11:04
  resume, maybe on LinkedIn, for example, let's say best case
• 11:07
  scenario is not the same as IMDb owned by Amazon, telling Google
• 11:12
  that this person worked on this episode, which also had this
• 11:15
  guest connected to this award. And it's a gigantic form of
• 11:19
  discoverability. So credits, those help you get discovered
• 11:22
  those help sustain the message making impact and reaching the
• 11:25
  people that you want. I again, I geek out about it, but that
• 11:27
  that's what podcasting independent side of media does
• 11:30
  for us. And that's why I'm fully leaned in. I've always worked
• 11:33
  with small business owners is that weird to say? Beyonce owns
• 11:36
  a small business, Destiny's Child.
• 11:41
  Stephanie Maas: A family business? I don't know if I'd
• 11:42
  call that small.
• 11:43
  Vinnie Potestivo: Well, I mean, when you look at the executives
• 11:47
  that are on her board, I would say is less than 25. You know,
• 11:50
  as as big as the brand is at that level, it's a it's a really
• 11:55
  tight inner circle. I think that's where we can all relate
• 11:57
  to it's it's weird to say it that way.
• 12:00
  Stephanie Maas: One of the things you just said that was
• 12:02
  really interesting, I think very counterintuitive. Most people
• 12:06
  feel okay, I have a plan. And it needs to be long and drawn out
• 12:11
  and systematic. And actually what I heard from you is the
• 12:15
  exact opposite, talking about the word hate the second, you're
• 12:17
  a podcaster you qualify you're in. So go, go do it all as fast
• 12:23
  as possible. That's how you get out there.
• 12:25
  Vinnie Potestivo: You don't have to wait 25 years to qualify for
• 12:28
  an Emmy Award. Like I'm telling you, all I did is apply. I saw
• 12:32
  what qualify to win what I had, I had a goal I told a couple of
• 12:36
  friends. But I make these decisions now based on the
• 12:39
  future. My secrets of success has been not making decisions
• 12:42
  based on now making decisions based on the outcome of now, I
• 12:47
  don't care about this current, you know, choice if it doesn't
• 12:49
  get me the outcome, the larger outcome that you've called me in
• 12:53
  to make happen and making me realize that every room that I'm
• 12:56
  in is important, and I hold on to my name. It's one hell of a
• 12:59
  long name. It's not easy to say it's like Vinnie Potestivo!
• 13:02
  Stephanie Maas: Oh, my goodness. Okay. So one of the things you
• 13:06
  said very, very early on was most of the folks that are
• 13:10
  launching, they're not creators. By nature, they have a passion
• 13:13
  for something and they figure out how to package it into
• 13:16
  something that can be bought by somebody else that makes them
• 13:20
  then a business owner, what mistakes do you see those folks
• 13:24
  making? Because they're again, let's assume they're not
• 13:27
  naturally marketers, or they don't know social media or what
• 13:30
  what mistakes do you see them make?
• 13:32
  Vinnie Potestivo: Yeah, here's, here's two quick answers. One is
• 13:35
  they do it by themselves. And we try to learn a lot by ourselves.
• 13:38
  And I actually recommend not learning and pecking away and
• 13:42
  slow learning and going and learning I really recommend
• 13:45
  stop, learn completely in its entirety, and then implement, I
• 13:49
  think that if it takes two weeks to get a website out of the
• 13:53
  gate, because we're learning and updating, learning and updating
• 13:56
  small little pieces that have been just shut down for four or
• 13:59
  five solid days, and gotten clear on what our story and how
• 14:04
  we want our story to be received, not just shared, not
• 14:06
  just sold or told, but received. And shared. Clarity is one of
• 14:12
  those things that I think is often overlooked in creativity.
• 14:16
  There's a focus on how do I get something accomplished, as
• 14:19
  opposed to who could I be working with? There's a great
• 14:22
  book called who, not how and it's all about people in
• 14:25
  networking, and making sure they're set up for success. And
• 14:29
  in terms of picking those people, I think there are four
• 14:32
  or three types of creatives. There's an analytical creator, a
• 14:35
  strategic creator, and a technical creator. So you know,
• 14:39
  you might find a better partnership, if you identify as
• 14:43
  an analytical creator. If if performance marketing and Google
• 14:46
  ads and Facebook ads and all that's important to you, you
• 14:49
  might do really well with you partnering with a technical
• 14:53
  someone who's who's more focused on SEO and automation and
• 14:56
  integrations or even a strategic creator who's going to bring in
• 14:59
  one relationships and focus on the person to person component
• 15:03
  to it more so so. So just making sure that you're complementing
• 15:06
  your creative skills. But whether you identify as an
• 15:09
  analytical, technical or strategic creators sort of up to
• 15:12
  you.
• 15:13
  Stephanie Maas: So you do this stuff all the time. And I
• 15:15
  imagine you're usually sitting in my seat, probably a little
• 15:18
  bit more than sitting in your seat. What is the one thing you
• 15:21
  don't get asked that you wish you did?
• 15:24
  Vinnie Potestivo: Oh, that's interesting. I would want to
• 15:26
  say, there's a lot of focus on what we're talking about now.
• 15:29
  You know, it's all about getting in touch and handing off. I wish
• 15:33
  people talked about sustainability a bit more, which
• 15:36
  is that after they're done with this, what is the next thing
• 15:39
  they should do? Not? How do they get in touch with you? Like, we
• 15:43
  just started a conversation, we're responsible for what
• 15:46
  happens next? So how do we get to help the people who are
• 15:49
  hearing this podcast do it I feel like it's a people that
• 15:52
  people responsibility. But for us, you know, for the people
• 15:56
  listening to this, I appreciate people being sent my way. But
• 15:59
  the real, the real, I hope the real honest answer is like,
• 16:02
  hopefully, we would get to be part of the answer. I don't,
• 16:05
  they're they follow you for a reason that they're learning
• 16:09
  about me through you for a reason. And I think that
• 16:12
  together, we can come up with better solutions, and I could
• 16:15
  ever do it, you know, on my own. So I wish there was more
• 16:18
  conversation about that about the sustainability about of
• 16:21
  impact more so than let me help you grow your business? And how
• 16:25
  do they buy your next product and that sort of transactional
• 16:28
  element of it. Because it's not about strategy. It's about
• 16:31
  tactics really, right. Like, I don't call myself a strategist,
• 16:35
  because the last thing you need is more strategy from more
• 16:38
  opinions and strategy. I don't care who I helped out, I don't
• 16:41
  care what I went through in life. Sometimes strategies feel
• 16:45
  deeply like opinions to me, and I'm, and sometimes I want to
• 16:48
  remove my opinion from the conversation. And sometimes I
• 16:51
  lean into my opinion, but tactics, that's something that I
• 16:54
  feel confident in sharing 24/7 With, with anyone, as long as
• 16:58
  you're using them for the betterment of the good, you
• 17:01
  know, and I put, I put that energy out there as well, I
• 17:04
  intentionally make sure people know that this, these tools need
• 17:07
  to be used for positive impact, and that I won't stand to have
• 17:11
  amused otherwise. That's why I've been sensitive about
• 17:14
  working outside of the small gated talent community that I
• 17:17
  got so lucky to get to work with because I truly got to work with
• 17:21
  them and understand their intentions. And scaling. What I
• 17:24
  do with people who I don't truly understand their intentions is
• 17:27
  scary to me, because I've seen the impact of what media can do
• 17:31
  to change the conversation to change the law, to give us
• 17:34
  rights, you know, hopefully back to get more out of us, you know,
• 17:37
  and I, I gotta say, I bring up Mandy Moore and Beyonce, and
• 17:41
  they fight for our rights, like they show up in places that are
• 17:44
  important for us. Matthew McConaughey, it's weird, because
• 17:47
  I never got to work with Matthew, these talent have a
• 17:50
  role, you know, and in an impact. So how we empower them
• 17:54
  and who we select, to celebrate and turn into celebrities.
• 17:57
  That's us as an audience that you can't blame MTV for a
• 18:00
  certain type of show, or Bravo, for a certain type of show,
• 18:03
  because I was at the network, I'll tell you what the network
• 18:07
  says, but the audience watched it.
• 18:09
  Stephanie Maas: I think this is not something I've heard a lot
• 18:11
  out there. And it echoes your idea of sustainability of
• 18:15
  impact, which I think there's a lot of power in that. But it's
• 18:18
  support versus promote. Yeah, and think about how organic that
• 18:23
  is. Because if you really support something, it naturally
• 18:27
  gets promoted. But people today we're so used to it so much
• 18:30
  coming at us when I mean, don't you think we're so used to it's
• 18:34
  almost at times we put up that guard like oh, don't come at me,
• 18:38
  Don't come at me. But when it's Hey, this is just a cool thing,
• 18:42
  come be a part of it, or come listen to it, or whatever. The
• 18:46
  byproduct is the promotion, but the intention is the support.
• 18:50
  And I think it makes for a much more organic response, which in
• 18:54
  turn to your point, it's with the right intention.
• 18:57
  Vinnie Potestivo: Yeah, because there's cause there's there's
• 18:59
  there's inspired action that's bringing them to you there's
• 19:03
  momentum, bringing them to you, what's going to happen after
• 19:06
  they find you is two things one they're going to share, maybe
• 19:10
  verbally with their team. This is a real legit way to grow your
• 19:14
  brand, without having to focus on the name, the artwork, all of
• 19:17
  the creative ways that we understand branding impacts the
• 19:21
  way that our message gets out there. But by focusing on the
• 19:24
  actual message itself, and stripping away all of that
• 19:28
  creative packaging, unwrapping the gift, and makes it easier to
• 19:31
  share and makes it easier to discover. That's just one way
• 19:35
  that that we can help ourselves be more discoverable. You don't
• 19:39
  need to be more visible to be discovered 20 years ago, 10
• 19:42
  years ago more was more was more was more even that term. No
• 19:46
  press is bad press I can't disagree with don't tell me
• 19:49
  there's no such thing as bad press. That's long, long as the
• 19:52
  day when that was the truth. Now we have a choice and a decision
• 19:56
  of how we get represented. We don't we don't we're not at the
• 20:00
  whim of Five public companies that have access to the
• 20:03
  airwaves, we the power of people can change that. And it stems
• 20:07
  from what we create and what we consume. So you're watching
• 20:10
  those weird shows and then complaining about it. Guilty
• 20:13
  pleasure. Now I'm in defense of media.
• 20:18
  Stephanie Maas: That's awesome. Vinnie, you have been super
• 20:21
  generous with your time, your willingness to share. Very
• 20:24
  appreciative. Anything else?
• 20:26
  Vinnie Potestivo: Thanks. No, there's nothing I haven't shared
• 20:29
  that I also haven't documented. So if I can bring that up, I
• 20:33
  have a free creator hub. There's PDF versions and the HTML
• 20:36
  version I asked for you to come and sign up for a free account
• 20:39
  that VP e.tv over 100 awards worthy of winning 60 podcast
• 20:44
  platforms I think every podcaster should be on and
• 20:47
  20 2350 creator platforms that pay I have hundreds of tactics
• 20:53
  and links to share the power of the Creator economy, how to
• 20:57
  convert using influencer marketing, I have a free
• 21:00
  masterclass up there. So please feel free to use these resources
• 21:03
  to be successful early and consistently throughout your
• 21:07
  career. And say hi to me on LinkedIn.
• 21:09
  Stephanie Maas: Thank you, really fun, so nice to meet you.
• 21:13
  Vinnie Potestivo: Yea, that was awesome. Thank you.