Latest / Beyond Fulfillment Podcast / Turning Moments Into Movements: How John Petrocelli Revolutionized Live Event Streaming

Transcript

Turning Moments Into Movements: How John Petrocelli Revolutionized Live Event Streaming · Beyond Fulfillment Podcast

• 0:03
  This email back in the middle of the night that says Prince says in quotes, this is exactly what I want to do.
• 0:09
  What does it take to build an entirely new industry from the ground up and stay at the top of it for over 20 years?
• 0:17
  Today's guest, John Petrocelli is a true pioneer in live streaming.
• 0:22
  He worked directly with Prince to launch one of the first artist owned music platforms, powered live streams for Coachella and the Grammys and built Bulldog DM into the world's most experienced live stream studio with clients like Coca Cola,
• 0:37
  AT&T and Samsung.
• 0:40
  Today, John breaks down the mindset, sales strategies and the hard won lessons that shaped his path.
• 0:46
  As always, if you found value from this content, please like and subscribe.
• 0:52
  All right, John Petrocelli, welcome to Beyond Fulfillment.
• 0:56
  Thanks Dave.
• 0:57
  Great to be here.
• 0:58
  Yeah, absolutely.
• 0:59
  We appreciate you taking the time.
• 1:02
  So John, you've had quite an illustrious career in the field of live streaming.
• 1:08
  You've been in it 20 years basically as long as the industry has been around.
• 1:13
  And you've had several milestone moments from working with Prince and landing Coca Cola and a whole bunch of other stuff we'll get into.
• 1:21
  But just to set the stage for our listeners, can you just talk about how you became an entrepreneur happily and you know, I've kind of the big thing for me certainly operating in streaming, I tended, you know, I
• 1:37
  tend to follow or I actively followed the career of Mark Cuban.
• 1:42
  And I think a lot of people know him for being this wealthy entrepreneur who owns the Mavericks and is in the, you know, cost plus drugs and other things that he does at Shark Tank.
• 1:52
  But he's also kind of the godfather of the streaming industry.
• 1:57
  And in the late 90s, I believe it was when he had aggregated a lot of like college or radio stations streaming across the Internet and other properties.
• 2:08
  Yahoo came in and bought that business from him for $5.7 billion.
• 2:13
  And I thought, wow, there's got to be a fascinating business here.
• 2:17
  And that's how I got into the streaming world.
• 2:20
  And as a result, you know, I've continued to follow kind of his thoughts and you know, his strategies and advice for entrepreneurs.
• 2:27
  But that was really, you know, how I got into the business.
• 2:31
  And the quick backstory was I was working in Boston in, in technology and telecommunications and I moved out to LA to learn.
• 2:39
  I still wanted to be in business more in sales but also be around a kind of creative environment.
• 2:44
  And I got into entertainment, which you all start in the mailroom at these big giant talent agencies and you would go through an Agent training program.
• 2:53
  And I learned how a TV show was put together, how a film is made, and even how someone packages up an artist to go on a tour for music.
• 3:03
  And right at that moment I realized that Hollywood was looking at, geez, there's this wave coming with the Internet.
• 3:10
  And they were kind of, I would say, on high alert based on what had happened with music.
• 3:16
  And music being, you know, file shared and kind of disrupting that space.
• 3:20
  So I got into streaming because I could, I could leverage my tech background with the knowledge I had acquired working in entertainment and go in and talk to people that worked at the studios, the broadcasters, even the sports
• 3:33
  leagues about, hey, what does this mean for you?
• 3:34
  How can it work and kind of address their fears?
• 3:37
  Because I had, I had, you know, come from that world and that's what set me off on this path overall.
• 3:43
  Okay, so as a young kid just starting out, early in your career, you had this tech background where you understood the technology and then you were fortunate enough to work in an entry level position within entertainment and you
• 3:58
  instantly saw the connection with what had happened with music streaming and how that really changed the landscape of how music is distributed.
• 4:06
  Then you instantly saw the opportunity and started basically getting into streaming that way.
• 4:13
  Yeah, I was back early in the early days of streaming.
• 4:17
  You know, people might remember what was called the format wars.
• 4:20
  So it was this battle for the desktop.
• 4:22
  Microsoft had Windows media player, Real had RealPlayer, and Apple had QuickTime.
• 4:29
  And I was operating in the kind of as Switzerland as a content delivery network, which means streaming those bits.
• 4:36
  And Apple came to me and said, or one of the executives at Apple said, hey, you're doing great work with QuickTime.
• 4:42
  There's a music artist that wants to do this themselves.
• 4:44
  Would you be interested in conversing with them and finding out how to help them?
• 4:47
  I said, sure, who's the artist?
• 4:49
  And they said it was Prince.
• 4:50
  And I'm a big, massive lifelong fan of his.
• 4:54
  And you know, back then too we were trying to, in my mind was, hey, everyone's streaming all these things, but how do we protect those assets and how do we make sure that it's authorized content?
• 5:06
  Again, trying to avoid the file sharing challenges and to explain that digital rights management and anti piracy is hard to explain.
• 5:13
  So I basically took a copy of Purple Rain from a file sharing network and I had it encrypted.
• 5:20
  Meaning when you went to play it, it says, oh, hey Dave, you're trying to play this asset.
• 5:24
  You have to be a member of Prince's fan club or you have to pay 99 cents for the song Whatever, Whatever it is.
• 5:31
  And I sent that off to one of Prince's people and I got this email back in the middle of the night that says Prince says in quotes, this is exactly what I want to do.
• 5:39
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• 6:27
  Egan was the number two number.
• 6:28
  He actually communicated in that manner and we were quickly out.
• 6:33
  We did a deal and I built really what became the first major artist owned and operated direct to consumer music store.
• 6:41
  And he filled that with audio, video, new music, EPs, LPs, footage of him performing live.
• 6:50
  And then he decided he was going to go on tour and have this big comeback tour.
• 6:54
  And when you went to see him perform, say at the Staples center, he would have the 4,000 best seats available exclusively through his online music club.
• 7:02
  So we had to then spin up a ticketing system as well.
• 7:05
  And it was really fascinating to see the kind of combination of a major artist as well as his fans interacting and how do they go through this workflows together.
• 7:17
  And I was able to go see him tune up for this and also see a bunch of dates on that tour.
• 7:21
  And it does dawned on me that some of the things I was seeing him do as probably the greatest live performer of all time, I wanted to tell my friends about this.
• 7:28
  And it realized that there would come a day where this would be a shared experience where we could live stream what was happening and we could have that collaborative moment.
• 7:37
  And that got my mind thinking, wow, this is the future and this is where this is all headed.
• 7:41
  But really that was my entree into being wired to think about acting entrepreneurial as he was, but also looking at the streaming space and particularly the live streaming space.
• 7:53
  Wow.
• 7:54
  Okay.
• 7:55
  So very early on you're getting to work directly with Prince's team to help him build out this direct to consumer model of music and all the other things that an artist can sell and live performances you get to
• 8:09
  see him live numerous times, and then the wheels start turning about, wow, like, how this is going to evolve and be, like you said, being able to tell your friends.
• 8:17
  And this is before social media, but clearly social media came after that and, and all the other avenues where content is shared.
• 8:26
  But that, that was really the genesis for your, your business career relative to streaming 100%.
• 8:33
  And shortly, you know, at the same time, I was advising a boutique live streaming company for six or seven years, and they had asked me to come on and run it and act as a CEO.
• 8:44
  And I said, yeah.
• 8:45
  Finally, after that experience with him, I decided to do that.
• 8:49
  And within a matter of months, that business was bought by aeg, who people know as the world's largest presenter of live music and live sports.
• 8:59
  So now we were operating inside of this massive live company that had holdings with Lakers, Kings and Galaxy and professional sports, and running big giant stadiums and arenas, as well as music tours for people like Justin Bieber, Garth
• 9:16
  Brooks, Black Eyed Peas, Bon Jovi, in addition to owning properties like, you know, Coachella.
• 9:22
  So we were powering things independent of AEG, like the live streaming for the Grammys, Oscars, Masters, TED conference, E3, product launches, movie premieres, things inside of AEG.
• 9:34
  But right before that acquisition and through it, I'd gone to YouTube and said, this is a business that you should certainly consider to bring these engaged audiences to these experiences on YouTube as a live experience, and then share
• 9:47
  all the related content post show as well.
• 9:50
  And we had this kind of proof of concept.
• 9:52
  The planets aligned and Alicia Keys was performing in an AEG venue in New York, livestreamed on YouTube, brought to the viewer by American Express.
• 10:01
  And we powered everything because back then YouTube was VOD only.
• 10:05
  And the result was, wow.
• 10:07
  You know, they came back and said, the way you did this, you were right.
• 10:09
  We had a delighted music artist.
• 10:12
  Alicia's new record was, I think, a top, top pre order on itunes.
• 10:17
  Before the show even finished.
• 10:19
  The audience was thrilled.
• 10:20
  They got to have a live experience on YouTube.
• 10:22
  And the brand, American Express was, you know, over the moon.
• 10:26
  So YouTube said to me, hey, we want to do this, but we don't have the stack built yet or the capabilities.
• 10:32
  And we then did a deal with YouTube where we powered everything on YouTube for three or four years.
• 10:37
  Coachella, Bonnaroo Rock and Rio, Lollapalooza product launches, tentpole events like Oracle, Open World.
• 10:43
  And that opened my eyes.
• 10:45
  I'm like, wow, the world is opening up.
• 10:47
  There's more devices.
• 10:48
  People really prioritize experiences and I figured it would go beyond just pure YouTube or pure AEG.
• 10:54
  So I spun out of AEG and I formed this business, took a few key people with me, brought over an executive from Live Nation, and that was the foundation of Bulldog, was really that Prince YouTube AEG experience that
• 11:08
  led to me building this business.
• 11:11
  Wow.
• 11:11
  So, yeah, the stars certainly aligned, it seems, and you definitely took action as well.
• 11:17
  So you're at the forefront of this really emergence into the live streaming world and getting to work with all these major players is they're adopting this new technology, they're seeing it work in real time, they're seeing the results,
• 11:31
  and you see right away that this is the future.
• 11:33
  So like you said, now you spun out of aeg, you took a few key people and you started your own company, Bulldog dm.
• 11:42
  So talk about that company, what you do specifically there and what was that process like?
• 11:48
  So Bulldog DM today is the world's most experienced livestream studio, which means we provide all of the turnkey services and strategies that a customer would need to deliver live video at the best practice or most optimized way that
• 12:02
  they can.
• 12:03
  And you know, a client for us could be a big brand, it could be an agency, it could be a content creator, a music artist promoter, or even one of the social media platforms, or it could be a
• 12:13
  subset of a couple of those entities functioning harmoniously together.
• 12:19
  And we provide all of the live multi camera video production and filming.
• 12:25
  Second, we provide all the technical services like moving the, moving the video or encoding it.
• 12:30
  And three, distribution.
• 12:32
  Is that going to live on YouTube, Facebook, Twitch, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok?
• 12:36
  Do we need to build a custom microsite to house the experience?
• 12:40
  So we're involved in the kind of the whole turnkey process of creating the video, executing it and then distributing it.
• 12:47
  And you know, live video has become a pretty popular topic certainly now, without question, in the pandemic.
• 12:55
  And in general, I think there's a certain, there's an interest people want to have, they want to have moments and they want to have these collaborative participatory experiences, viewing either by themselves or with their friends or en masse
• 13:06
  watching a big show.
• 13:07
  And we've seen the space evolve over time, but that's, that's the, the process and that's kind of what we're doing today as a business.
• 13:17
  Okay, all right, so.
• 13:18
  And just, just for everyone like to execute live streaming.
• 13:22
  Right.
• 13:23
  And I.
• 13:24
  Right.
• 13:24
  You started this in 2012.
• 13:26
  So clearly technology and the world has evolved a lot since then.
• 13:30
  But like when you started what was the process like to execute live streaming as opposed to, to maybe streaming something recorded.
• 13:37
  And how important was it to like engage a company like yours?
• 13:41
  Yeah, I think the big way to explain this or the clearest way is the streaming industry.
• 13:48
  The Internet, frankly was built with an on demand focus, meaning if we want to watch music video, we're going to watch that on Vevo, or if we want to watch a TV show, it's on Hulu, a movie's on
• 14:02
  Netflix.
• 14:03
  Any asset you can think of is on a platform like YouTube.
• 14:06
  But what people didn't comprehend is that they've come up, there's now this live ability.
• 14:13
  Every device everyone owns pretty much today has the ability to render and deliver and process and watch live video.
• 14:21
  And that's a very different science than on demand video given the pulling of all those, those, those files.
• 14:30
  So A, the bandwidth, B, we're typically trying to service thousands of different device, you know, profiles, you know, C, people, viewers could be all over the world as well.
• 14:41
  So it's a very complex, you know, moving industry combined with the fact that we're also filming this in the moment.
• 14:48
  Right.
• 14:49
  You know, if you watch a, a take in a film, like they might do 34 takes for one scene, a movie.
• 14:55
  In the live world, we don't have that luxury.
• 14:58
  It's happening and it has to happen in the moment.
• 15:01
  And we've really built a business around ensuring that.
• 15:05
  It's almost a television production like approach in that we're using, you know, broadcast grade or near broadcast grade, highly reliable equipment.
• 15:15
  Our crew members are people that this is what they do for a living.
• 15:18
  It's live, live multi camera work.
• 15:21
  And also the technology that we're building, the workflows are all completely redundant.
• 15:25
  There's no single point of failure in the workflow.
• 15:28
  And that allows us to work with some of the biggest brands and platforms in the world because they can now have the confidence that their experience, their content is going to be rendered and delivered the way they intended
• 15:41
  to be, but also at the standards of their brand.
• 15:44
  And also knowing that there's a pretty big audience that's going to be watching this.
• 15:46
  It's critical that functions and works, but without question the live space is far more complex, so many more moving pieces than the on demand space.
• 15:56
  Okay.
• 15:57
  And so given you, you really pioneered, you know, particularly with, you know, your work prior to the AEG acquisition.
• 16:06
  And then when you, you've, you founded Bulldog, right, You were on like the leading edge of this technology as it evolved and as, as everyone's really adopting, pouring into the space.
• 16:17
  Like you mentioned, a lot of big brands, big companies were jumping in left and right.
• 16:21
  What was the process like?
• 16:23
  Basically, even though you had experience and you had some early wins, you're basically a new company, a startup growing in this space that was evolving so quickly.
• 16:32
  What was the process like scaling the company?
• 16:36
  I think for me, again, I kind of borrowed the Mark Cuban philosophy and I hear him when he speaks or his books he's written or even on Shark Tank.
• 16:44
  You know, his kind of main mantra is, you know, sales cures all and you know, no sales, no company.
• 16:51
  So it doesn't really matter what kind of technology or product you have if you can't explain it and drive, drive a sale to a customer.
• 17:01
  And I think the big takeaway for me coming out of AEG was, you know, I knew that AEG wanted to live stream Coachella, but they had to.
• 17:09
  They have three big tasks around a giant music festival.
• 17:12
  They have to book the bands, sell the tickets and manage the on site sponsorship.
• 17:17
  You know, like Heineken as the official beer of the festival or Toyota as the official car.
• 17:21
  To wrap their heads around a streaming experience is pretty difficult.
• 17:26
  And they also don't want to finance that themselves.
• 17:28
  Right.
• 17:29
  They have other costs operating that experience.
• 17:31
  The big takeaway for me was brands.
• 17:34
  And you know, brands are trying to reach and engage consumers and it's super hard to do that, more so than it's ever been.
• 17:42
  I think the average consumer attention span now has fallen this century down to eight seconds.
• 17:47
  I believe it was 12 seconds around, you know, the year 2000.
• 17:52
  And you know, brands have that challenge.
• 17:54
  And I realized that I went and sat with them.
• 17:57
  I had a new business and because I was early, it allowed me to hear them out, hey, what challenges are you having?
• 18:04
  And I heard these kind of three recurring themes of we really struggle with cord cutting, brand safety and ad blocking.
• 18:11
  Those are real challenges.
• 18:12
  We can't message, we can't communicate, we can't connect.
• 18:15
  Combined with we're trying to get our heads around this experience economy.
• 18:20
  These younger consumers who value events, experience, et cetera almost more than anything, help us do that.
• 18:26
  So I built a business around those challenges and it looks led to some significant success with some of the biggest brands in the world.
• 18:34
  And I realized that if we do, if we execute live streaming in a best practice way where it's not just surveillance video or webcam, it's transforming the viewer into a participant.
• 18:46
  And we do that with higher quality production.
• 18:49
  But things like a social stream like chat that's curated and related to the video, so it's not filled with, you know, off topic or trolling and other things like pulling trivia, graphics and calls to action.
• 19:04
  Now, that viewer is now a participant in the broadcast, and that does a couple of things.
• 19:09
  You know, it allows the, you know, I might invite you.
• 19:11
  Hey, Dave, I'm watching this cool broadcast.
• 19:13
  Come watch it with me.
• 19:14
  I'm more likely to come back to subsequent live streams.
• 19:18
  But the big thing is it unlocks a much longer watch time, and that's what obviously brands want.
• 19:24
  And we can deliver live streams now that get 5, 10, 20, 30, 40 minutes of watch time.
• 19:30
  But it was really those early days of just hearing them out, both the brands and the ad agencies.
• 19:34
  Like, what are you faced with and how might we be able to help?
• 19:38
  But that was, I think, really the launchpad for our work as a company, and it's reflected today.
• 19:45
  Okay.
• 19:46
  And a pivotal moment for the company as you're were growing is you landed a deal with Coca Cola.
• 19:53
  Right.
• 19:53
  And it was about two years in.
• 19:55
  Two years into starting the company.
• 19:57
  Yep.
• 19:57
  Right.
• 19:58
  And what was that like to land a mammoth company like that as a new business?
• 20:05
  Like, how did that change things?
• 20:07
  It completely transformed the business.
• 20:09
  And I had been contacted when I started the business, one of the marketing executives in Mexico for Coke, which is really where some of their greatest marketers come from, globally, he contacted me and said, hey, we did some
• 20:22
  great work with you on YouTube, but we want to live stream something of like a big temple experience from a Coca Cola property.
• 20:30
  And is that something that you could help us with?
• 20:33
  And I said, sure.
• 20:34
  And it turned out that, you know, Coke was the major title sponsor of the Vive Latino Festival festival in Mexico City, which is the rock version of Coachella.
• 20:45
  It's been around for almost three decades at this point.
• 20:48
  And their big thing was help us amplify this and help us have a broader message beyond just the festival grounds.
• 20:54
  So we built a really kind of a turnkey livestream experience for them that had multiple channels where you can go in and pick the different artists that you wanted to see.
• 21:03
  You can get an alert notification sent to you saying, hey, Dave, the band Prophets of Rage that you like coming on and, you know, here's the video link it's coming into, coming on in a couple minutes.
• 21:12
  You could chat, you could tweet.
• 21:14
  We brought in the video director of Muse, you know, big band.
• 21:19
  He's almost like a.
• 21:21
  An important part of the visuals around what Muse does.
• 21:25
  He directed the main stage for us in as a VR extension of the show.
• 21:30
  So you could, if you didn't have VR you could, you could 360 live stream if you YouTube.
• 21:34
  And that led to a partnership that Coke structured with Samsung.
• 21:38
  You can go to any best Buy in Mexico and put on a VR headset and watch the live stream that way.
• 21:44
  And end result is we did this with them I think three or four years and Coke was able to, based on all this cool functionality, realize an average watch time on mobile of 29 minutes and an average watch
• 21:58
  time on desktop of 150,13 minutes all from a Coca Cola FM property.
• 22:04
  And as a marketer, I mean they were blown away again, they're struggling with seconds of attention and here they're getting a half hour on mobile and almost two hours on desktop.
• 22:16
  And that was really, that changed the business for us and that got us into a lot of other.
• 22:20
  It validated us.
• 22:21
  So we started then winning business at AT&T, Jeep, Nissan, Samsung, as well as the platforms, you know, Google, Facebook, etc.
• 22:32
  So but yeah, without question that was a huge win and completely changed the trajectory of the business for us.
• 22:39
  Okay, wow.
• 22:41
  So again after, after this really visionary experience and everything you did, you start your company two years in you land Coca Cola, you hit a home run run with that project and really deliver some phenomenal results.
• 22:56
  And then kind of the domino effect starts happening where you land accounts with AT&T, Jeep, Nissan and other platforms.
• 23:04
  So what happens next as the company takes off with all those projects?
• 23:11
  I think the big obviously what we're trying to do is partner with people that have success in the doing this, but then turned it on with a cadence.
• 23:21
  And I think our first thing we did with AT&T was the masters.
• 23:26
  So AT&T has a big corporate partnership with the Masters and the Masters allows them to live stream that or did on an AT and T property.
• 23:33
  So we built a quickly a capability where you could stream three different aspects of the Masters.
• 23:38
  You could see the leaders, the Amen corner and I think a different, a different segment of the experience.
• 23:46
  And that's a pretty, that's almost, that's with all the statistics and leaderboard information layered into the broadcast.
• 23:55
  And that led to a bigger partnership with AT&T where they cut a deal themselves.
• 24:00
  They became a corporate sponsor of both the NBA and the ncaa.
• 24:05
  So we would go to almost every NBA All Star Game and we would would produce and live stream the pre game concert before both the NBA All Star Game and the WNBA All Star Game.
• 24:17
  And then we Would go with them to the Final Four.
• 24:19
  There was just kind of a big music festival night.
• 24:22
  We would power three, four, five bands, same relationship with them for the college football playoffs.
• 24:29
  And here this is really to help AT&T tell their 5G marketing story.
• 24:34
  And that became, I think, our biggest customer to date.
• 24:39
  But that was a significant, really kind of building off the momentum from Coca Cola migrating us into the waters of AT&T.
• 24:48
  And also with a lot of different creators and a lot of major temple sporting events around the country that became, I think, an even bigger, created much even bigger profile for the company.
• 24:58
  Okay.
• 24:59
  All right.
• 24:59
  And just hearing all this too, right?
• 25:02
  Like, it sounds like just continual win after win, highlight reel kind of list of accomplishments as you're growing and scaling this business.
• 25:10
  But so many of our listeners know every business has challenges, obstacles, pivots you have to make.
• 25:15
  Were there any times like things didn't go well, or you were kind of faced with some, some, some crises within the business or operational failures as you're scaling and building and working with all these big companies?
• 25:28
  Yeah, I think the initial, I think the last project we did before the Pandemic was an automotive reveal for Hyundai, and it became more of a virtual experience.
• 25:41
  But it's pretty elaborate because they were announcing the new model of the Elantra, which is their number one most successful selling vehicle in their history.
• 25:50
  And we had to pull this off just on the cusp of the pandemic.
• 25:55
  But the result was, interestingly enough, the highest number of pre orders for that vehicle in Hyundai's history.
• 26:03
  And we thought, oh, great, this, this is all about to take off and explode.
• 26:07
  And then the Pandemic hits and all of a sudden AT and T has to cancel, you know, the Masters and all these other things that are happening.
• 26:13
  Right after that.
• 26:13
  We thought, you know, where is this going?
• 26:15
  And it was pretty quiet.
• 26:17
  And we thought, you know, what are we?
• 26:19
  Where is this world going to go?
• 26:21
  But then it just pivoted entirely because now you had everybody stuck at home.
• 26:27
  And also for the music artists who make pretty much the majority of their income comes from live touring, were largely sequestered in their homes.
• 26:36
  And all of a sudden the market began to change.
• 26:39
  Where they wanted to perform in their living room, in their recording studio, maybe it was like an empty hotel lobby or even.
• 26:47
  We've seen shows that were happening in museums or castles, and that was an interesting space.
• 26:53
  But what also happened is a lot of companies went out and got venture funding, and there were now upwards of 200 companies operating in this Space who were largely going to burn through their venture money because we knew
• 27:07
  eventually that the pandemic would end.
• 27:09
  And it's one thing to record something and play it out live when there's no one in the room or edit it and post, but if you have to do this in a live arena or with 5,000 people all
• 27:22
  pulling the same bandwidth for their wi fi and you have to understand seat kill, you don't want to put a camera in front of where a group of people are sitting.
• 27:29
  You got to keep the artist happy as well as the promoter.
• 27:32
  So we realized, well, we're going to go through this trajectory of all this focus in the pandemic, but eventually it had to resettle.
• 27:40
  So that was kind of, I would say, an up and a down time where we had to be cognizant of, you know, where is this going to go.
• 27:48
  And I've always tried to focus on, you know, skate to where the puck is going versus where it is.
• 27:54
  And now today our industry has got two, you know, pretty monumental developments happening simultaneous.
• 28:00
  So a lot of us, this is cyclical.
• 28:02
  And I think as an entrepreneur, you know, having that background of knowing how to A sell and B, at a high level with big brand customers, they'll also give you feedback.
• 28:12
  Right.
• 28:12
  You know, having being an authorized vendor to a giant corporation like an Apple, for instance, when they come at you with projects, you can start to see where they're wired and what they're thinking.
• 28:24
  Are they pursuing music or sports or is it enterprise streaming?
• 28:28
  And it helps us understand where this market is headed and also how are they monetizing it?
• 28:32
  Is, is it subscription, is it pay per view, is it ad supported, is it sponsored?
• 28:38
  So it's been, you know, keeping our eyes.
• 28:42
  I always believe that no project is similar to identical to the prior one.
• 28:48
  And knowing that things are always going to be subject to change has helped us, I think, navigate some of those choppy waters and those developments.
• 28:55
  Yeah, and like you said, the pandemic where all of a sudden all, all the live events get canceled and it looks like maybe there's going to be trouble and then all of a sudden the at home streaming really
• 29:05
  takes off and then you get flood, the market gets flooded with all sorts of competition that you have to deal with.
• 29:11
  But as you said, right, you stuck to your core business and you knew that executing at a high level based on all your experience was ultimately going to win out over time as everyone kind of realized what it,
• 29:22
  what it really took to succeed within live streaming.
• 29:27
  Okay, so one other Point I really want to hit on too, and you mentioned it a couple times too, was just your ability to sell.
• 29:34
  And I know you mentioned about the Mark Cuban philosophy and some of the quotes there, but just for the listeners, because we often have that topic come up.
• 29:43
  But how important as a skill set would you say sales is for an entrepreneur?
• 29:50
  I think without question, far away, it is the most important skill set to have.
• 29:55
  And it, I think it takes some, some work and some trial and error.
• 30:01
  And I think you have to look at it also objectively as a numbers game.
• 30:07
  I mean, nobody is going to have a hit rate of 100% or I mean, I use, I play baseball.
• 30:13
  I use that as the greatest, most successful hitters of all time hit.300, meaning they fail 70% of the time.
• 30:23
  And I think it's critical to understand that because someone says no to you once or maybe 10 times, maybe 100 times, it doesn't mean that your business is, you know, over per se.
• 30:35
  But understanding how to conduct a sales campaign, how to take someone from a suspect to a prospect to a customer, I think is a critical skill set to hone and develop.
• 30:46
  And I, you know, also I think once you, I think, understand it, you can then more, more readily approach a company like an Att or a Coca Cola or a Google.
• 31:00
  You have to understand that there are decision makers and processes that happen at these organizations.
• 31:05
  But the real thing for me was, I think, going early and sitting down and saying, what are your challenges?
• 31:09
  Where, what are your problems?
• 31:11
  That really changed my business.
• 31:12
  I got the feedback.
• 31:13
  They told me this is what we're struggling with.
• 31:16
  And we're cognizant that there's technology out there and that's being developed and the market is changing.
• 31:21
  But here's what we're faced with and here's what we, you know, we want, we want to, if you can help us solve these challenges, you're going to have certainly our attention.
• 31:30
  And that skill set, I think, you know, sales to me is.
• 31:35
  Majority of it is listening, like asking the right questions and listening to the feedback you're getting.
• 31:40
  And also understand too that the whole world is not a prospect.
• 31:42
  I fully get that.
• 31:43
  I mean, I'm, I operate in somewhat of a, of a niche.
• 31:47
  I've heard that live streaming is like the 1% sector of the streaming space.
• 31:52
  I think that's kind of expanding and growing, but I think that's reality.
• 31:56
  I have to be, as an entrepreneur, aware of that.
• 32:00
  And also some of this is timing.
• 32:01
  You know, when we do, we're doing A music festival that's going to happen in June.
• 32:06
  We're aware of that.
• 32:07
  The festival isn't going to be happening in New York City in the middle of December.
• 32:11
  So we build our calendar and our thought processes around that.
• 32:14
  But I certainly believe that sales has been.
• 32:18
  Is today the most.
• 32:19
  One of, I think, the most critical and important skill set for an entrepreneur.
• 32:24
  Okay.
• 32:25
  All right.
• 32:25
  And given this, this, this journey you have, you had and how it started and the way the company has evolved and where you are today, looking at all this, what's been the best part of your entrepreneurial journey?
• 32:41
  You know, I think the ability to.
• 32:45
  When you're an entrepreneur, you're your own boss and you create the culture of the company.
• 32:51
  You pick who you want to work with, in some cases, what customers you want to work with.
• 32:57
  And it allows to, I think for iteration, I get feedback and I can understand where the market.
• 33:03
  I'll give you a great example.
• 33:04
  Right now, our market is completely transforming and it's focused on what's called E Commerce live streaming.
• 33:11
  And this is about a $400 billion business in China where people are having these live broadcasts and they're demonstrating and talking about a product and the audience can interact and ask questions and say, can you show it to
• 33:25
  me from this came camera angle?
• 33:26
  Does it come in blue?
• 33:27
  Is the, what is the.
• 33:28
  Is the waistband?
• 33:29
  Is it elastic?
• 33:31
  And these interactive broadcasts are leading to these incredible conversion rates because they're happening in the moment, they're authentic, you're getting the information.
• 33:39
  And they're also offering usually some sort of a financial incentive.
• 33:43
  Maybe it's 24% off of what it normally would cost.
• 33:46
  And this is leading to about a 30% conversion rate, which e commerce is normally around 2 to 3%.
• 33:54
  And some platforms are reporting a 50 to 60% conversion rate.
• 33:59
  So this is a.
• 34:00
  We've.
• 34:00
  So I've, I've moved my business into that world.
• 34:03
  So we became a TikTok shop certified agency this past year.
• 34:07
  And we're, you know, hurtling down the tracks as rapidly as the market is to understand this world.
• 34:15
  And when you see things like that type of a conversion rate, I now have to think as a vendor to a marketer.
• 34:25
  Marketers brands have shifted their philosophy.
• 34:28
  It's not just brand awareness now.
• 34:29
  They actually have to show conversion and calls to action and ultimately revenue.
• 34:34
  So we're now wired to understand, hey, this is now a new development for them and we have to build a business that supports that.
• 34:40
  So as an entrepreneur, I was able to quickly position the business to do that.
• 34:47
  And, you know, I don't know if I would have had that, that flexibility and that nimbleness at a, at a big, large, structured organization, hopefully.
• 34:54
  But I know for sure that running my business, I'm able to do that.
• 34:58
  And now we're looking at an entirely different ecosystem and landscape.
• 35:05
  But it all comes back to proper live video execution, but just almost a difference in methodology.
• 35:12
  Meaning if we're doing, you know, YouTube wants you to watch a video or a live stream as long as possible, but if you're selling something, if the sale happens in 12 seconds, you've accomplished a job and you've driven
• 35:24
  revenue.
• 35:24
  So it's a little bit of a level setting and a differentiator there of what has happened traditionally and what this new frontier in e commerce live streaming is looking like.
• 35:32
  But never a dull moment is I think probably a good way to summarize that.
• 35:39
  Yeah, well said.
• 35:40
  Okay, John, if people want to get in touch with you, learn more about Bulldog dm, the projects you're working on, or how they could potentially work with you, what's the best way people can find you online?
• 35:51
  Two ways, certainly we have, we have a social presence, but Bulldog DM is our website and I'm also have a presence on LinkedIn.
• 36:00
  But those, I think the two best ways to find us.
• 36:03
  Okay.
• 36:03
  All right, we will link all that in the show Notes for everyone.
• 36:07
  All right, John, thank you so much for taking the time to be here and sharing all this incredible wisdom from your journey with our listeners.
• 36:13
  We greatly appreciate it.
• 36:15
  Thanks, Dave.
• 36:15
  Really enjoyed it.