0:00 to people making money I'm your host Kevin bemel and we're here every Tuesday at 10:00 a.m. Pacific time and that's 1 pm on the East Coast where my guest Adam is is located and we talk about all things related to Business and Professional success and wealth building giving you ideas that you can use you can apply to your own situation to find the kind of success that you're looking for which each of us I think has to Define for ourselves so today I'm I'm really pleased to H to bring to you Adam
0:37 Weissman So Adam and I met um gosh I think maybe about a year ago half six months six months 12 yeah we've known each other for a while here um Adam is as I said a moment ago is is based in New York City and he is an entertainment and media attorney and I haven't I realized after after um Adam agreed to do the show that I don't think I've ever had anybody from that industry um you know especially from the business side of that industry um to to talk to us so I'm I'm I'm very
1:14 interested to hear Adam's story and and and how he got um where where he's at So Adam uh welcome to uh people making money great to have you on the show thanks and thanks for having me happy to be here yeah so I usually start out an interview by by asking this this question and you know as far back as as you're comfortable going but um I I know for most people what we ended up doing isn't what we thought we wanted to do as a kid right
1:50 I'm you I know for myself uh you know I I did not grow up thinking yeah I I want to administrate trusts you know I mean I think one time I wanted to be an astronaut you know a fireman right a train engineer um so when when you were a kid you know what what was it that you thought you wanted to do you know when you grew up right because we always get ask that question yeah I I don't think there was ever a moment where I knew what I wanted to do or had a really clear sense of what I wanted to do when I was going to grow up I was always
2:27 attracted to the Arts and performance perance um I acted from middle school through High School in in different school plays picked up guitar when I was like 12 or 13 and I've been playing that off and on for you know the last how old am I now last 20 something years I guess um and did a lot of stuff in between that you know was was really obsessed with um kind of illustrating uh Comics at some point so all these different things that I would do as as a I'll say
3:02 an adolescent that I never saw necessarily as a career path um what ended up happening was I sort of fell into a Philosophy degree in college which pushed me towards law uh effectively my very last year I had this one Philosophy of Law class and this kind of light bulb moment went off I'm like oh I really like philosophy and law feels like the practical application of a lot of philosophy that I was working with I was doing a lot of Ethics based stuff I was doing the philosophy of Law and kind of just ha had Hazard Le went
3:38 you know I'll take the elsat see what happens and before I knew it a year and a half later was in law school so I'll start a history from there so how did you make the bridge from what were it sounds like primarily Artistic Endeavors to philosophy which is you know a very sort of academic Scholastic field and and at least on the face of it I I don't I don't really see a connection between the two I don't think there was um I definitely had a background in English uh and and sort of creative writing which does lend itself
4:14 in some ways to philosophy because a lot of it is just understanding language uh reading comprehension being able to to to frame things properly um it's probably this foolish idea I had when I was going to college that philosophy seem more practical looking at it now that's a very silly thing to say um and and I would keep my my artistic Pursuit sort of going in the background nothing ever raising to a professional level but I never let that go um although certainly once I got into law school there was a moment where I was pushing a
4:49 lot of those things to the side and focusing just on the law what I was going to do in my leg career at that point so you know I do see the connection between philosophy and the law because so much of philosophy is the parsing of ideas right and the figuring thing you see this this is this is one of the reasons why you see um so many um traditionally religious Jews in the law and Jews in general because so much of um talmud's study is is very legalistic right yes um so it so
5:24 um what what was it about and and I I as I think back I took philosophy class or two I think when I was in college I think I took a class on rhetoric um you know and and and found it quite fascinating so what what was it about well let me give you the basis for this question philosophy sounds so esoteric right compared to something more practical like you know business or engineering or or you know mathematics you know the stem subjects what was was
5:59 it about philosophy that attracted you as essentially a teenager that you you decided I'm I want to spend you know four years studying this this topic it does seem a lot more esoteric than a business degree or uh even even in a a theoretical math degree or something like that uh but fundamentally philosophy is about asking questions and trying to understand things uh it's it's the the philosophical inquiry is always
6:34 the first inquiry into every subject that's ever existed science exists because philosophy came first to ask those preliminary questions and then science came out of that um and it was just this very attractive notion of let's learn a way of thinking as opposed to necessarily specific pieces of information because I could not for the life of me recall the specific topic that I was studying at the time whether it was like the classic Greek philosophers or more modern uh ethical pieces but that mode of questioning
7:09 things and questioning the foundation of things getting to have a really deep understanding of anything you're working on was very exciting um and again you know the the translation to law is obvious I think at least but it was really funny to see when I started as a first year law student we were doing all these preliminary like these these introductory courses and the questions I was asking were going over the heads of a lot of my my uh fellow students because they were coming from a business background or something else where everything is just like here are the facts and here's what you do with them
7:45 you don't question things as much um Everybody caught up more or less we'll say by second semester or the second year but it it was just really exciting to be able to spend my time asking questions and kind of analy in that way and you know you talk you talk about the like hudic history I I had a background going a private Hebrew day school for a large portion of my life and come from a Jewish family so there is this already tradition of people just kind of like asking questions and doing the these broad inquiries and you know I can go back to to talks I had with my my
8:22 grandfather my Z back in the day and he's always questioning things I'm like oh it feels like philosophy is in some way built into my DNA uh and there was there was a moment where I was doing some philosophy of religion classes too and Jewish stuff came up and I'm just like oh this feels like riding a bike thing yeah so so you know described that way it a Philosophy degree almost sounds like a you know an ideal precursor for almost any field whether it's science whether whether it's business because so much you know now with AI That's you
8:58 know more and more doing kind of the routine things right it's the ability to think and ask and ask cogent questions and search do that searching that is is really what's left for for us to do yeah yeah I mean I'm AI is coming up in my practice way more than I care to admit these days it's it's working in the Arts and entertainment field you can imagine a lot of my clients are worried about it worried about being replaced but it's never going to replace um the role someone who needs to poke holes and things and question why people are doing what they're doing and
9:33 how to improve things and how to innovate so that's that sort of goes hand inand the philosophy degrees great for that because again always questioning things it it also you know frustrates people in my personal life I think that way too much and there was definitely a moment coming out of it where I had to kind of rewire my brain again to not always be in the mode of of questioning or bothering people but could say it's certainly I think if you ask people to describe me one of my personality points is probably like always playing you know Devil's Advocate at this point which which again I need to curtail that sometimes sometimes very
10:08 helpful but it just seeps into everything uh if you've been in that space for long enough and if you've been a lawyer too I've been a lawyer for about 12ish years now and it's just like second nature to to kind of go into that mode very easily so so you you graduated from law school um what was your first step after that into the legal profession yeah I got a job um through a process known as oncampus interviews which a lot of law schools have where where the law firms some of the bigger ones actually show up and they interview you on campus and I I
10:44 managed to get a job uh I think in the sum my second year at a midsize commercial copyright and criminal defense litigation firm in Toronto Ontario which is where I'm born and raised I was I was living in Toronto uh my entire life up until that point so I ended up immediately out of law school going straight to this firm that had me doing a mix of showing up in court to do criminal defense appearances and the stuff that I was more excited for at the time which was sort of commercial and copyright and general civil litigation so so being the guy who's working on lawsuits and stuff and by virtue of the
11:20 size of my firm which was relatively you know it was a midsize firm relatively large for Toronto but still not gigantic I was being thrown into it from the start I was doing appearances from the start I was doing a lot of research I was dealing with clients um for about four years or so uh at this one specific spot that's where I started for me looking looking at the job back in the day it seemed like being a litigator being the guy who argues in court is in theory at least the I thought it was the purest um form of the law because that seems to be what it's
11:56 all about it's all about taking precedent and arguing and going back to my younger years there was a performative aspect to it too that was really exciting you know I I was never afraid to get uh on a stage whether I was in a a play or playing a concert and that went hand inand like get me in front of a judge and a jury and I would have been pretty comfortable so there was that piece which started slowly coming back uh into my life at that point got it and you know what this seems maybe this is going to kind
12:31 of be a theme in in your professional Arc but the connection between um you know intellectual property law and criminal law right it doesn't seem particularly I don't see a connection there to be honest um there there's not there's not a direct connection there's a connection of you're still arguing the law and the fundamental way the law works is is sort of the same across everything you got legislation you have jurist prudence and you have to use those as your basis for your new arguments that's really it so honoring
13:06 what came before and sort of reworking that to fit your situation um you know I was I was basically told you have to do these criminal defense appearences and the second the second I was a little more senior and got a chance to stop I did stop it was really good exposure it put me uh in rooms with people I never would have met uh with with all people from all different walks of life which at that point you know I was I was probably pretty pretty sheltered All Things Considered and suddenly bam you're dealing with all these people who are getting uh criminal charges thrown against them you're dealing with the police you're dealing with uh different
13:42 types of lawyers you're dealing with people in the system so it was it was pretty fascinating just to have that not even for my career but just as a human being um but no the connection back to intellectual property is not there and even at that point I wasn't doing all that much intellectual property I had some copyright cases and a little bit of trademark work coming into play um you'll note I did not say a single word about media and entertainment work because at that point in my career I had no clue that was going to be the exact place I ended up when I first started although I'll say within the first year and a half or two something started
14:17 forming uh part partially was you know as a second year lawyer you're not really expected to bring in work but I did occasionally and there were always people I knew uh who had some sort of and in the sort of media entertainment space on some small capacity they were tiny clients because they were like maybe people I went to high school with or something like that who who couldn't really afford to pay a lawyer because we were all in our like mid 20s um but that was sort of the first inklings of getting into the media entertainment space bringing those clients we had a very small transaction Department working on deals and anytime I would bring in someone to them the head of the transaction Department was like you
14:52 should be working on these files with us and I did and I started learning there and that was that really started the seed of what would eventually become where I'm at now like 12 years later so um was was there kind of an an an interim situation between your your four years with the Toronto firm and and starting your own firm what was what was kind of what how did you make that transition not really um I was really burned out from litigation uh and I realized that uh towards the end of my
15:27 tenure there and to make a very long story short my wife who I was just dating at the time had a job opportunity in New York City um and I am lucky enough that my family is actually from New York City originally so I was just like go there I'm really tired of my job uh I'll kind of see what happens and in the summer of 2016 I ended up writing the New York State Bar uh ended up moving to New York a few months after that started getting out there networking and before I knew it was admitted to the bar and while I was interviewing at a bunch of In-House
16:02 entertainment companies um ended up actually just taking on a bunch of clients I I I was for the first time in my life I was really getting out there and meeting people and you know by January of 2017 I had a bunch of people that are like Adam we know you passed the bar you can you can take us on as clients now and at first I scoffed at it but once I had a handful of people asking me I'm like oh I think there's something here you know I think I've I think I've coralled enough potential clients together that that that you know maybe I'll be able to pay rent this month through that or something like that and I will admit that for the first
16:38 maybe six months or so I wasn't sure exactly what my path was going to be but what ended up happening uh in around mid 2017 you know I was I was not I I think I had just turned 30 and I was looking for clients everywhere and you know it's a lot easier to get clients when you have some gray hair and you've been doing it for a while and me meanwhile I had you know four and a halfish years of experience at that point um I ended up getting into the sort of content creator influencer World which was in its very early stages at
17:15 that point you know Instagram had only been popular for a few years uh Tik Tok didn't exist a lot of platforms didn't exist yet and ended up becoming uh the lawyer for this management company this social media influencer management company oh that was sort of pioneering in the space there were only maybe a couple others that existed at the time or at least a couple others that were older than it and having that sort of cemented okay I can do this and that has led to where I am today which is I'm sure we'll talk more about this which is really I'm doing traditional entertainment but I'm also doing a lot
17:50 of uh more uh New Media digital media stuff that wasn't NE necessarily a thing a decade ago um working with a lot of content creators working with a lot of commercial production uh ventures in the digital space and that's what really cemented me being able to open a practice so early in my career um because if I had just been focusing on more traditional entertainment it would have been a lot harder to get my foot in the door right so what was it like being involved with that management firm
18:25 really at at at the birth of this whole sort of I mean it's it's really it it really has changed the whole not just the media landscape but the the information landscape the whole the whole way almost everything is I mean you you you practically cannot pick up a newspaper well people don't pick up newspapers anymore except I do but but I mean and it without hearing about you know this influencer or that influencer you know it's so common today but so
19:01 what was it like being involved in the beginning of that and and and how how did you how do you think you shaped it or Andor how did it shape you sure um it was fascinating you know I was doing some music law work and a little bit of film work and and that stuff had really cemented itself and the structure for it was more or less established by the time I started doing any of it but by contrast the influencer world uh which is which is now uh being re branded as the creative world for the most part but anyways uh that that's we'll see where that ends up in the next year too but the it was so new that from the legal
19:39 perspective you know we'd have deals worth tens of thousands of dollars if not more that were being done with a handshake and for me to step in and be like Whoa We this is too much money uh we need a contract in place that was seen as weird at that point and there weren't a ton of lawyers it was like thing deals were being done through through handshakes and text messages and really brief emails and there wasn't a lot of convention yet uh what had happened around that same time was the Federal Trade Commission which is this uh Federal agency that amongst other
20:14 things is there to protect consumers from misleading advertising deceptive advertising had done its first sort of uh foray into the influencer world and actually got a brand and a whole bunch of influencers in trouble for not being honest about the fact that they were getting paid to advertise things and that sent a bit of a shock wave through the emerging industry at the time because suddenly people realize oh there are repercussions if you're not doing things properly and that was sort of the landscape with which I was entering into it of of people going oh we need to start getting a little more serious about it and and that's when you know
20:49 lawyers and accountants and other professionals sort of step in and start making things happen what was really exciting was developing I'll say early contra contracts and figuring out um what the appropriate sort of standardized quote unquote terms would be and there are no standardized terms of this day but there are different issues that would pop up that six seven years ago were huge fights that today are are you know I'm able to brush it aside with a sentence saying nope this is just how we do it now um talk about intellectual property you know one of the big questions back in the day was who's going to own all of these posts if
21:25 an influencer is making it and Publishing it themselves but the brand is paying them for it who's gonna get to own it and that was there was probably a two-year period where that was a fight with almost every single deal I was working on now we're out on the other end and for the most part with a handful of exceptions it's the influencer owns it and gives a license back to the brand and that's kind of like you know it's it's it's not law but it's it's that's just how it's done now and I you barely have to explain yourself to to get to that point so it's kind of interesting seeing how much that's changed us in the last seven and a half years or so it it
22:02 it it also and I'm not I'm certainly not a an intellectual property expert although um after college I I clerked for a lawyer and his specialty was intellectual property law and you know the the idiom and this is going back to the early 1980s basically so the idiom back then was if if I got hired by someone to create something that was a work for hire and that was owned by the company who paid me right I had I had no intellectual property rights in that and again I don't I don't like you were saying I don't think that was law I just
22:38 think that that was kind of the the law the law yeah so the law about that basically says if I'm put it put employee aside because that's its own thing if you're an employee of a company the law says anything you do is don't buy an employer right but yeah let's talk about a contractor which all these influencers effectively are they're independent contractors thew says if the agreement states explicitly that your work is a work for hire or it's assigned back to the person commissioning you then that person or that brand gets to own it but if the contract is silent on that or says anything else the default is that the person that makes something actually owns
23:14 it that's how copyright law works and for the most part in other areas of both entertainment and advertising um and we we can talk about how the lines between that have blurred in the last decade as well but for the most part yeah when you are working on a film or you're working on a commercial um you as a contractor whether you're in the crew whether you're a photographer whether you're onscreen Talent any of those things your work is work for hire for the benefit of either the advertising agency or the brand that's hiring you the major difference here is and this is what sort of upended everything from the normal
23:51 conventions is in every other aspect of entertainment and advertising the brand or the advertising agency is the entity that's publishing the thing they have final control over what goes out in this case you're going to these influencers have these established Channels with hundreds of thousands or millions of followers and they're responsible for actually publishing it and showing it to their own audience and it sort of flipped things on its head and the question became okay if the purpose of this is not to just create a commercial
24:27 for the brand to use themselves but it's really to get in front of this particular person's audience and they're the ones who have it living on their Channel and it's more valuable maybe even on their Channel than it is anywhere else they probably should be oning you know because otherwise they're otherwise they're going to have a wall full of stuff that is not theirs right and and and that that's actually a fascinating distinction but you know as as you're talking through it I'm thinking yeah that makes that makes perfect sense because it's it's a whole different distribution system really or a whole different Pro promotion system
25:03 whatever you want to call it than what was going on before and so the also also chalk it up to being to me being a compelling lawyer maybe it makes maybe it doesn't make as much sense as the way I pcture but I agree it's that's a big part of it and then the other piece too which which in my mind is it really up against things but it's tied to the same piece is you're really if you're a brand or you're an advertising agency see you are you you don't have control over that final piece of uh that final video or that image that goes out and that's a scary thing to have to let go of so the
25:39 other other major change I've seen over the last eight years is just the level of control in um these contracts that basically let the brands and agencies oversee exactly what's happening don't get me wrong I I work I represent Brands and agencies too so I I've wear I wear that hat also and I think it's absolutely necessary but it's wacky seeing how back in the day it was just like again a handshake and this thing goes live whereas now you could have five pages in a contract talking about the whole process for reviewing and approving and changing stuff before it goes out I I mean and again I that makes
26:14 perfect sense I mean because you know when if if some things go viral and all of a sudden you've completely lost control of of your brand um and and while sometimes it it sounds like oh gosh I would like to go viral but but going viral isn't necessarily positive unless what's gone viral is positive you can go viral in a negative way and and it can cause a tremendous amount of of damage so yeah although once it's once it's out there and like it's in the zeist telling a Creator to pull it down is is it's just too late so it's almost
26:49 it's almost beside the point yeah um so you oh shoot I I I just lost the next question I was goingon to ask you um so oh I I um oh shoot it came back to me and then went away again um so so we'll move on to the next thing hopefully it'll come back to me um so you're you're involved with developing really this this new area of of the law and you talked about you know
27:24 kind of getting out there you know for the first for the first time in your career and you know when I hear that and and I'm look I I you know I started my own business back in you know 1986 so you know um I think probably around the time you were born so getting out there to me that's exactly getting out to me is like you know going to networking meetings you know going to you know this group that group what did what did it mean for you um you know as as a
27:59 you know a lawyer um building a practice starting in the sort of mid you know 201s or late 201 what does it mean to get out there especially connecting with influencers I'm I'm very curious about that I've never thought about this idea until just now sure yeah I mean a big part of it is not has not changed since the 80s and before where you are meeting people in person you're going to events you're getting out there you're shooing following up and going for coffees to really get to know the people that you're interested in working with um obviously influencers are operating on a
28:35 digital scope and digital scale so you know there's a there's a component of being online and available there one thing lawyers have to be careful about is uh not soliciting clients so for me it was never I I never yeah it's we're not allowed to do that you can't reach out and be like I think you beet a lawyer um it's a little more complex than that but that's basically the gist of it and I was always hesitant to go out and send like just mass emails or or you know direct messages on Instagram and things like that um although it's happened from time to time I'll meet people on LinkedIn kind of randomly and go from there but but really say what's been
29:12 interesting you know talk about in person or not pandemic hit four years ago and suddenly all of my networking became exclusively virtual and as things started getting a little bit better I started going out and meeting people more person and found that you can't be making a connection in person uh so to to this day that's what I try to do more than anything and it's interesting because you do have people all over the country um doing this stuff so you never know where your next client is going to
29:47 come from obviously I'm based in New York and I'm licensed in New York so my clients have to have some connection back to New York but you know you just you do this long enough and suddenly people just start showing up in your inbox or giving you a call or getting introduced to you by other clients you've worked with and it is a constant question of where you're going to get your match batch of clients from that's that's sort of any business owner knows this that's that never stops so yeah it's it's a lot of inperson stuff it's finding the right groups it's uh getting to know other professionals who can use you as a resource and building really
30:24 genuine connections and that's that's what I've learned the most over the last eight years or so since I really just started doing this on my own which is what matters the most isn't just networking but it's finding people that you actually get along with and that you can trust because if I meet a bunch of accountants and I one of my clients needs an accountant I'm going to send that person to the accountant that I think is going to do a really good job and you don't get to know that through a couple emails or even just a zoom call like you really need to get out there and chat with this person and get to understand how they work and in some ways understand that their way of treating people in their way of operating their business matches yours
31:01 so there's going to be this wonderful sense of continuity when you send your clients out there and vice versa if they send people to you you're going to know that like okay this person's in good hands with Adam partially because he runs his business like I do right this I do find this absolutely fascinating that your your clientel is you know was and continues to be at the Forefront of the digital world and yet when all is said and done the the you know the meeting of them is is taking place you know analog essentially them don't get me wrong I've
31:37 got a bunch of clients that I've never met in person and we all like we've been exclusively digital um but yeah it's it's I will say as a I'm a millennial and that's sort of the mindset I see gen Z one generation younger um they're a little less in person than I find colleagues with my exact you know generation to be so it could be shifting a big part of it too is a lot of my clients are in the sort of content creator digital space but I'm also working with a lot of producers and more traditional artists and other folks who
32:12 have some I mean everybody has social stuff going on at this point uh but they're doing things a little more traditionally so they're kind of in line there you know a lot of my photographers I like to meet in person before you really start working together so that is kind of nice in that piece but yeah I don't think networking ever changes umh it's it's the more you get to know someone the better you get to know someone the more likely something is to come of it and I just don't think you can build the same connections purely virtually that you can in person I mean I I agree with that 100% And I think most of the people that I
32:50 have strong professional relationships with I have met um you know face Toof face at various times although like you I do have some um who I've I've never met um face to face although typically we've at least spoken on the phone so you know I think the the the more um the more authentic the connection if you will I think the the the easier it is to build that relationship because you're getting a sense of who someone is without the the digital filters if you
33:27 will yeah it's it's also just a lot easier to pick up on uh physical cues and uh when you're interacting in person uh and and you sort of there's a lot that's missed out when your when your face is is put flat on a screen and it it makes a big difference but it's interesting contrasting with yeah a lot of my clients are putting out stuff exclusively on like Instagram or Tik Tok but they're doing stuff that caters specifically to that medium um so it it it makes sense they're still they still have things that they need to do
34:03 IRL in real life so it's it's all about figuring out what medium makes the sense for what you're trying to get across well I and you know as I think about it and so I know you know I I check my Instagram feed you know every morning because I I follow things that you know I think are beautiful or inspiring or whatever right and there I know there's one um person in particular I guess she would be considered an influencer or a Creator she's a a young historian based in England and most of her posts are she's
34:38 at some you know historic place in England she was at Stonehenge well well she wasn't a Stonehenge yesterday I don't think but she she did a one that from Stonehenge that she posted yesterday and and so what she's doing happens in the real world she she brings it though to those and she's got millions of followers you know um between Instagram and whatever she brings it to you know people all over the world I mean I'm here in California pretty far away from you know England and I'm I would venture to say she
35:14 probably has people in you know a huge number of countries throughout the world but but the her her Essence is bringing the real world to us you know through the digital media yeah yeah absolutely and and I'm sure I don't I don't know which Creator you're referring to but I'm sure you know what she's doing probably couldn't have existed on traditional television uh in any capacity and it's really fascinating to see the amount of things people are being exposed to now and that people are able to create that just never would
35:51 have been created a decade or more ago I mean I my my the platform that I'm probably on the most outside of when I'm like actually doing the work is is YouTube these days and the level of production that you're seeing now on some YouTube channels and the things that they're covering are just unbelievable and I have now seen YouTube Productions and worked on YouTube Productions that have bigger budgets than some small films that I've worked on in the past wow it's just like this yeah it's it's opening us up to a
36:26 lot of really fascinating stuff um you know the counterargument to that is is because there is no buried entry there's also a lot of stuff that's probably not worth most of our time but once you get to that once you can figure that out it's amazing like I I'm on I'm watching YouTube just as much as I am any streaming services these days you know and it's interesting because I hear this from a lot of people but by the way the the influence her name is Alex Alice lockon she goes under history Alice um she's a you know young
37:02 historian I would guess she's maybe late 20s very early 30s I know she's been promoting a book I I'll give her a plug even though she has no idea who I am she's been she and I think you know this kind of though fits in with what you were saying is so she wrote her her her her kind of mission is to inspire um I I think kind of her generation and younger people to be interested in history and and really you know engage in it in a substantial way um so she wrote she's written a book that's being released next month called um 18 at 18 I think it
37:38 is and it's she she tells the life story of 18 people um famous people in in Britain at the time they were 18 years old and you know what they were doing I know the one she mentioned yesterday was a a a a a girl who was born without arms and legs who became a painter it's you know really really fascinating but I don't think she could have done this you know with with traditional media how how how would she would have had to have you know paid her dues and you know all of
38:13 that and and look she's very I think she's very charismatic um and and you know she has great you know presence when she does her things and so it's really she's really you know built herself a following and and think is really accomplishing her her Mission which is I I think that that also you know that kind of mission-based um focus that she has I'm not sure that that happened in traditional Media or you know in past media either so that that that there is I think there's a whole different approach to it among uh
38:49 create I guess I'm supposed to call them creators now like sure no I mean you can call them anything I think I think part of what it's done is it's sort of uh let me flip that so so you know I work with a lot of traditional artists and sometimes you'll hear some of them lament like oh you can't be successful without a big social following at this point which is which is for better or worse it's it's become fairly true if you're a a painter if you're an actor or a musician there's an expectation that there's going to be a lot of people following you on Tik Tok and Instagram
39:24 and that sadly in some ways that you know you're not as worthwhile if you don't have that um so it's tough kind of seeing that it it it opens up a lot of opportunities to people who wouldn't have necessarily made it in the old machine I'll say but the flip side is everyone is sort of expected to play in that playground in some capacity if they want to further their artistic or Creator career it's it's sort of you know we're talking about do call them creators or influencers or something it's it's sort
39:59 of taking a step towards removing labels on people who are doing things I'll just say doing things with any sort of creative output which is kind of fascinating to see because you know what do we call this historian that we're following I'm not sure what she is she an author first is she a a writer or a television personality like do we need to label her or something I don't know um and probably the fact that we can't that easily is what helps lead to her success people want to just see what she's making is really what it boils down to uh and she doesn't necessarily
40:34 need a label on top of that which I think is fascinating I I mean it it is very I I don't mean this in the political sense but in the in the the philosophical sense it's very democratizing yeah in that sense right that's the word that's the word I would that I was thinking of using um just being worried though that it it is also toxic in some ways and the way the algorithms work right really remove some of that democratizing effect because you know you never know what's going to go viral because of whatever Tik Tok in an algorithm is supporting
41:10 that month or that year right but it is it really is it's sort of I'd say year a few years ago people were saying it's sort of level the playing field and that's not necessarily true it's still really difficult to get into anything and become successful but it's created new means to to do so um you can't guarantee success starting on social media in any way a lot of it is luck and just hard work and like just consistently putting stuff out and maybe that one video or that one image or that one comment somehow goes viral like you said um and then and then just explodes
41:46 and suddenly you've got an audience that's 10 times bigger than what you had the day before um that's what makes it exciting but also sort of exhausting because you can't predict that I mean that yeah that and that seems from that standpoint I think this is this is how it's always been right we we tend to think of artists as being you know Picasso or or you know Kandinsky or whatever but you know for every Picasso and Kandinsky there was probably a thousand 10,000 you know painters right
42:21 who we they painted all their lives never heard of we've never heard of them right it was just and why Picasso and Kandinsky break through I'm you know I'm I'm not really sure I don't I don't know I mean I love both of their Works um but I wouldn't I wouldn't say that their work is necessarily Superior to someone who never broke through because I haven't se no and and and when you're dealing with art you shouldn't be able to say that someone's work is necessarily Superior than anybody else because there's a high level of subjectivity to it um with with you know
42:57 classic artists like Picaso or kiski could probably identify at some point in their career um The Gatekeepers that sort of catapulted them like the individual reviewers or wealthy patrons or or someone who is just like we're we're gonna really promote this person that I think is the difference you can't do that as much with social media it's it's go back to the word democratizing yeah okay the audience is what builds it the the masses it's thear large groups of people as uh as opposed to maybe a few lynchpin individuals that say Hey
43:32 I'm an AR critic you got to see this person and then boom sort of explodes from there right I mean and and you I think we see this across the board it used to be for example movies you know you had a a handful of film critics right who in many ways and and you know there's the classic thing with theater especially in New York if the New York Times panned your show that was it you're closing right and maybe that's still the case on Broadway I I I I don't know but these days um the idea that someone can either promote you to the Heights or as send you to the depths it
44:08 seems to me that that doesn't exist anymore it it is it is very very open um for someone who's I'm sorry yeah go ahead no I say yeah yeah I think I think it exists to some degree in the music industry still like labels if they get behind you can get you there the what we're seeing you know you talk about the film industry um the way things have gone in the film industry the movies that do really really well like the absolute Blockbusters sadly tend to be the ones that have massive marketing budgets that are then online everywhere in your face
44:44 uh and that's sort of the state of where film is these days so it it's been in many ways sort of Tainted by social media marketing and digital marketing too which is kind of you know tragic in some ways and interesting in other others but yeah now we're at we're at sort of a uh Paradigm shifting point in terms of what and how things get popular so I want to go back to something you said a few minutes ago um and and this this struck me as as something that is perhaps very relevant so you said you you spend as much time watching YouTube
45:19 as you do streaming services so I think I I have a friend who's a data scientist um I think that's the case for him these days I think my nephew you know he was telling me because I was asking well where you know where do you consume media he said typically on YouTube I was surprised to hear that because you know I had sent him something that I thought was interesting to listen to that was on um I think it was Apple podcast or whatever he's like yeah I don't really you know I don't go there you know like I I you know do this so so what what is it about
45:54 YouTube that you think is in some ways I don't know supplanting because streaming in the end is is really sort of like traditional media it's just a different way of receiving traditional media right so what what is it about YouTube that is somehow I don't know supplanting you know these these other more traditional media Outlets sure yeah it's it's kind of going back to what I was saying before you're you're you have people are able to do things that would never get the funding of a studio um in a traditional whether it's with cable TV or streaming and you
46:31 know I'm a I'm a big Southern barbecue Enthusiast I uh I have a patio and I in New York City with a smoker on it which is just like absurd um and there are tons of people on YouTube who are literally just making videos uh going in depth about how to smoke different things and how to operate a barbecue and how to cook over fire and all these things that you know if you go to Netflix uh by contrast I think there is a there's currently a barbecue competition show I think Chef's Table did a a like a four episode miniseries
47:08 about barbecue but beyond that nobody's going uh in depth in the level of these people that I follow on YouTube it just it just isn't a thing so you're able to see that and then the other pieces too you you can have one person creating a really laid-back relaxing show that has very little production value but they're saying something or they're doing something that's just really hitting an audience in the right way that you don't get that and and in some ways too on YouTube and especially on the other platforms a lot of these creators are creating these parasocial relationships with their audience where
47:44 they're not just being entertained but they're getting something else out of it um they they're you know you're following let's say a family who goes camping and and lives in the woods half of the year but you're not just seeing a oneoff of how they Camp one time it's you're following them for years kind of just seeing their progression and it's absolutely fascinating you're not going to get that in streaming which in my mind at this point is is pretty analogous to what cable was 20 years ago um because we are all paying for it it is hard to know which one to use back when Netflix was the only streaming
48:20 service people were using that was a different world but now it's it's really become more like traditional cable where it's just like okay there's a few things on this I want to watch and I'll pay for the whole thing anyways and you know the only major difference now is just like I get to watch it when I want it as opposed to waiting for that specific time of of the week that you you're able to watch your showan it's interesting that you raise that because yesterday the day before I got a a um an email from sling which I've had for many years primarily because it's it's a less expensive way
48:56 to access Turner Classic Movies which I like classic movies and right and they were asking me about um you know my sling subscription you know what I um uh you know tell other people about and I'm thinking I'm like yeah no not really because it's got much more expensive for what is essentially you know one network that I want to watch and unfortun for whatever reason that one network doesn't want to have its own Standalone you know thing so you have to you know sling is the only thing I found so far where where I can get it and then when I was
49:32 in the but then I was in the hospital uh a couple of months ago and the hospital you can stream Pluto which is free right and it's like it's it's it's I I had no idea that like this the selection out there is is mindboggling it's it's some ways it's even worse than cable because at least with cable wherever you were that was what you got but you you have decision for is there's too much stuff you're just like oh I just spent an hour and a half scrolling through my options realizing it's it's now bedtime basically definitely had evenings like that no there's and and Beyond the I'll call
50:08 more mainstream streaming services there are all these Specialty Services now out there that caters to really Niche things like there are horror streaming services you can get that literally just have horror and suspense films it's it's it's tough unless you know exactly what you're looking for it's it's not easy to just figure out like what you should be using so so you're maybe a good person ask this because look for anyone who follows the entertainment and media news you know the the big thing at least at the big media companies is how are we going to actually make money with
50:43 streaming because most aren't right except except for ne ne Netflix um and at the same time um I'm seeing a a lot more competition um not just in the streaming world but just in the in the in the content creation World both at at sort of the more sort of corporate level but also like you were talking about just sort of individuals doing these very deep D where do you see all of this going yeah it's a good question and I talk to my clients a lot about it these days and and I will say this year in particular it's it's slow for a lot of
51:19 my clients across Industries so it's certainly something that comes up quite a bit now when I'm talking to uh quite a few of them and hard to say definitively I think in media a lot of it's going to be uh specialized media companies focusing on pretty Niche things with relatively small teams as opposed to the giant media companies uh that were dominating online a decade plus ago um for streaming I don't know I think a lot of the streaming services are sort of learning through their mistakes right now um Netflix is not doing that well
51:54 all things considered they had they've had waves of lab layoffs and you know they're they're cancelling shows that the audience loves and and producing others that totally bomb um I don't know where that's going to end up and the movie industry as a whole it's like trying to find its place we're at a strange time I think part of it is the younger generation are now in tune with short form video which was not really a thing 5 10 years ago figuring out how that's going to play out long term it's a big deal and I think part of it is realizing that at
52:31 every stage of the entertainment media industry there's never really been that much stability um you know think things have changed from Radio to black and white to Takis to to TV and home to just like new tech coming out all the time so it's hard to say where things are going to end up I think part of it's going to be uh just sort of find your nation figuring that out and not worrying about all the noise around you um and then we'll see and you know it will democr it it's sort of going to the economics of
53:07 it makes it all democratizing because the things that will last are just going to be the things that can afford to last and that's kind of how it goes in in some ways it's almost as if we're coming back around to the the Genesis of media when you think about things like Nickelodeons right where you put a nickel in and you had something that was what maybe you know a minute long or something that's where it all and and then it you know it grew a little bit longer and then eventually went into long form and yeah I mean are are are we seeing you know the the industry coming around do you think in
53:44 the sense that it's in some ways it's going back to its roots but you know maybe you know the the history of it will somehow repeat itself what what do you it's possible it's also possible that some you know 20-some year old influencer is going to do something totally novel on Tik Tok that just picks up and now everybody's imitating that person for the next five years it's it's hard to say um it feels almost disingenuous to say that it's sort of coming back around again or something like that because when you really break it down uh the
54:20 technology for entertainment as it is like based on mechanical things and electricity it's not that old in the span of human history like it's it's it's 120 years of this kind of stuff that we're talking about which is not really that long so I know it sounds kind of goofy to talk about it it's almost like could be cyclical could come back in some capacity yes we are seeing a lot of short form video on Tik Tok that is reminiscent of like slapstick stuff from The Three Stooges area I I would say just trying to figure out its own place right now um but I don't know and and
54:57 that's kind of the exciting part of just following the trends and making sure that you can't get too set in your ways as a producer or a Creator or a writer or any sort of person that is just making something for an audience um you don't want to worry too much about trends like you need to find your voice as an artist or as a Creator and make sure that you're not too influenced by the things around you but the reality is like whatever comes next it's going to be because that's what people have just caught on to so I was listening to something the other day um this was related more not
55:32 more this was related to the music business and the person was making the case that um and and they were they were talking about Ai and how I I guess you can go on an AI and say you know write me a song like you know yeah this this this performers you know song of such and such right he say and and and the person was was he was a performer and he was saying I did that and he said if I hadn't known I had done that I would have thought wait was this something I wrote and forgot that I wrote it you she said it was that good but he so he said
56:09 what he thinks is going to happen is that live performance is going to become much more significant in the music business because in the end AI cannot duplicate yes a lot human being and I I wonder what you think about that and and what implications you think that might have for other parts of the entertainment and media business sure as as a huge huge fan of like just music guy play guitar i' I've been a rock nerd my
56:44 entire life yeah that that sounds great um I don't know if that's necessarily true I think part of it is we have this generation of people that have grown up with the internet to start you know I the internet came into my life when I was like 12 or 13 years old so I already had a little over a decade of of pre- Internet stuff but there are people who from from birth effectively were consuming everything online and that's just their mode of being and it's cool and and and you look at uh fortnite if you're familiar with that video game which fortnite I mean they they've been doing
57:20 they've been doing concerts on their platform for years now and it gets huge audience and you see the like Holograms of artists that have passed away that are are coming out and replacing live performances so I think yeah to some degree there's there's something there uh I will say in the music industry right now it's harder and harder to make a living as an artist and live performance is one of the few avenues that can actually be lucrative for artists um you know album sales are not putting food on people's tables these days because if you're getting most of your money through something like
57:55 Spotify that's not that great unless you're like really one of the the top 100 artists out there um it makes sense people wanting more um authentic and uh meaningful things but I think that also goes hand inand with the sort of parasocial relationships I was talking about before where you could follow somebody on YouTube and feel like you've known them for the last two years um but we'll see uh how it's going to play into other spaces film's never going to be live TV is never going to be live that's just it by default theater is a nice little niche area that I I do Little
58:32 Theater work and I I'm a fan of theater but don't know a ton about it but I think it's safe to say that like it's sort of its own thing um and if you're not into it you're not going to it as opposed to film and television which has always been more accessible so I'm not sure that sounds nice I hope I hope that's the case um you know one thing that was interesting that happened recently uh if you're familiar with the band The Black Keys no they're uh they're uh uh they're like indie rock band have just been huge over the last decade or two and you know they they start it's these two guys uh that
59:08 started small and now like all their songs are in C commercials and stuff so they're massive they they had a I don't know the full details of it but they had like a full stadium tour planned that had to be cancelled uh because I I just think ticket Sals weren't there ticket Sals were unbelievably expensive uh and they ended up replacing it or want to be replacing it I think with a more uh intimate uh series of shows and smaller venues which is which to me again as music fan I go oh that's awesome yeah I would much rather spend my money being 20 feet away from these artists in a small venue with a few hundred people rather than with you know
59:44 literal tens of thousands of people on top of me seeing them as specks half a mile away so there's something to be said there uh that makes a lot of sense um I think part of the problem with that too is it is it's somewhat elitist to suggest that that's the future of entertainment because not everyone can afford to be in a room with an artist or afford those concert tickets or afford to go to a talk by your favorite writer or something like that or even just be in a
60:19 position to to have the time to do that um so maybe that will grow as it's own thing more and more in some capacity although I think it is there anyways but there's always going to be a need for easily accessible entertainment and that's what social media has made even more easily accessible uh in the last few years than anything that came before it well I there's there's so much more I'd love to dig into we're we're we're already at the one hour mark so um unfortunately we're going to have to um wrap wrap it up here but um I'm I I
60:55 gonna have to have back on again because like said there's so much more here and I mean I feel like we've just barely scratched the surface in some ways um there's 20 other questions in the back of my mind just based on what you were just saying so so Adam thank you so much for for coming on on the show today I I just want to take a a minute and and kind of summarize some of the things that you've said for the benefit of of the people watching and and I think the most important important thing you you said was that um to be successful in the
61:31 entertainment and media business today is to find your Niche and and and not worry so much about what other people are doing but really develop yourself within this area that that you have a very keen interest for and and and be persistent in creating content and in in putting yourself out there and and just understand that this is what it takes to you know hopefully be successful in the entertainment and media business but also that you know not not everybody
62:07 hits so you know it's it's it's it's a gamble is is is that a a reasonable summary of of yeah you you you put it well it's it's about being authentic to yourself and building out something that that you believe in and sadly the tough part on top of that is yeah it's it's really hard to be successful in the industry um you see a lot more things come out that don't that don't make it in front of the general public that do um but persistence is key and loving what you're doing is key and building out something that you believe in is is
62:43 absolutely key in today more than ever if you can find that Niche audience there's a way to not necessarily become the biggest artist in the world or or be a you know multi multi-millionaire but at at the very least if you find your Niche audience you can earn a living uh there's a lot of artists out there who are earning very good livings without being the like International Mega stars that that we all read about in the tabletes very good well again thank you so much for for coming on the show today I I can't tell you how much I appreciate it and and how much I enjoyed it so yeah
63:18 I'm just GNA wrap things up and we'll go offline and talk for a minute so so folks thank you for joining us I hope you enjoyed the show and and got something out of it and if you have any um thoughts comments by all means our social media links will be in the show notes after the show posts on YouTube um and so feel free to to to comments criticisms all of that um I'll also put um Adam's contact information in there so I guess Adam can't ask you you know to to be your lawyer but but but but I can and you all know I'm
63:53 Shameless when it comes to that so you know if you need some if you need legal advice um you know high quality you know well-informed legal advice um I I have I I've met other entertainment attorneys in in my career but I will tell you I I Adam's knowledge is is really unmatched especially in in the these more new emerging areas of the media business so I I I couldn't I couldn't recommend Adam to you highly enough but his his contact information will be in the show notes as well I'm sure he'll be happy to get an
64:29 email from you if you if you have questions and and especially if you're you know looking for someone to represent you so so um tomorrow at 5: PM Pacific time is my every other week show jigger's place this is an opportunity for us to talk about all the things unrelated to business and professions and tomorrow we're going to be sharing a a cocktail of Jerusalem sour uh which is uh in in in honor of my topic which is I'm going
65:06 to disclose to you what I think is the most Jewish TV show of all times I'll be curious if you can guess what that is because I'm pretty sure that that you cannot okay it's not mama's place by the way um so I I invite you to join me tomorrow at 5:00 pm it's an opport for us to spend about a half an hour together as we um move off in into the end of the week and the weekend and then of course next week um we're back on Monday at 10: am Pacific time trust and Estates weekly Tuesday at 10: am with
65:42 business lessons from the military and then seven days from today we'll be back with the next edition of people making money so again thank you very much for joining us thanks again to my guest Adam Weisman wishing you all a Wonder wonderful rest of the day and signing off as I always do Marie you are my bell courage at all times