DeAngelis Interview fpr Read AI.mp4
Wed. May 22, 2024

0:01 – Speaker 2
We will get going.

0:02 – Unidentified Speaker
Sweet.

0:03 – Steve DeAngelis
Excited.

0:06 – Jim Serpico
Welcome to Bread for the People. I’m still Jim Serpico. It’s a beautiful Monday. That’s right, it’s Monday. Not Wednesday, it’s Monday everyone. Recording a new episode today and I just got back from a scout of a new location. If you’ve been following along on the podcast, you know, I’m trying to open up my first brick-and-mortar cafe bakery last week Spoke to my friend Mike Pitera who was trying to convince me to give up the dream of doing it here in Long Island and Moving down with him in South Carolina and he made a lot of good points on why that me may be a good idea but not there yet Mike and I’m still giving it a go here in Long Island. I also want to give a shout out to my good friend, Tom Solletti, who was my partner and is my partner in Milestone TV and Film, and he’s been a partner of mine before that at a company we had called Apostle Pictures. We’ve been working together for 30 years.

1:14 – Speaker 2
I don’t know if you guys have a friend like this, but Tom and I even when we’re not working together We speak every day on the phone He’ll call me or I’ll call him and it usually goes something like this hey Tom, how you doing and then he goes off for 25 minutes and and tells me about all the problems in his house, his dishwasher broke, his kids’ baseball schedules are crazy, and he can’t fit in soccer practice, and this one’s playing, and this one’s getting benched. And 25 minutes later, he’ll say, so what’s going on with you? And I’ll say, Tom, I gotta fucking work, man. You just took up 25 minutes of my life. I can’t talk to you now. I’ll call you back. But I do know if I ever need Tom, he’s there for me, and he’s an ear to lean on. So today, we’re going to speak with Steve DeAngelis from MMP Creative. They’re a media agency whose mission is to create content to help brands build communities. This is something I’m very interested in. It’s very much related to what I do now every day in that I have a hospitality company and a bakery. And I’m interested in building a community around my product and brand.

2:30 – Speaker 2
Also, you know, I’m very interested in video and audio but I well I had a Career in video audio and film and TV. It was very much different. I was not an advertising agency I wasn’t in brand building. So I’m curious to learn a lot from Steve Steve welcome to the program Thanks, man.

2:50 – Speaker 1
I’m curious to learn a lot from you as well. I know we had a discussion a couple of weeks ago on the phone where that trailed off in a lot of different directions, like your, your conversations with Tom. Um, but we cover a lot of ground in that one. I have some follow up questions for you too.

3:06 – Speaker 2
That’s great. That’s great. And I’m sure our audience wants to hear and learn about all this stuff as well. So, um, tell me a little bit about how you started this agency and did I get the mission right?

3:20 – Speaker 1
Yeah, the mission is all the same, helping people to grab attention and opportunity.

3:27 – Speaker 1
It’s evolved over time to be focused in more like the wellness, retail, and on-site service businesses is who we’re working with. But yeah, you nailed it. I mean, the core of it is community. The core of it is how can you create a community of supporters who will follow you through anything that you choose to do.

3:45 – Speaker 2
Now, do you think there’s a difference between the wellness businesses you work with or food oriented business or chiropractic office? Do they all need to build brands and community?

3:59 – Speaker 1
Well, I think yes is the answer. But it comes down to where are those brands at in the moment? And what do they need to do to survive? I mean, you coming from the hospitality industry, survival in that industry as a restaurant or opening up a storefront is more difficult because of lower margins in general. And so sometimes investing into a brand is maybe even the wrong choice until you get to a certain point. So that’s why we don’t work with too many of those brands. We have worked with them in the past. But I find that the difference between the two is just how much the product costs and how like the volume that you would have to get in terms of attention in order to make it make sense for your brand.

4:48 – Speaker 2
So is part of that because the beginner hospitality, food service business doesn’t have the budget that it really takes to spend on the correct type of production that’s meaningful? Not just production, but the development of the strategy as well.

5:11 – Speaker 1
I would say. I would say yes. I would also say it depends on, it’s really just that it depends answer. Sorry to maybe not give you what you’re looking for there. But as far as investment level, yeah, that’s usually on the lower side for those startup, you know, restaurant type small businesses.

5:36 – Speaker 2
I’m not even looking for any particular answer, but in my experience, you know, my son is a videographer and he does it at a professional level. And he was doing some hospitality stuff and then he’s not right now. And he was trying to get more clients in hospitality because he was a little familiar with it from doing the bread with us and attending farmers markets. And it was really hard to get anyone to cough up More than month, $500 certainly. I mean, some people are spending, for a few of the agencies, a couple of thousand, or obviously even way more. But I’m talking about the regular mom and pop place.

6:24 – Speaker 2
And, and then on the other side, there’s a value to, you know, what you guys do and what my son does like these, you know, it’s, it’s like a doctor, you know, it’s a high hourly wage.

6:37 – Speaker 1
And I guess people can’t wrap their head around the value they’d be getting to spend that 2000 That’s the that’s the key there is there is a certain type of person that Absolutely sees the value in investing in what is something that’s longer term but a lot of times in that industry I would say people are They’re fighting to survive there. It’s month to month or it’s you know, you got a couple months runway that You need to see immediate return, you know in an investment into marketing and on the brand building side That’s not the case. It’s it’s almost never the case that you get an immediate return, right?

7:18 – Speaker 2
You know for me, it’s difficult our whole business started with us doing videos of ourself making bread Without it we would have nothing because we don’t have a storefront. We didn’t even have farmers markets or anything at the beginning.

7:33 – Speaker 1
So it’s been… So for someone like you what I would say is where it makes sense to work with someone like us is when that takes up too much of your time or you can’t do the other stuff.

7:45 – Speaker 2
Exactly.

7:46 – Speaker 1
That’s really our bread and butter is Business owners that are getting to the point where their businesses are hitting 750,000 to a million dollars in revenue and they have to wear more hats or take things off, take hats off and say, I can’t make content and post content and spend time on social media 10, 15, 20 hours a week. I can invest five hours of my time a month to work with this team who can then create all the content for me in that amount of time.

8:17 – Speaker 1
So it’s a time saver. At a certain point, it’s an investment to take it off your plate.

8:21 – Speaker 2
Right. And you’re also doing it at a high level in terms of quality. I mean, not every business owner has the knack for social media. Um, besides the time, some people just don’t get it.

8:38 – Speaker 1
Yeah. And that’s fine. You know, there’s people out there. I’m not, I’m not in the, I used to be, but I’m not in the world of trying to convince people that the value is there anymore. I’m more in line with trying to find the people who are already doing it and already see the value, but just need help. Um, that’s where I’m finding the low hanging fruit right now.

8:58 – Speaker 2
Right. Now, how do you find customers?

9:02 – Speaker 1
I reach out on social media a lot. I think people use the platforms differently and they expect, I’m going to put a video out there and I’m going to go viral and I’m just going to get all this money rolling in. Very rarely does that happen. I can’t say never, but very rarely.

9:19 – Speaker 1
The way that I like to use it is to build relationships and build a community. Get meetings like this and, you know, talk to Jim and talk to, you know, Sandy down the block and just say, Hey, uh, I’m interested in learning more about your place and taking that relationship offline and having a phone call, grabbing a coffee. And then that always turns into something. So it’s how you use it to do more of what you should already be doing, which is just speaking to people in your community.

9:46 – Speaker 2
And your community is key. Now I have an observation, uh, And I try not to get caught up in this myself, but I’ve been victim to it. A lot of people, and food, like my Instagram account is a lot of people in pizza. It’s just a very communal business. A lot of us are friends. I have friends from all around the country involved in pizza and bread.

10:19 – Speaker 2
But I do notice that a certain percentage are really trying to make entertainment videos with the goal of going viral. And it happens, but then I question if you put too much on the importance of that How much local business does that actually bring, and are you speaking to the person who’s going to spend money at your business? Because a lot of us are local.

10:57 – Speaker 1
Yeah, I mean, that’s the million dollar question right there, is if you could solve for that. Where should you be putting your time and attention in order to talk to the people who are actually going to purchase from you? That’s something that we try to break in the people that we work with as much as possible. People get caught up in those, we call it vanity numbers. It’s like, oh, I got a million views. And we had clients that, you know, we put a video on TikTok that got 17 million views, or we put something on Instagram for a private chef that gets 500,000 views. But what is the end result that they’re looking for? If you’re in result that you’re looking for is to grow a brand get those views as high as possible build some partnerships with maybe some affiliates The products that you like in the case of this private chef. He’s like I want to be sponsored by a knife company I want to be sponsored by this then that’s the route you should try to go for but if you’re a local bread company on Main Street in you know suburban United States you’re trying to get people through the door who live in your town. So I would take a different strategy there. How can you build as many relationships as possible using the media as a vehicle and using the platform as a vehicle to do that?

12:12 – Speaker 2
And then all these people are using hashtags that are also broad and national and not localized. I don’t use hashtags often. Once in a while I play the game. Hashtags are a great mystery.

12:24 – Speaker 1
A mystery? I don’t know how much of an effect it truly has. I feel like it doesn’t hurt to use them, but people put so much emphasis, and this is a great point just overall, people put so much emphasis on these small little optimizations when it comes to social media that they don’t just put stuff out. And I’ve fallen victim to that myself and wanting it to be perfect and wanting to have the perfect story to tell. But sometimes just telling your story honestly and showing where you’re at and not trying to optimize the perfect caption or the perfect hashtags is the path of least resistance because you’re able to do more.

13:07 – Speaker 2
What do you mean by telling your story of where you’re at? Are you insinuating? That you should be talking with your like being on camera?

13:18 – Speaker 1
Talking, it could certainly be visual if you’re not a talking to the camera type of person but I think people relate more to the struggle maybe or the the raw real in the moment what is happening with your business and what are you actually doing rather than the beautiful polished version that 99% of business owners want to put out there. You know, I want to come on this podcast and say to the world, my media company is the best media company in the world. Look at all these beautiful things we’ve done. But we make mistakes all the time. We’re learning and growing. And I think that’s what makes us special is that we’re actually putting attention into that. We’re not just like walking in the door and saying, hey, we’re hot shit. Sorry if I can’t curse. You can curse. We just don’t walk in the door and come out of the gate and say we are the best. I think what makes us the best is the hunger to want to grow and want to learn.

14:17 – Speaker 1
But sometimes that polished view isn’t the true story.

14:21 – Speaker 2
Right. I like that. On my side of it, I do a little of both. I like to show successful bakes to give people trust that my product is good or to give me credibility as a baker. But I do, you know, sometimes talk about certain failures.

14:48 – Speaker 2
And they happen. You know, this was my first weekend in Syosset at a new farmer’s market and I tried something a little different with my rustic sourdough because I wanted it to have a more sour flavor, something similar to the San Francisco taste. A lot of people when they think of sourdough, they think of really sour tasting bread. And generally mine isn’t because I use a different process even though it’s naturally leavened and it’s sourdough and Because I didn’t bake this exact way often I It didn’t come out. So I had to show up to the farmer’s market without my rustic sourdough.

15:30 – Speaker 1
You still sold it though? No. Or did you just say, this is not the quality that I wanted?

15:34 – Speaker 2
I didn’t bring it. But people were coming for it. So now this weekend, I’m making it my traditional way. And I’m going to fix what I think the problem was. So I’m bringing both. So I’ll at least have my backup.

15:49 – Speaker 1
You can ask some people throw it out to them and say hey, what do you think about this? Oh, yeah, I think that’s something that people just Connecting that with telling your story I’ve connected with more people By telling them what my current struggle is or asking them what their current struggle is so that we can help each other Right more than telling them I’m amazing and you’re amazing and look how amazing we are.

16:13 – Speaker 2
Right. My goal is to get the sour down to exactly where I want it, which, which I’m very close and hopefully this weekend is it and continually offer my version of a West Coast IPA and East Coast IPA. Because my West Coast sourdough is going to be the San Francisco really sour, tangy flavor. And my East Coast is going to be bread that happens to be made with sourdough, but doesn’t taste that sour. And appeal to both, and I’d like to offer both. That’s what I’m aiming for.

16:47 – Speaker 1
That’s a cool analogy there.

16:49 – Speaker 1
Yeah.

16:49 – Speaker 1
Because I feel like more people probably have more knowledge about IPAs, even though it is still a niche.

16:56 – Speaker 2
They definitely have more knowledge about IPAs, and a lot of people know that they taste different. One’s juicy, one’s a little more hoppy and bitter.

17:07 – Speaker 2
People who buy sourdough sometimes believe if the bread isn’t sour, the baker is subpar. But it’s not true. It’s just a different process. It’s a different fermentation process. It’s a different time and temperature process.

17:25 – Speaker 1
How do you manage that? I’m sorry to go off track a little bit, but there’s so many different factors that go into that, right? Humidity, temperature. Yeah. How do you…

17:34 – Speaker 2
You plan. Control.

17:37 – Speaker 2
Okay.

17:37 – Speaker 2
Uh, control.

17:38 – Speaker 1
You can’t control that. Absolutely. You just have to measure it.

17:42 – Speaker 2
No, you could. Well, you, you control it. You, you get familiar with your surroundings and your specific bakery and your time of year that you’re baking and you do it enough, you know how it’s going to affect it and what’s going to happen. Uh, but for me at the end of the day, to be able to show up on a Saturday to a market and a Sunday on a market with two loaves of fresh bread that taste completely different but use the same exact ingredients shows that I know how to control that and that’s what I’m striving for.

18:17 – Speaker 1
That’s mastery.

18:18 – Speaker 2
Yeah, so I’m trying to do that and hopefully this is the weekend. This is the weekend.

18:22 – Speaker 1
Where are you going to be this weekend?

18:25 – Speaker 2
Syosset, we’re there, Syosset, Long Island, every Saturday through November, and then starting the weekend after, we’re adding Farmingdale Farmer’s Market on Sundays, and then in July, we’re adding East Meadow on Saturdays, so we’ll have three markets this summer.

18:44 – Unidentified Speaker
Awesome.

18:46 – Speaker 1
We’ll be hitting up. I gotta stop by Saturday in Syosset. I’m right around the corner.

18:51 – Speaker 1
Are you?

18:52 – Speaker 1
Yeah, I’m in Huntington.

18:53 – Speaker 2
Yeah, yeah. They have a great market. We’ve done that a few times.

18:58 – Speaker 1
Where in South is it? The train station?

18:59 – Speaker 2
Sorry to go off track. That’s all right. It’s it’s near the train station. It’s a little north on Berry Hill Road at VFW Hall. 68 Berry Hill Road at 830. Great vendors.

19:13 – Speaker 2
It’s very cool.

19:14 – Speaker 1
I’ll see you on Saturday.

19:17 – Speaker 2
Absolutely. So now you’re in film and video. I’m curious to know If you had a plan in film and video, or did you, I just put up a post on my stories the other day because I heard a quote while I was watching TV that a well known television executive said, don’t follow your dreams, follow opportunity. And I had to think about it for a while. I think it’s really deep and really interesting. I never had a dream to become a television producer. I did have a dream to get into entertainment, but I didn’t know or have a definition for what that meant. Like, I was around entertainment in that my father was a musician, so I thought I wanted to be an agent, but I didn’t even know what an agent meant. And as I needed money and got my first job somewhere, I saw opportunity to become an assistant at some booking agency. And each step of the way, I saw different opportunities and ended up in a path I never dreamed of Now, I know a lot of people are into film and video at a young age. Especially your generation, because you were able to do things on YouTube. So it’s even different than when I was growing up. And people go to film school, as one of my kids did. And obviously, you’re following your dream.

20:59 – Speaker 2
I’m curious to hear what you think about that statement. And I’m curious to see how it applies or doesn’t apply to you in terms of where you ended. Not that this is, I mean, maybe this is exactly where you want to be and you’re going to keep looking at opportunities, but I’m curious about your path.

21:18 – Speaker 1
So three things in there. This is where I want to be right now. I don’t know where the future is going to take me. I don’t know where this company is going to go. I know where it’s going in the next three years or so as far as my plan for it. But beyond that or what opportunities are going to present themselves, I’m not sure.

21:41 – Speaker 1
As far as following my dream, this was never my dream.

21:48 – Speaker 1
I don’t think I had a dream. Okay. Maybe when I was a kid, the dream was, you know, play major league baseball, but right. Uh, I was, I’m five, eight, you know, I wasn’t gifted with the physical skills that I needed to do that. Uh, when I turned 12 and everyone started growing, I stopped growing and, uh, that was it. And then realized that dream was dead. And so. What was the statement again? What was the phrase?

22:17 – Speaker 2
Don’t follow your dreams, follow opportunities.

22:21 – Speaker 1
So I followed opportunities to get here to this point, which isn’t, I haven’t done anything amazing by my standards yet of what I want to accomplish, but I followed opportunities to get here. Um, and then at a certain point I had to tune out opportunities. To focus on the one that I wanted. So that’s where I think that statement can get a little scary or messy is Opportunities now present themselves to me every single day and in order to follow this new dream that I have perhaps of growing this to a certain level and you know getting my team to a certain level and I have to ignore opportunities or pick and choose when the right ones come around.

23:16 – Speaker 2
I think that’s That’s great.

23:19 – Speaker 1
And I think that Prioritizing and picking and choosing the opportunities is the key And so it’s where I get it’s where I get so bogged down sometimes it’s where I struggle because I I have, you always have that voice in the back of your head. That’s like, is this the right thing? Is this what I should be doing? But sometimes you need to just focus and work on one thing in order to get to that.

23:49 – Speaker 2
Whether or not it’s the right thing. It’s an opportunity for sure. It may be the wrong opportunity. Compared to others. But if you do your due diligence, and you know, you are prepared and you think about it and think about the pros and cons. Like an example for me right now, in this strange path that I’m on, I never dreamt of being a bread baker either.

24:21 – Speaker 2
In fact, a lot of people look at me and say, but why? Why don’t you keep doing what you are doing? That’s a whole nother story.

24:30 – Speaker 2
But, you know, now the goal is to open a cafe. But if something came around, for instance, that was an industrial warehouse with a wholesale business that was producing money, that would allow me to create income and bootstrap and invest in the cafe, I would consider that opportunity even though I’m not going out there and looking for that right now.

25:00 – Speaker 1
But you have a very clear goal. In whatever you’re doing, it’s to, to get you to that, you know, that cafe that you want to open, which has become the dream.

25:13 – Speaker 2
Yeah.

25:14 – Speaker 1
And so, but a goal, you can follow opportunities to do that, but you have one, one main thing that is your, you know, the carrot in the distance or the carrot on the stick dangling in front of you. You’re like, I’m going to do whatever I have to do to get that. Yeah. And maybe you follow an opportunity that takes you down another path and you never get to that cafe.

25:34 – Speaker 2
Correct. And that’s one of the issues I have with film school is that, you know, if 80% of the students are trying to be directors and the reality in true television and film, there’s less than 1500 people in the United States that actually make a full time living doing that. Like, if you say that’s your goal, you might as well say, I’m gonna be an astronaut.

26:09 – Speaker 2
Now, I’m not saying don’t pursue it.

26:11 – Speaker 1
They were equal percentages, you know, get there.

26:14 – Speaker 2
Yeah. Yeah. And you have to be open to other opportunities that come along the way after film school where you could use those skills and create a meaningful life for yourself, which is not always based on the amount of money you make. Right. It’s figuring out what makes you happy and so on.

26:37 – Speaker 1
So I don’t know, two schools, two schools of thought on that, because There’s the, uh, the single minded, like focus and become the best and do whatever you have to do to become that director, you know, a hundred percent, you know, and then, but that is probably going to require a lot more hardship and a lot more resilience in your life.

26:59 – Speaker 2
I don’t, I agree with you, but I do think that of those, that 80% that want to do that. And that’s their goal. There’s a certain percentage of them that are not going to be honest with themselves. It’s just like you were talking about baseball. Okay. You have to at some point be realistic. Not that I’m, the chances are slim. I’m not going to make it. I believe you could go against the odds and make it. I, and I, listen, I’ve done it to a certain degree. So without question, I believe in the single minded focus, but you know, A lot of people are kidding themselves about how good they actually are and what their chances are gonna be to make it.

27:47 – Speaker 1
Yeah, 100%.

27:49 – Speaker 1
In a highly competitive field.

27:50 – Speaker 1
Going back to baseball for me, that was the, I tried out for the travel team when I was 13 didn’t make it. And I was upset, I was crying. My dad was like, did you really? Had to have that real conversation with me at one point where it was like, did you really think you were going to do this because you’re not putting in the effort that it would have taken in order to do it.

28:13 – Speaker 2
Right. You know, the the analogy with doing farmers markets as a baker, I didn’t know how to bake. So I took a low stakes side business and really started to like it and put time and put that single minded focus and becoming better at it. Which gave me the confidence to look for the opportunities to take the next step. And then I bought a food truck, never having done it before. And the same is going to happen with the restaurant. Like some people, even in my family, are like, are you crazy? You’ve never done it. What makes you think you’ll be able to pull it off to the level of X? And right now my focus is learning.

28:55 – Speaker 1
You know, trying to get better. If you focus on learning, you’re never going to be worse off than you were before.

29:01 – Speaker 2
Right.

29:01 – Speaker 1
And I feel like entrepreneurs, people who start businesses, I don’t consider myself an entrepreneur because I’ve only had one business. So I would call myself a small business owner.

29:13 – Speaker 2
Okay. I disagree. You’re taking a risk.

29:15 – Speaker 1
Well, people who are entrepreneurial minded, I think, I have this weird belief, and I have this weird belief that whatever I choose to do, I’m gonna do really well. I think I told my dad a couple weeks ago, if I wanted to be a drummer, and I really put in the effort to be the best drummer that I could possibly be, I would be a rock star. And maybe that’s wrong, but I just have that deep belief in my mind.

29:42 – Speaker 2
I believe that too about myself. And I believe that anyone could do it, to be honest with you, if they have that belief in themselves and the drive to put in the work. And at some point you are making choices. I like what you said about the single-minded focus, because that’s what it takes.

30:01 – Speaker 2
I know a lot of musicians haven’t grown up in that. And these people made that choice to put the focus on that at the expense of playing baseball, at the expense of being available on the weekends to live a normal life, but they went down that path and they put in their 10,000 hours.

30:24 – Speaker 1
What are your thoughts on when it’s time to focus? Because I think there’s a lot of value, and just in my experience, in being a generalist and in doing a lot of different things to a certain point. So I was doing audio engineering, working in live events. I was hosting music festivals and filming stupid videos with my friends. And I was also freelancing, you know, doing video freelancing, helping to organize events. And all of these different things never led me down a career path like other friends of mine, or like my wife, who’s an accountant, who had a very clear path to be like, I’m gonna get an internship, I’m gonna do this, I’m gonna do that, and then I’m gonna be the manager, and then I’m gonna be the partner.

31:24 – Speaker 1
For me, it was, At what point do I stop doing all these different things and focus on? Being the best media company possible and that didn’t happen until 2000 2021 I think 2022 in that field and the field you’re in and the field I was in I And even the field I’m in now, which is completely

31:50 – Speaker 2
different, being a generalist is a great path. Because every single one of those things you mentioned has helped prepare you for what you do now. And even if some didn’t, that’s okay, because it helped weed certain things out, or you never know where those skills you’ve harnessed are going to come in. And it was your way of almost like a graduate school in an informal way and also a path to discovering opportunities that you may want to ultimately focus on. So they were all related in some aspect to me, right? It’s like me saying I want to go into entertainment. I believe that, especially when you’re young and there’s a little less at stake because you’re not putting your kid through college and you have less bills probably than when you’re older, that’s a great time to experiment and explore all these things. And create relationships at an early age, which is another big thing about, the great thing about identifying you want to be in film and TV at an early age, and you really want to do it, like you said, I want to really be a drummer with film and TV, You really want to do it. First of all, you have to realize at an early age to go to the best film schools, you actually have to take grades seriously, even though it’s not important. It doesn’t mean you’re going to be a great filmmaker, but it does mean you have a better chance of getting into one of the great film schools.

33:25 – Speaker 1
You gotta have good grades to get into NYU.

33:27 – Unidentified Speaker
Correct.

33:28 – Speaker 2
Correct. All of them. Now you’re in this game, and the great thing about it is you have a peer group that’s going to rise through the ranks and through attrition. Some of them are going to fall out of the game and never get into film and TV, but a good percentage are. And that’s how you network and grow in that field. So Manhattan and Los Angeles, if you really want to do the film and TV thing, a big part step is making the move.

33:57 – Speaker 1
Being in that environment.

33:58 – Speaker 2
Yeah. And with those people that you grow with. Um, but yeah, being a generalist is good.

34:05 – Speaker 1
I had a question for you that I wrote. It was, it was kind of about your path and I don’t know if you’ve, I’m sure you’ve gone through it before, so stop me if it’s a redundant to your listeners, but I don’t know this. Like you, you took this path of making a living in, you know, that scripted and original television.

34:24 – Speaker 1
Right.

34:25 – Speaker 1
Um, I’m sure there’s a bunch of ways to get there, but how did you get there? What was the path that you took?

34:33 – Speaker 2
The path, again, like I could reverse engineer it and explain it in detail. Probably take a little longer than this episode, but it was different than, there are a million ways to do it and get in. It is a very competitive industry. And a lot of the people that I know that have gone on to succeed in it also did not plan that this would be their career.

35:05 – Speaker 1
Is there a common thread or a common thing that you could find between all those people?

35:13 – Speaker 2
Well, so I was not a filmmaker. I did become one after spending 10, 15 years on sets and just living and breathing that. But I got in through talent. And it was like looking at all these opportunities. My first job in the business was as an assistant at a music booking agency. And I became ultimately responsible for booking acts at colleges and met agents for comedians at these conventions that would be held for college student buyers.

35:57 – Speaker 2
So through those relationships, I started selling comedians to colleges for other agencies. I was what was called a middleman at the time. And one of the comedians I was selling to colleges was Adam Sandler. And I would book him gigs and then I would drive him to those gigs. And as soon as that happened at age was 23, like, forget this music thing. I want to go into comedy. And I want to go into comedy representation. So I started looking for jobs at comedy management companies. So I took the path of representing talent and representing comedians. And as they became bigger and grew, I grew with them and I learned the business with them. And then when we had opportunities to develop a movie for a comedian, I would bring on a real producer that knew what they were doing, who was probably older than me. And I would become friends with them naturally and go out to lunch and ask them questions and visit them in Los Angeles. And they wanted to show me the ropes and just learned the business by making the most of every opportunity along the way. That’s how it happened for me.

37:17 – Speaker 1
So.

37:19 – Speaker 1
You did it. You were, you, you were doing it. I think that’s the number one common thread behind the people that I see that are making it or that are making it work for themselves, doing the version of the thing that they want to do is they’re actually doing it and not afraid to fail, not afraid to try, but they’re putting it out there.

37:45 – Speaker 2
So that’s what I’m doing in bread. I, you know, after doing the bread and starting the podcast and talking to people that were bread makers and pizza makers, I decided I want to really go deeper into pizza. And I took classes, I would fly to cities somewhere else in the country with the best teachers there are in the world. And like, I want to make it happen. I want to put the time I want to learn it. And it’s the same with now trying to open the cafe. I am studying with someone on a weekly basis for a year who has succeeded and has programs and systems in place to teach on how to succeed. Right. So, so I’m going to do whatever it takes to give myself a better chance to succeed than if I didn’t.

38:44 – Speaker 1
So that’s how I’m constantly learning. And yeah, you, you messed up your bread last weekend.

38:51 – Speaker 2
Oh yeah.

38:52 – Speaker 1
He didn’t bring it. But this weekend you’re going to do better.

38:56 – Speaker 2
You know, the mentor we have says fail upwards and he doesn’t mean that in a bad way. He’s like, you learn by your failures. Like I know what I did last week didn’t work and I have a hunch as to why. So I’m going to make some changes and hopefully I’m right about those changes and then I’ll be able to do it that way forever.

39:14 – Speaker 1
connecting that back to branding and video. That’s literally what we, the biggest hurdle with a lot of the people that we work with is getting them to realize that the first 30 to 100 videos that they put out there might really suck. They might really suck. They might be like not great at it yet. But the only way to get really good at it is to continue to do it. And if it’s something that they’re committed to and that they want to do is invest in growing a brand and, you know, finding people through social media, building a community, bringing in that attention and opportunity using those platforms, then they have to go through that process.

39:54 – Speaker 2
That’s really interesting. I wonder why they don’t give it enough time and why they don’t realize it takes so much time.

40:04 – Speaker 1
There’s a bit of money, a bit of a, immediate gratification. A bit of a bunch of things, I’m sure. It’s very personal, I would assume. But those are the two that hop out to me are probably return on investment and how patient can you be before you see that.

40:25 – Speaker 1
that that immediate gratification of I want to have People look at me a certain way right and if that vision that you put out there doesn’t match exactly at the beginning then Sometimes people get discouraged But the first time you bake sourdough it wasn’t it probably wasn’t any good correct Maybe the first hundred loaves weren’t amazing. Then that hundred and first loaf might’ve been the one where you were like, Oh, this is really good. And you got, you got on the path of something that you’ve developed over the years. And now you continue to do that over and over.

41:03 – Speaker 2
Do you have advice for any of the smaller businesses that can’t afford to pay an agency like you?

41:12 – Speaker 1
Yeah, the advice would be to just spend a little bit of time every single day doing it. Even if that thing that you’re doing is messaging people and building relationships, I would say that’s the easiest low-hanging fruit for small businesses. I do it every single day. I just picked up my phone. I don’t know why.

41:36 – Speaker 1
to go into Instagram or TikTok or whatever platform you want to spend time on.

41:45 – Speaker 1
spend 15 minutes, block it off. And if you’re a baker in Farmingdale, reach out to somebody else in Farmingdale and try to build an actual relationship that maybe that person is not going to buy your bread, but maybe they know someone who will, or maybe you know someone who can help them. And if you approach it from that standpoint of trying to build community, build relationships, um, it puts the social into it.

42:11 – Speaker 2
Do you think that the reach out should be to other businesses? Is it always business to business? Or even individuals? Is that worth it?

42:20 – Speaker 1
It depends what you’re after.

42:25 – Speaker 1
Answer is you never know until you try. Um, I would say approaching it from the mindset of learning and of saying, okay, I’m going to reach out to five businesses today and tomorrow I’m going to reach out to five people. And then you do that for a month and then you’ve got, you know, a hundred businesses you’ve reached out to a hundred people you’ve reached out to. And then you can look at that and say, Which one of these yielded me the best return? Did I get 20 customers from these 100 people that I reached out to? And that would be a really great success rate. But maybe you got one really great relationship from the 100 businesses you reached out to that turns into a collaboration between you and the restaurant on the corner. And now you’re selling your sourdough there to 100 their customers a day.

43:21 – Speaker 2
Right. That’s great advice. I didn’t see it going there. I thought you were going to go on a video level.

43:28 – Speaker 1
Okay. Well, I mean, I think you should do that if you can, if you have the time, but like the first thing you should be doing, I would say is starting to use it to build relationships because that’s the ultimate goal. Maybe that’s shoot myself in the foot, my own business in the foot, but the people who benefit the most from doing video are the ones who already have that community built and the video is just that constant reminder to

44:00 – Speaker 1
the top of mind with those people on a local level. Um, if you go the more viral level, then yes, you need to be, if your, your goal is build this up, get a platform, get sponsors, then you need to go down that route of experimenting and trying to reach as many people as possible. And then using the media in, in conjunction with reaching out to people in your local community, you get the best of both worlds.

44:26 – Speaker 2
Yeah. I like what you’re saying. You know and go specifically when we talk about video what I’m hearing throughout this and talking to you is Not everyone’s gonna use video in the same way Even if they’re in the same business their goals may be different

44:47 – Speaker 1
Sure, it depends what they’re trying to do My personal goal with video is just to show people that I our organization is capable of doing great work, that our people are the right people that they should be having conversations with, and that we are maybe giving out some information that is helpful to those businesses that they can utilize, and then they go, oh, those guys actually knew what they were talking about. When they need video, they’re going to give us a call because we help them one time or we help them multiple times.

45:25 – Speaker 2
Do you get into the scheduling strategy of when to release videos with your clients?

45:30 – Speaker 1
Sure. Yeah. So we do manage accounts for our clients as well.

45:37 – Speaker 1
That’s one of the great Mysteries, I guess we keep coming back to it’s with depends it depends and really what it comes down to is Testing it and learning Consistently what works what doesn’t work? What is actually connecting with the people who are walking through your door or the people who want to follow you? And iterating on that and trying new things and basically taking educated guesses. We have a lot of different experiences that have led us to the point where we can say, okay, let’s try these five things because we think those are the five things that are going to work the best. But then beyond that, we could be completely wrong with three of those things and then we swap those out for new things that we try. But it’s all based on the result.

46:25 – Speaker 2
Do you think the amount of likes you have on a post correlates to whether or not it’s successful?

46:33 – Speaker 1
We define success.

46:36 – Speaker 1
Let’s use you as an example. What’s success for you when it comes to posting? Is it people buying the product at the end of the day or is it a connection that you’re looking for?

46:47 – Speaker 2
It’s usually people buying the product at the end of the day. So I’ll give you for instance.

46:54 – Unidentified Speaker
Yeah.

46:55 – Speaker 2
I, some things I do for strictly entertainment and to get my person, my, our company’s, not my, our company’s personality out in the world. So for instance, I did a reel last night of me sculpting a sourdough middle finger, which is just, it’s a little edge, right? It’s a little funny and it does better than, the post I did last week of the 100% sourdough bread I made, which I was really proud of And 100% sourdough is harder to make than 100% whole wheat sourdough. So a lot of the stores, when they sell whole wheat bread, it’s really a mixture of white flour and whole wheat flour. But it’s still called whole wheat. And I make that as well. And it’s a lot easier to make.

47:49 – Speaker 2
So when I post the the whole wheat sourdough, I’m only getting 15 likes or something It’s it seems like it’s a boring something but then I always like these people will come to the farmers markets I don’t think they’re

48:01 – Speaker 1
like on Instagram like a kid liking everything they see but I think it may have registered That’s something that we’re seeing absolutely is people don’t realize how many people are actually seeing what it is they’re putting out there. Sometimes the like is not the ultimate driver of success. I would say having a mixture of making the middle finger bread and the beautiful photos of the 100% whole wheat sourdough that you put together is probably the Ideal, you know area that you should be in because you’re using that almost as a funnel, right? Look, you’re grabbing attention and you’re turning it into opportunity, right? And so if you can grab attention with something exciting that makes people interested in who you are and then they find That sourdough bread they may not be scrolling through and seeing. Oh, wow. I really like that and liking the post I would say of what I see on the internet. I’m not double tapping. I’m not clicking the like button, but I am seeing it It is registering somewhere.

49:10 – Unidentified Speaker
Right.

49:11 – Speaker 1
And I can, I can put an actual example together. We work with a really great physical therapy company in Huntington, um, shut them out there called recovery. And we approach it with them the same way we approach it with everyone. We make these videos, we have these educated guesses, and then end of the month comes by, we sit down with them and we say, here’s the results as far as likes, views, engagement. This is what we’re seeing these types of videos where the owner is working on a patient and You know really getting his hands on them and then also talking and explaining what’s working And then the patients chiming in and saying yeah, he’s really helped me this, you know, this recovery on my knee has been Been huge for me. I got back on the field after three months and Those videos do extremely well. People are following them from it, they’re liking those videos, they’re getting something interesting out of it, and they’re attracted to the brand because of it. But then we’re doing these other videos where it’s just montages, it’s just B-roll of hands massaging, scraper tools scraping, cups on the back with the cupping, and they get six, seven, 15, 20 likes compared to the thousands of views that they get on the other videos. So we brought that to them and we said, hey, these videos are just not performing. What are you guys seeing on the back end? And they said, on days where we post those videos is when we get the most bookings. Because people are seeing it and going, I want that feeling. I want that feeling of relief. So we have to balance the content that’s bringing people in with the content that’s bringing people through the door.

50:59 – Speaker 1
Exactly.

51:00 – Speaker 1
And that’s that funnel. That’s that attention. That’s the middle finger for you. And then the, you know, the nice massage videos are the sourdough bread.

51:08 – Speaker 2
It’s funny. It makes a lot of sense to me. But once in a while, and maybe this makes me creep or a bad person. I’ll put the same post on the story because I want to see all the fucking people that’s they want to see the names of the people that actually saw it. And it’s an interesting experiment. You know, And I’ll have people come up to me all the time and say, I saw this on Instagram and they’re all friends of mine. It’s like, I didn’t know you saw it. Like, why don’t you do me a favor and just hit the fucking like button? But I guess it doesn’t matter. I shouldn’t care as a 56 year old guy using Instagram who likes my shit, but I guess I do. It’s crazy.

51:51 – Speaker 1
Well, that’s, that’s the, uh, the ego gets involved. I love it. Everyone loves the dopamine hit of, Oh, who liked my video? Who’s liking this? Who’s liking that?

52:04 – Speaker 1
But it’s doing more than just that. And if you’re getting stuck on that, it’s counterintuitive. Because then you’re not spending the time actually baking the bread.

52:16 – Speaker 2
Now, someone who’s so involved in making content, Do you still ever enjoy just doing scrolling and looking at stuff for entertainment or do you stay away?

52:28 – Speaker 1
No, I’m not a robot. I’m scrolling. I’m seeing stuff. I try my best to not spend a ton of time on the platform because I think that has a negative effect. If you’re just staring at stuff all day or just watching the news all day, I try to not do too much of that. But yeah, I watch stuff. I got certain people that I follow that I enjoy. And it’s interesting how you can connect with a complete stranger that has no clue who you are.

53:01 – Unidentified Speaker
Absolutely.

53:02 – Speaker 1
Similarly to TV. YouTube and TV and movies, they’ll have that same type of connection. I mean, there’s this guy. I forget his name. I don’t remember his name. He plays blackjack every day.

53:15 – Speaker 1
Really?

53:16 – Speaker 1
And he plays one hand and he bets 10 cents for every follower that he has. And he went from like 13,000 followers to like 1.6 million.

53:28 – Speaker 1
He got to day 90 and he was betting $160,000 in one hand of blackjack on online. And he kept track of how much he was winning and losing. And after day 90, called it quits and he had $500,000 in profit.

53:42 – Speaker 2
Oh my God.

53:44 – Speaker 1
And it was just like once a day, every night before I went to bed, I would go on Instagram and I’d be like, this guy from New Zealand is my one minute of entertainment. And I watched him every day, it was awesome.

53:56 – Speaker 2
I have a few people I watch every day that I actually look forward to and they make me laugh.

54:02 – Speaker 1
What are they? I’m curious if you want to mention anyone.

54:07 – Speaker 2
I’m into this guy named Calvin Grinds who he’s like a comedian What’s amazing to me is the people that could just go up to anyone and talk to anyone and make people do anything. It’s simple stuff. He walks around a Walmart and he’ll go up to someone and ask them to steal something for him and he’s very charming and he’s very likable. He’ll take the wigs off these women’s heads and put a new wig on it and I just can’t believe how everyone ingratiates themselves to this guy’s personality. And I look at that and say, I need to be more like that as a human being. And it’s feel good. You know, it makes me laugh. Um, I like stuff like that. Okay.

54:55 – Speaker 1
That’s cool. I don’t know if you need to be more like that or if you just need to be more of yourself and put it out there.

55:01 – Speaker 2
That’s true.

55:02 – Speaker 1
But I guess that’s who that guy is.

55:04 – Speaker 2
Yeah, that’s definitely who that guy is. But I do have a, I have a little thing that it, with, listen, I was an anxious person and a quiet, shy person when I was younger and I’m a lot different now. And I think I grew into who I am. And I, I think that’s where that strikes a chord for me. I think that to be, to not be afraid to network and talk to strangers is very helpful in business. Um, so I think I, I relate to that. Um, You know, and I like, I personally like making people laugh. So I think I borrow some stuff from things like that. And I use that even when I’m at farmer’s markets. Like I try to make my customers laugh.

55:53 – Speaker 2
You want them to have a great experience.

55:54 – Speaker 2
Yeah.

55:56 – Speaker 1
And you, you enjoy yourself too.

55:58 – Unidentified Speaker
Exactly.

56:00 – Speaker 2
Yeah.

56:01 – Speaker 1
So it says a lot about you as a person. It’s cool.

56:04 – Speaker 2
Yeah, man. Well, Steve, I appreciate you sitting down with me and I appreciate learning a lot more about you and your business. And we are talking about doing some work together and I would like to do that.

56:17 – Speaker 2
Find the right project.

56:19 – Unidentified Speaker
And if anybody wants to get in touch with you, how could they reach out to you? I think the best way is to find us on Instagram at mmpcreations. And if you want to email me, it’s steve at mmpcreations.com. I’m always open to have conversations. All right, perfect. We’ll put that info in the show notes and hope you all enjoyed the episode. Steve, I’ll be talking to you soon.