0:03
We are back. And so excited to bring you new episodes of titans of industry. I hope you’re all healthy and thriving, as my team and I are so thankful for the encouragement and support we’ve received surrounding the podcast. And we can’t wait for you guys to hear these upcoming episodes. So to everyone that’s reached out to be a guest, and to those of you that have answered our calls to be on the show, thank you. And to our awesome listeners that hit that play button, you guys are awesome. We’ve put together a new best of episode to give you a taste of some of our favorite moments from past conversations. Some of these conversations have taken place literally all over the world, from the beaches of Malibu, California, to the other side of the world. In Singapore, we are hard at work getting more great stuff ready for you guys. And we have some big things in the works. We’ve got some fun conversations, and we’ve got some extra special content. So make sure to stay tuned on our Facebook and Instagram accounts. And if you aren’t already, my entire team behind the scenes would really like your support by subscribing to the podcast. And it would be really helpful if you can take 10 seconds and leave a quick review. That’s one of the best ways for our podcast and grow. And it means so much to us. So thank you all for your support. And I hope you enjoy this episode.

1:19
Now from Episode 22, Jeff Amrhein, and Jeff Standridge, titans of startup, economic development tends to be about moving jobs and in the traditional sense and economic empowerment is about creating $1 where one didn’t exist before, right or creating a job where one didn’t exist. And we certainly don’t want to forget, and I know, you know, we want to do it in conjunction with with the large businesses because quite frankly, it’s it’s beneficial to them as well. Many of the folks who start out in the entrepreneurial community, or participate in the entrepreneurial community develop skills that are coveted by some of the larger companies. Everyone wants to hire talent that is innovative, entrepreneurial, and what have you. And so we want to do it arm and arm with with the larger businesses as well. It’s intended to be as much inspiration as education. Because one of the key themes there is not just what we’ve experienced over the last 13 years in Arkansas and creating a pretty vibrant startup and venture scene in a place where it was pretty much absent. I mean, there had been great companies built here, but there wasn’t really a vibrant

2:25
Newstart scene. So that part of the message is we could do it, other flyover locations can do it as well. So that’s kind of a big part of it. And then the second part of it. And then there were some key themes in there about the pillars, you have to look at talent, capital, entrepreneurial culture, community and enterprise engagement. Those are kind of the four things we talk about. But I’m going to hand it off to Jeff standards. To talk a little bit about the toolkit, we always talk about start where you are, you know, what we’ve seen across a number of unexpected places is when they’re trying to replicate something that someone else has done, they fall into the trap of thinking they have to have a building. And so they literally start with a building, and they either buy one, they leased one, or in some other fashion, acquire a building. And then they have to spend 80% of their time raising funds to keep the lights on and only 20% of their time fulfilling the programmatic needs of the community. When we started the conductor in Conway in partnership with startup junkie consulting in the University of Central Arkansas, we started with an assessment to assess where exactly are we and so we say start where you are, well, you need to know where you are. So we’ve created the venture ecosystem building canvas that

3:42
provides community builders and ecosystem builders with a tool to actually assess the state of where they are, across those four pillars, talent, culture, community engagement, access to capital, but then also to begin formulating those into what are our top assets? What are our top supporting strengths? Where do we think we can get quick wins, and where are some of the lasting impact things we need to work on down the road. And so that’s our venture ecosystem building canvas. And it really provides the opportunity just like startup junkie did when they came to Conway in partnership with UCI, he was they started with an assessment of our community. And so we took that model and built it into the canvas and a tool kit that can actually be downloaded. It’s a copy of it’s in the book, but can also be downloaded as well start where you are, but where are you trying to go? What are the things you have to accomplish over that next? Let’s call it a five years. And then what must you accomplish in the next 12 months to get 20% of the way there because if you’re not 20% of the way there in 12 months of a five year plan, you’re off track. And then what are those key performance indicators that you that you need to be looking at on an interim basis to determine the outputs the outcomes and what have you that that keep you on track to keep it between the ditches so to speak. So those are two very specific tools that we provide. You know that that we have used ours

5:00
cells that we have helped other people use. And we get, we get quite a lot of good feedback about that. So we didn’t start with a building we started with, with an assessment, that assessment turned into a movement, that movement turned into some people, those people grew. And a benefactor emerged and says, We love what you’re doing. We want to provide you a place. The only thing required for innovation to occur is constraints. I mean, if we don’t have constraints, we don’t innovate. We don’t need to innovate. If there’s no constraint, we’re just fat and happy doing what we’ve always done the way we’ve always done it. And so, you know, what I what I like to suggest is that companies impose some degree if they don’t have constraints immediately, and everyone does. But if they don’t immediately recognize constraints start, start thinking about what if scenarios start doing some risk planning in that regard and thinking about what if, what if the, the another variation of the Coronavirus comes out in it and it shuts us down for an extended period? What are we going to do? Constantly viewing the outside environment and your business through the lens of a risk manager looking to mitigate those things that could cause you to fail, is a really healthy exercise to go through average small business around the country had 27 days of cash on hand, and 27 nights.

6:18
And and, you know, we talk about in our personal expenses and our personal finances, we should have four to six months. Why should we be any different in our in our business? And, you know, so understanding what your breakeven point is and understanding how many days of cash does it take to operate your business? If you didn’t sell anything? If you stopped selling today? How long could you maintain your business before you had to shut the doors and if you want to be successful in a business, you got to realize that your talent and your team is your number one asset. So don’t overlook that build a winning culture, have people on board that are better and smarter than you the a plus talent, you’re going to have to pay them you’re going to have to reward them. But your job as an entrepreneur or small business leader is to build that team that’s going to do amazing things. And then you got to take the greatest gratification from watching them do those amazing things. From episode 23 Heather Vasser titan of music marketing, the first part of 2020 was interesting, just trying to wrap our heads around. Okay, how long is this going to last? We just continued to releasing music, but we can we did not stop. We didn’t stop our release plans, we continued and we thought man, as Empire we are have continued to operate as digital for digital focused majority of I think the industry pivoted to doing whatever they could and so then trying to figure out okay, what then sets us apart? And that I think we’re able to be on the upswing where we can kind of look back at 2020 and go okay, what what did that do for us in a way? How do we excel in that, then also, where did we kind of misstep in some places, but I think what 2020 did for a lot of my artists that are either developing or, you know, kind of breaking, essentially, is that it leveled the playing field a little bit because it took the Ailis artists off the road, it took all of the developing acts at major labels. And as an indie label, you know, that it took them off the road and said, Okay, now the music speaks, now the content speaks. And so we let that kind of outshine and continue to push. And that helped, you know, it’s funny, every artist is completely different. I mean, they’re just creative beings, you know, so they’re as different as you and I, as, as anybody else that would walk into a room. And so you have to take every artist and every team completely different. So we did we had some artists that were struggling off the road, they had never been off the road. And so figuring out, okay, what can we fill in this space? With? What can we fill in the gap with, I don’t think you can really cookie cutter it, you know, especially with how diverse our roster is much less all of empires that I think it would be a disservice to cookie cutter it for an artist you really have to take and go, Okay, what are where are easy wins during this time, because nobody knows how to survive a pandemic, and how to get through that. And so what are what are easy wins that we can easily grab and then what are we okay to kind of allow them to be humans through this, you know? Yeah, I mean, it’s funny when I first got in the music business, like video streams didn’t count towards the chart, right? And so that it wasn’t as much of a factor now video has always been a great component and a great asset to have. But then, as I’ve been in the industry, now they do so then they matter. So then create compelling content is even more important. And then as the digital space has just grown, more platforms, you know, tick tock wasn’t around when I first started that was, you know, it was musically and trying to figure that out and then moving, moving to other platforms. So it’s trying to balance the artists narrative, the artists brand, the music narrative that we have, and then marrying that with what that content looks like, across all different types.

10:00
For him, so it really is there. There’s not one specific that moves the needle, I think you have to be very cognizant of what works on that platform. Because what works on one platform doesn’t work on another. There’s no magic formula. I mean, I wish there was, I wish I’ve discovered the magic formula, as I’m sure you do, as well. It’s only when that great idea hits on the authenticity of the artist, that that is probably more of where the magic is, rather than any type of rollout strategy or plan, they, they’re the ones that have to sell it in whatever capacity that is, whether it’s a live show, whether it’s, you know, any type of content, any type of branding, and so that has to feel and resonate with them. Because when it works, it really works. You can’t build on something that isn’t real artists trying to find their voice. And what is that, and it’s so important, and I spent so much time just on the branding side of that just on that side of it, because they have to know and start to understand who they are. Because then that will help them solidify their career, helping establish those pillars outside of the artists with their music is just as important as their music is. So I’m all about adapting.

11:15
Because I feel like when at my time at Universal, we didn’t. I didn’t get to adapt. You know, I didn’t know if what we did worked.

11:23
Because we had such big artists. And I was like, Well, of course it works. But does it work as best as it could. And so here it’s very polarizing, with developing artists, and then you know, even breaking artists of it’s like, okay, you know, when something works and when it doesn’t, but I have the ability and the agility to pivot on a dime, and go okay, well, that didn’t work. So let’s do something else.

11:46
From episode 24, Sarah Catherine Gutierrez, Titan of financial planning, the main piece of my story that landed me into the world of finance, that I think is such a teachable moment, is the people in my life who inspired me and encouraged me to pursue finance, I think so many women don’t see a seat at the table, and they’re not encouraged to take one, we are not actively dealing with our money anyway. So it’s not like, Oh, I was making long term financial decisions in a clear, productive, analytical way. And then now I’m married, and I’m turning that over. I think we go into inertia autopilot, we make passive financial decisions. So they’re still financial decisions, but we don’t make them with thought. And so it could be credit cards, using credit cards and going into credit card debt or, you know, saving a very small amount in our retirement plan or not joining it all. So we’re just not making these proactive decisions. And then, you know, and then we just assume someone, we assumed someone else can do it better than us. Let’s let’s re wire that thinking, oh, yeah, you’re right, I can do that. This is our problem. We cannot we can only talk about money in unhealthy ways. We cannot talk about money in healthy ways. We have made it absolutely acceptable to talk about the new house we bought. I mean, look at it, like look at the humble brags on Facebook.

13:16
We can humble brag about expensive vacations, European vacations about standing in front of our new house that we just bought, you know,

13:25
you know, I’m so thankful I was able to get this new car, right? Like that is all acceptable that we have made it taboo to say I save 10% into retirement and so glad, like I mean, I can imagine like the humble brag. Wouldn’t it be so great if we could humble brag about our retirement and saving, because then you would have peer pressure, then you would have all these people feeling angst. And that is a good thing. We need the opportunity, we deserve the opportunity to feel peer pressure. To save money, we are so willing to auto draft a car payment. We are so happy for the federal government to just take our money out of our paychecks like, is it going to be 1000? Is it going to be 2000? I don’t know. But like just go ahead and take it or health insurance premiums. We will allow so much of our lives to be payment ID. Why can’t we payment ourselves first? Pay yourself first. So we have physicians that come to us living paycheck to paycheck on $800,000 a year, two years after a residency were they making 60,000 a year and we don’t blink an eye because of course they do it without a plan without a structure like we’re no matter how much money we’re gonna we make. We’re going to spend it and so if anybody listening to this hasn’t gotten on to the savings train yet and thinks I’ll save when I make more money. I call BS our brains are working without us consciously knowing these things. And that is why if you set your if you set your budget your system up

15:00
In a way that works best with your brain, then you can save and spend in ways that you don’t feel are depriving. Isn’t that amazing?

15:10
From episode 25, Dwayne Logan titan of film directing, I’ve never met a person that is going to work hard and give you 110%, when they feel like they have no value, you ideally want for crew members to be there, because they have a reason to be there, I want to be here, I want to run down that hill with those keys to help get the shot.

15:32
And so now I just I’m so passionate about that. And I feel like as an ad, I’ve tried really, really hard to make that the reputation that hey, like, if I see Dwayne’s name on a call sheet, I know this guy’s going to bat for me one way or another, and that I’m in good company, and this is going to be a crew oriented, shooting that together, we’re all going to be able to come and knock this thing out. The very fascinating side of that is sometimes you you become such an advocate that especially as an ad, you started to hear all sorts of things that just, hey, Dwayne, we’re running out of, we’re running out of Gatorade over is like, that is so not a big responsibility. But I’m glad that you could come to me with whatever whatever’s on your heart at the moment. And that’s doing that’s doing good business that’s doing the kind of business that I want to be a part of, and I want people to be excited when they see the phone ring, and then it’s got anything to do with my name on it.

16:29
It’s really hard to,

16:33
to work backwards from having the opposite of that reputation. Because he’s, I mean, it’s possible. But man, good luck, you know, once you are known for that person that’s going to beat the crew into the ground, it’s going to take more than you give. And, you know, just as well as I do, there are names that that go along with that, that are synonymous with that.

16:56
And I don’t, I don’t ever want it to be the thing that’s like all you’re about to pull a logon, it’s like, you’ve seen 1001 times, you know, some crazy person with a bullhorn jumps out on set, and it’s like, I need this and I need it now it’s like, but if you know what you’re asking for, you know, it’s not coming anytime soon, because it’s gonna take them some time to do that. And it’s, I’m so grateful for the opportunity to learn, okay, when someone’s had an a fit, and they’re saying I need our department to, it seems so trivial, I just need them to put together that little shelf. And get that in here. Because we did like this when we want to swap it out. And our department says, Okay, it’s in a box, and you say you didn’t want it, but now you want to, we’re gonna tell her to turn around and bring it back, we’re gonna build it, you know, like having been there, they’re gonna go as fast as they can, it’s gonna be a second in or, you know, like, when they say, Hey, we just need I love the word just gonna get thrown around until it’s just a shiny board, we just need a shiny board over there, just get a shiny board over there. And you know, that thing weights and you know, what it feels like when it’s on your shoulder, you know, when that combo stand is connected to it, what it’s like to care that thing, and then you look at the graphs that that guy is going to track through it and get it down to that. It’s like, knowing and understanding what the crew members are actually feeling and having some experience in those departments. And I mean, you can never know it all. But at least having enough to empathize with each of those departments, I think is what what should be mandatory for any leader of any company have know what you’re asking for. And then when you ask for an A, your appreciation for for when you get it is going to be so much more.

18:35
But be like the the ability to have informed conversations and better expectations when you’re asking for things. And just it all gets ironed out so much better. And it really just shouldn’t be this mandatory thing for any leader, to have to have some level of understanding of who he’s eating and what he’s asking them to do. I love how Dr. King said it’s it’s cruel to tell a man to pull himself up by his boots when he doesn’t have any.

19:02
And there are some people that don’t, and really do just need someone to believe in them. And to see that they are willing to do the work, but they just need some assistance. I firmly believe that that really is how it all works, that at the end of the day, it takes a community one way or another. There’s someone that’s that’s got to pause what they’re doing, and look outside of their bubble and see someone else and say, Hey, I’m gonna get involved in that. Even if sometimes it’s for

19:33
less than pious reasons, but there’s there’s just this handshake that happens from human to human, it really gets to go.

19:43
From episode 26, Gina scarpulla Titan of production, not only did we launch a brand new streaming service, we did it in the middle of a global pandemic, while working from home and

19:58
the team I mean it

20:00
It comes down to it starts with a team, right? Like you have the best team you have everyone is rowing in the same direction everybody is pushing toward the same goal. There were challenges as there is with anything. None of us had done this before. This was new. This was something that we were all figuring out as we went along. And we had all the right people in the right places to make decisions and problem solve and just keep moving forward. And I think that was the big thing for all of us was it was one foot in front of the next, and just keep moving forward, no matter what kind of came our way. We just kept going toward that goal of getting getting it launched and getting it out into the world. And I think everybody’s also really proud of the product. And when you’re proud of what you’re working on. And when you are invested in what you’re working on that comes through. Everybody was personally invested and wanted this to succeed and want people to be excited. I mean, it’s

20:57
it’s still it’s crazy that people come up and they’ll say when they find out I work on Discovery, plus, Oh, I love that I this this show is amazing. And I use your product. Same thing with Cirque we. And it still boggles my mind that that we get to touch that many people and do something like that that is part of people’s day to day life, we get to come into their homes every day. And people take the time to watch the stories that we tell and watch what we put out. And that means a lot to all of us. It’s not does not go unnoticed. We’re only six months into this, the launch of discovery plus,

21:33
every time we do things, we learn a better way to do it from the time before we learn how to create efficiencies, and we learn how to make make something even better than it was even six months ago. And I look back at some of the processes that we put in place because we had to build all new processes for this. All new ways of naming things, organizing things, communicating things, you’re talking about the amount of assets for a global launch, like this is massive, and the amount of people that need to access them. So we had to build a system. We liken it to you know, building, building the plane, while you know you’re flying down a cliff, you have to build it as it’s happening. There’s no time to preemptively build something and then test it out and see if it works. And I looked back at even some of the early systems we had six months ago. And we’ve come so far now from that. And that’s all from learning and evaluating. There’s a lot of research that goes on. A lot of our decisions are made based on research, we listen to our customers, we talk about things, we evolve things and want to make them better. In the end, I really see the benefit of being organized, but also figuring out rooms for things to happen as they will. I was someone when I started early on that like to see all steps of the process happen before I did them. And so I would over schedule things. And I would look at things and want to get every single part of the process done from draft script all the way through post production, I wanted to be able to see it. And then I realized that part of the beauty of what we do have both storytelling and production and marketing in this sense, whether it’s traditional marketing, branded entertainment, or even just sharing a story on a documentary piece, you need to

23:20
schedule an organized enough so that their structure but also leave room for the for the other things to happen. Because that’s when the special stuff happens. That’s when the magic happens is when you’re not expecting it. I’ve gone out on Shark boats before where we’ve had all days scheduled from morning until night, and had to throw out the schedule on day one. And the stuff that happened was things that we never would have expected to happen. I did get chased by a Mako on a inflatable boat during that trip, but that I was not expecting but it was fine. But it’s leaving that room for for life to happen. And for those stories to happen. A lot of the stuff we do is unscripted. And that’s where I find the most fun is letting go enough that I let things happen as they will and it really gives some wonderful results.

24:07
From episode 27 Jonathan gory titan of pain management. A lot of times other physicians will question the research in our field, not realizing that, that the 10% of patients that you couldn’t fix are 100% of our patients. So that leaves us in a little bit of a lurch because

24:30
we are trying therapies on folks who have who are the exception to the rule for every other medical therapy.

24:41
And we don’t always we don’t always do great we don’t always make the change we desire. And some of my most challenging conversations is to sit down with someone and say

24:56
I don’t think that we can make a real dramatic change.

25:00
So in the source of your discomfort,

25:04
but I’m going to be here with you, I’m not going to toss you away or send you somewhere else or keep having you jump from position to position. Let’s figure out what little small changes we can make to get you there.

25:19
I think one specific disease process example is diabetic peripheral neuropathy.

25:26
We are one of the leading states in diabetes in the nation. And we have a lot of patients who have severe foot pain, because diabetes damages the nerves in your feet.

25:40
And a lot of those patients ended up in my practice when I got here. And we didn’t really have an answer for it. You know, we tried a lot of things, I tried things that had not been tried before in the literature at all.

25:54
And some of it didn’t work.

25:57
But there was a new product on the market that was doing a multinational research trial. And they were choosing 15 centers around the world to try that treatment for this disease. And for me,

26:18
one of my passions is to make sure that those treatments aren’t just in San Francisco, LA in New York. And so I was and with my partner, Eric Peterson, we’re really persistent about making sure that little rock was a part of that trial. And that trial has been pretty successful. We just published one year data and we’re working on further data. But that is going to change the way that we treat diabetic peripheral neuropathy. Probably going forward. And we have been fortunate to have a few wins like that. And the other is with a disease called Complex Regional Pain Syndrome, which is considered the most painful disease known to man. And so

27:04
it’s it’s really been exciting and but it’s really kind of getting together with either my partners locally, or my partners nationally or internationally. And coming up to solutions to really complex problems that we’re all seeing in our individual practices. What I realized about two years into my career is you know, I can go to work, and I can be in a clinic. And I can see 15 to 20 patients in a day and have an amazing impact. And those 15 to 20 Patients are gracious, they’re thankful. They’re appreciative of what I did for them getting people back to work getting, you know, grandparents back playing with their grandkids is great. But there is there are ways that physicians can have much larger impacts. And when I look at our state, which is number two or and has been for the past four or five years number two and opioid prescribing.

28:15
And when I look at a rural state that doesn’t have access to cutting edge, high quality pain care, compared to the places I trained, Manhattan, Atlanta, where you could throw a rock and hit someone who’s a well trained, fellowship trained pain physician.

28:38
I quickly realized that I can if I focus on education, and policy, and recruitment and program building here in Arkansas, if I bring multinational research trials to Little Rock, if I bring in physician partners from four corners of the United States, if I open education programs for doctors in rural Arkansas, that I’m not just having an impact on 20 patients a day, I’m having an impact on 1000s of patients, because the entire of culture around quality of life care is going to change. And once I realized that it was a no brainer. And so I still see patients. I still, you know, I’m wearing scrubs right now and no one can see me but, you know, this afternoon, I’m going to do some procedures on patients to help with chronic pain. But I only see patients about 50% of the time and the rest of my time is devoted to really educating our state educating the physicians of tomorrow, educating the physicians of today and working on policy for UAMS and for for the state and bringing in Hi

30:00
quality research and partnering with other physicians around the world to advance pain care, and make sure that we have access to that right here

30:09
from Episode 28, Monica Millington, Titan of fashion branding. When I was starting a business, you know, I knew I always wanted to do something, but I really wanted it to succeed. I didn’t want it to just be a passion project, I needed it to be, you know, financially viable. And so I was always I didn’t want to rush the process. So I was always looking out for gaps in the market and interesting things that could potentially be innovated upon. And my husband, who’s, you know, he was wearing basically a suit every day. And he in Asia, we have a lot of custom tailors that do a lot of custom work here. And we were joking, you know, what if the tailor made your stuff out of Nike Dri Fit material? And so we talked to the tailor, like, can you do that? And he was like, No,

30:54
the fabric doesn’t work the same way, it would be a disaster. Absolutely not. And I was just like, I’m sure it’s possible. So I started doing my research. And I saw that there’s a few brands in the states that are doing similar type of things like performance dress shirts. And so I was like, it’s already working, why is nobody doing it out here, this is the hottest place in the world. And I started talking to people and got my idea verified, and backed by a lot of people. And I decided to go into product development to see if it was actually possible for me to do it. I started looking into all the people that inspired me that were doing incredible things. And I looked at their path. And you know, they started from nothing as well, like they didn’t they weren’t born with this business or with this idea, or this know how they had to learn it and figure it out. And I so I started looking around and having tons of friends in these corporate jobs that they hated and jobs that they were miserable in, it really hit me that the reason not everyone’s doing it is because people don’t want to do it, they don’t have enough drive or energy to keep on going and figure it out for themselves. And I thought I if I’m not the smartest person in the room, I’m I can be the most driven person in the room. Whenever you hit your limit, you only actually hit 40% of your capacity, you still have 60% left. And I can tell you like that’s 100% True. I think when you really put your head to the metal and you have the willpower, you can actually do some incredible things. I’ve read countless psychology books, which I actually think helped massively with marketing and understanding. It doesn’t have to be a marketing book, per se. If you can understand what makes people tick and how to relate to people and communicate with with people and negotiate with people. I think you can understand marketing and branding for that matter. And so I started thinking when I was building the brand, okay, first of all, where do I position myself, you know, do a competitive analysis, start seeing the comparable brands pop up, and then dive into those brands? And see, how do I respond to this brand? How does it make me feel? Why do I like it? Or why do I not like it? People really trust consistency. It doesn’t even have to be good. But people like consistency, it’s just a sight. It’s a psychological fact about human beings. You know, if you had a friend that was always really, really sweet to you, and then for no reason she’s screaming and shouting and punching the wall, you’d be like, Whoa, I can’t trust you. I don’t understand you. Why are you acting this way and you put up your guard. It’s the exact same thing with brands, people need to know that every time they interact with you or communicate with you, they’re gonna get the same thing every time. I just like to always stay on top of it and always be thinking about this and figuring out ways to apply it to my brand because the people that are going to get left behind are the people who are not treating Marketing and Communications like it’s their full time job.

33:44
So once again, thank you for listening and if you know a titan that is doing amazing things feel free to send an email to Hello at content Titan dot CEO or reach out to us at content Titan on social media, and make sure to subscribe for many more episodes of titans of industry.

0:03
We are back. And so excited to bring you new episodes of titans of industry. I hope you’re all healthy and thriving, as my team and I are so thankful for the encouragement and support we’ve received surrounding the podcast. And we can’t wait for you guys to hear these upcoming episodes. So to everyone that’s reached out to be a guest, and to those of you that have answered our calls to be on the show, thank you. And to our awesome listeners that hit that play button, you guys are awesome. We’ve put together a new best of episode to give you a taste of some of our favorite moments from past conversations. Some of these conversations have taken place literally all over the world, from the beaches of Malibu, California, to the other side of the world. In Singapore, we are hard at work getting more great stuff ready for you guys. And we have some big things in the works. We’ve got some fun conversations, and we’ve got some extra special content. So make sure to stay tuned on our Facebook and Instagram accounts. And if you aren’t already, my entire team behind the scenes would really like your support by subscribing to the podcast. And it would be really helpful if you can take 10 seconds and leave a quick review. That’s one of the best ways for our podcast and grow. And it means so much to us. So thank you all for your support. And I hope you enjoy this episode.

1:19
Now from Episode 22, Jeff Amrhein, and Jeff Standridge, titans of startup, economic development tends to be about moving jobs and in the traditional sense and economic empowerment is about creating $1 where one didn’t exist before, right or creating a job where one didn’t exist. And we certainly don’t want to forget, and I know, you know, we want to do it in conjunction with with the large businesses because quite frankly, it’s it’s beneficial to them as well. Many of the folks who start out in the entrepreneurial community, or participate in the entrepreneurial community develop skills that are coveted by some of the larger companies. Everyone wants to hire talent that is innovative, entrepreneurial, and what have you. And so we want to do it arm and arm with with the larger businesses as well. It’s intended to be as much inspiration as education. Because one of the key themes there is not just what we’ve experienced over the last 13 years in Arkansas and creating a pretty vibrant startup and venture scene in a place where it was pretty much absent. I mean, there had been great companies built here, but there wasn’t really a vibrant

2:25
Newstart scene. So that part of the message is we could do it, other flyover locations can do it as well. So that’s kind of a big part of it. And then the second part of it. And then there were some key themes in there about the pillars, you have to look at talent, capital, entrepreneurial culture, community and enterprise engagement. Those are kind of the four things we talk about. But I’m going to hand it off to Jeff standards. To talk a little bit about the toolkit, we always talk about start where you are, you know, what we’ve seen across a number of unexpected places is when they’re trying to replicate something that someone else has done, they fall into the trap of thinking they have to have a building. And so they literally start with a building, and they either buy one, they leased one, or in some other fashion, acquire a building. And then they have to spend 80% of their time raising funds to keep the lights on and only 20% of their time fulfilling the programmatic needs of the community. When we started the conductor in Conway in partnership with startup junkie consulting in the University of Central Arkansas, we started with an assessment to assess where exactly are we and so we say start where you are, well, you need to know where you are. So we’ve created the venture ecosystem building canvas that

3:42
provides community builders and ecosystem builders with a tool to actually assess the state of where they are, across those four pillars, talent, culture, community engagement, access to capital, but then also to begin formulating those into what are our top assets? What are our top supporting strengths? Where do we think we can get quick wins, and where are some of the lasting impact things we need to work on down the road. And so that’s our venture ecosystem building canvas. And it really provides the opportunity just like startup junkie did when they came to Conway in partnership with UCI, he was they started with an assessment of our community. And so we took that model and built it into the canvas and a tool kit that can actually be downloaded. It’s a copy of it’s in the book, but can also be downloaded as well start where you are, but where are you trying to go? What are the things you have to accomplish over that next? Let’s call it a five years. And then what must you accomplish in the next 12 months to get 20% of the way there because if you’re not 20% of the way there in 12 months of a five year plan, you’re off track. And then what are those key performance indicators that you that you need to be looking at on an interim basis to determine the outputs the outcomes and what have you that that keep you on track to keep it between the ditches so to speak. So those are two very specific tools that we provide. You know that that we have used ours

5:00
cells that we have helped other people use. And we get, we get quite a lot of good feedback about that. So we didn’t start with a building we started with, with an assessment, that assessment turned into a movement, that movement turned into some people, those people grew. And a benefactor emerged and says, We love what you’re doing. We want to provide you a place. The only thing required for innovation to occur is constraints. I mean, if we don’t have constraints, we don’t innovate. We don’t need to innovate. If there’s no constraint, we’re just fat and happy doing what we’ve always done the way we’ve always done it. And so, you know, what I what I like to suggest is that companies impose some degree if they don’t have constraints immediately, and everyone does. But if they don’t immediately recognize constraints start, start thinking about what if scenarios start doing some risk planning in that regard and thinking about what if, what if the, the another variation of the Coronavirus comes out in it and it shuts us down for an extended period? What are we going to do? Constantly viewing the outside environment and your business through the lens of a risk manager looking to mitigate those things that could cause you to fail, is a really healthy exercise to go through average small business around the country had 27 days of cash on hand, and 27 nights.

6:18
And and, you know, we talk about in our personal expenses and our personal finances, we should have four to six months. Why should we be any different in our in our business? And, you know, so understanding what your breakeven point is and understanding how many days of cash does it take to operate your business? If you didn’t sell anything? If you stopped selling today? How long could you maintain your business before you had to shut the doors and if you want to be successful in a business, you got to realize that your talent and your team is your number one asset. So don’t overlook that build a winning culture, have people on board that are better and smarter than you the a plus talent, you’re going to have to pay them you’re going to have to reward them. But your job as an entrepreneur or small business leader is to build that team that’s going to do amazing things. And then you got to take the greatest gratification from watching them do those amazing things. From episode 23 Heather Vasser titan of music marketing, the first part of 2020 was interesting, just trying to wrap our heads around. Okay, how long is this going to last? We just continued to releasing music, but we can we did not stop. We didn’t stop our release plans, we continued and we thought man, as Empire we are have continued to operate as digital for digital focused majority of I think the industry pivoted to doing whatever they could and so then trying to figure out okay, what then sets us apart? And that I think we’re able to be on the upswing where we can kind of look back at 2020 and go okay, what what did that do for us in a way? How do we excel in that, then also, where did we kind of misstep in some places, but I think what 2020 did for a lot of my artists that are either developing or, you know, kind of breaking, essentially, is that it leveled the playing field a little bit because it took the Ailis artists off the road, it took all of the developing acts at major labels. And as an indie label, you know, that it took them off the road and said, Okay, now the music speaks, now the content speaks. And so we let that kind of outshine and continue to push. And that helped, you know, it’s funny, every artist is completely different. I mean, they’re just creative beings, you know, so they’re as different as you and I, as, as anybody else that would walk into a room. And so you have to take every artist and every team completely different. So we did we had some artists that were struggling off the road, they had never been off the road. And so figuring out, okay, what can we fill in this space? With? What can we fill in the gap with, I don’t think you can really cookie cutter it, you know, especially with how diverse our roster is much less all of empires that I think it would be a disservice to cookie cutter it for an artist you really have to take and go, Okay, what are where are easy wins during this time, because nobody knows how to survive a pandemic, and how to get through that. And so what are what are easy wins that we can easily grab and then what are we okay to kind of allow them to be humans through this, you know? Yeah, I mean, it’s funny when I first got in the music business, like video streams didn’t count towards the chart, right? And so that it wasn’t as much of a factor now video has always been a great component and a great asset to have. But then, as I’ve been in the industry, now they do so then they matter. So then create compelling content is even more important. And then as the digital space has just grown, more platforms, you know, tick tock wasn’t around when I first started that was, you know, it was musically and trying to figure that out and then moving, moving to other platforms. So it’s trying to balance the artists narrative, the artists brand, the music narrative that we have, and then marrying that with what that content looks like, across all different types.

10:00
For him, so it really is there. There’s not one specific that moves the needle, I think you have to be very cognizant of what works on that platform. Because what works on one platform doesn’t work on another. There’s no magic formula. I mean, I wish there was, I wish I’ve discovered the magic formula, as I’m sure you do, as well. It’s only when that great idea hits on the authenticity of the artist, that that is probably more of where the magic is, rather than any type of rollout strategy or plan, they, they’re the ones that have to sell it in whatever capacity that is, whether it’s a live show, whether it’s, you know, any type of content, any type of branding, and so that has to feel and resonate with them. Because when it works, it really works. You can’t build on something that isn’t real artists trying to find their voice. And what is that, and it’s so important, and I spent so much time just on the branding side of that just on that side of it, because they have to know and start to understand who they are. Because then that will help them solidify their career, helping establish those pillars outside of the artists with their music is just as important as their music is. So I’m all about adapting.

11:15
Because I feel like when at my time at Universal, we didn’t. I didn’t get to adapt. You know, I didn’t know if what we did worked.

11:23
Because we had such big artists. And I was like, Well, of course it works. But does it work as best as it could. And so here it’s very polarizing, with developing artists, and then you know, even breaking artists of it’s like, okay, you know, when something works and when it doesn’t, but I have the ability and the agility to pivot on a dime, and go okay, well, that didn’t work. So let’s do something else.

11:46
From episode 24, Sarah Catherine Gutierrez, Titan of financial planning, the main piece of my story that landed me into the world of finance, that I think is such a teachable moment, is the people in my life who inspired me and encouraged me to pursue finance, I think so many women don’t see a seat at the table, and they’re not encouraged to take one, we are not actively dealing with our money anyway. So it’s not like, Oh, I was making long term financial decisions in a clear, productive, analytical way. And then now I’m married, and I’m turning that over. I think we go into inertia autopilot, we make passive financial decisions. So they’re still financial decisions, but we don’t make them with thought. And so it could be credit cards, using credit cards and going into credit card debt or, you know, saving a very small amount in our retirement plan or not joining it all. So we’re just not making these proactive decisions. And then, you know, and then we just assume someone, we assumed someone else can do it better than us. Let’s let’s re wire that thinking, oh, yeah, you’re right, I can do that. This is our problem. We cannot we can only talk about money in unhealthy ways. We cannot talk about money in healthy ways. We have made it absolutely acceptable to talk about the new house we bought. I mean, look at it, like look at the humble brags on Facebook.

13:16
We can humble brag about expensive vacations, European vacations about standing in front of our new house that we just bought, you know,

13:25
you know, I’m so thankful I was able to get this new car, right? Like that is all acceptable that we have made it taboo to say I save 10% into retirement and so glad, like I mean, I can imagine like the humble brag. Wouldn’t it be so great if we could humble brag about our retirement and saving, because then you would have peer pressure, then you would have all these people feeling angst. And that is a good thing. We need the opportunity, we deserve the opportunity to feel peer pressure. To save money, we are so willing to auto draft a car payment. We are so happy for the federal government to just take our money out of our paychecks like, is it going to be 1000? Is it going to be 2000? I don’t know. But like just go ahead and take it or health insurance premiums. We will allow so much of our lives to be payment ID. Why can’t we payment ourselves first? Pay yourself first. So we have physicians that come to us living paycheck to paycheck on $800,000 a year, two years after a residency were they making 60,000 a year and we don’t blink an eye because of course they do it without a plan without a structure like we’re no matter how much money we’re gonna we make. We’re going to spend it and so if anybody listening to this hasn’t gotten on to the savings train yet and thinks I’ll save when I make more money. I call BS our brains are working without us consciously knowing these things. And that is why if you set your if you set your budget your system up

15:00
In a way that works best with your brain, then you can save and spend in ways that you don’t feel are depriving. Isn’t that amazing?

15:10
From episode 25, Dwayne Logan titan of film directing, I’ve never met a person that is going to work hard and give you 110%, when they feel like they have no value, you ideally want for crew members to be there, because they have a reason to be there, I want to be here, I want to run down that hill with those keys to help get the shot.

15:32
And so now I just I’m so passionate about that. And I feel like as an ad, I’ve tried really, really hard to make that the reputation that hey, like, if I see Dwayne’s name on a call sheet, I know this guy’s going to bat for me one way or another, and that I’m in good company, and this is going to be a crew oriented, shooting that together, we’re all going to be able to come and knock this thing out. The very fascinating side of that is sometimes you you become such an advocate that especially as an ad, you started to hear all sorts of things that just, hey, Dwayne, we’re running out of, we’re running out of Gatorade over is like, that is so not a big responsibility. But I’m glad that you could come to me with whatever whatever’s on your heart at the moment. And that’s doing that’s doing good business that’s doing the kind of business that I want to be a part of, and I want people to be excited when they see the phone ring, and then it’s got anything to do with my name on it.

16:29
It’s really hard to,

16:33
to work backwards from having the opposite of that reputation. Because he’s, I mean, it’s possible. But man, good luck, you know, once you are known for that person that’s going to beat the crew into the ground, it’s going to take more than you give. And, you know, just as well as I do, there are names that that go along with that, that are synonymous with that.

16:56
And I don’t, I don’t ever want it to be the thing that’s like all you’re about to pull a logon, it’s like, you’ve seen 1001 times, you know, some crazy person with a bullhorn jumps out on set, and it’s like, I need this and I need it now it’s like, but if you know what you’re asking for, you know, it’s not coming anytime soon, because it’s gonna take them some time to do that. And it’s, I’m so grateful for the opportunity to learn, okay, when someone’s had an a fit, and they’re saying I need our department to, it seems so trivial, I just need them to put together that little shelf. And get that in here. Because we did like this when we want to swap it out. And our department says, Okay, it’s in a box, and you say you didn’t want it, but now you want to, we’re gonna tell her to turn around and bring it back, we’re gonna build it, you know, like having been there, they’re gonna go as fast as they can, it’s gonna be a second in or, you know, like, when they say, Hey, we just need I love the word just gonna get thrown around until it’s just a shiny board, we just need a shiny board over there, just get a shiny board over there. And you know, that thing weights and you know, what it feels like when it’s on your shoulder, you know, when that combo stand is connected to it, what it’s like to care that thing, and then you look at the graphs that that guy is going to track through it and get it down to that. It’s like, knowing and understanding what the crew members are actually feeling and having some experience in those departments. And I mean, you can never know it all. But at least having enough to empathize with each of those departments, I think is what what should be mandatory for any leader of any company have know what you’re asking for. And then when you ask for an A, your appreciation for for when you get it is going to be so much more.

18:35
But be like the the ability to have informed conversations and better expectations when you’re asking for things. And just it all gets ironed out so much better. And it really just shouldn’t be this mandatory thing for any leader, to have to have some level of understanding of who he’s eating and what he’s asking them to do. I love how Dr. King said it’s it’s cruel to tell a man to pull himself up by his boots when he doesn’t have any.

19:02
And there are some people that don’t, and really do just need someone to believe in them. And to see that they are willing to do the work, but they just need some assistance. I firmly believe that that really is how it all works, that at the end of the day, it takes a community one way or another. There’s someone that’s that’s got to pause what they’re doing, and look outside of their bubble and see someone else and say, Hey, I’m gonna get involved in that. Even if sometimes it’s for

19:33
less than pious reasons, but there’s there’s just this handshake that happens from human to human, it really gets to go.

19:43
From episode 26, Gina scarpulla Titan of production, not only did we launch a brand new streaming service, we did it in the middle of a global pandemic, while working from home and

19:58
the team I mean it

20:00
It comes down to it starts with a team, right? Like you have the best team you have everyone is rowing in the same direction everybody is pushing toward the same goal. There were challenges as there is with anything. None of us had done this before. This was new. This was something that we were all figuring out as we went along. And we had all the right people in the right places to make decisions and problem solve and just keep moving forward. And I think that was the big thing for all of us was it was one foot in front of the next, and just keep moving forward, no matter what kind of came our way. We just kept going toward that goal of getting getting it launched and getting it out into the world. And I think everybody’s also really proud of the product. And when you’re proud of what you’re working on. And when you are invested in what you’re working on that comes through. Everybody was personally invested and wanted this to succeed and want people to be excited. I mean, it’s

20:57
it’s still it’s crazy that people come up and they’ll say when they find out I work on Discovery, plus, Oh, I love that I this this show is amazing. And I use your product. Same thing with Cirque we. And it still boggles my mind that that we get to touch that many people and do something like that that is part of people’s day to day life, we get to come into their homes every day. And people take the time to watch the stories that we tell and watch what we put out. And that means a lot to all of us. It’s not does not go unnoticed. We’re only six months into this, the launch of discovery plus,

21:33
every time we do things, we learn a better way to do it from the time before we learn how to create efficiencies, and we learn how to make make something even better than it was even six months ago. And I look back at some of the processes that we put in place because we had to build all new processes for this. All new ways of naming things, organizing things, communicating things, you’re talking about the amount of assets for a global launch, like this is massive, and the amount of people that need to access them. So we had to build a system. We liken it to you know, building, building the plane, while you know you’re flying down a cliff, you have to build it as it’s happening. There’s no time to preemptively build something and then test it out and see if it works. And I looked back at even some of the early systems we had six months ago. And we’ve come so far now from that. And that’s all from learning and evaluating. There’s a lot of research that goes on. A lot of our decisions are made based on research, we listen to our customers, we talk about things, we evolve things and want to make them better. In the end, I really see the benefit of being organized, but also figuring out rooms for things to happen as they will. I was someone when I started early on that like to see all steps of the process happen before I did them. And so I would over schedule things. And I would look at things and want to get every single part of the process done from draft script all the way through post production, I wanted to be able to see it. And then I realized that part of the beauty of what we do have both storytelling and production and marketing in this sense, whether it’s traditional marketing, branded entertainment, or even just sharing a story on a documentary piece, you need to

23:20
schedule an organized enough so that their structure but also leave room for the for the other things to happen. Because that’s when the special stuff happens. That’s when the magic happens is when you’re not expecting it. I’ve gone out on Shark boats before where we’ve had all days scheduled from morning until night, and had to throw out the schedule on day one. And the stuff that happened was things that we never would have expected to happen. I did get chased by a Mako on a inflatable boat during that trip, but that I was not expecting but it was fine. But it’s leaving that room for for life to happen. And for those stories to happen. A lot of the stuff we do is unscripted. And that’s where I find the most fun is letting go enough that I let things happen as they will and it really gives some wonderful results.

24:07
From episode 27 Jonathan gory titan of pain management. A lot of times other physicians will question the research in our field, not realizing that, that the 10% of patients that you couldn’t fix are 100% of our patients. So that leaves us in a little bit of a lurch because

24:30
we are trying therapies on folks who have who are the exception to the rule for every other medical therapy.

24:41
And we don’t always we don’t always do great we don’t always make the change we desire. And some of my most challenging conversations is to sit down with someone and say

24:56
I don’t think that we can make a real dramatic change.

25:00
So in the source of your discomfort,

25:04
but I’m going to be here with you, I’m not going to toss you away or send you somewhere else or keep having you jump from position to position. Let’s figure out what little small changes we can make to get you there.

25:19
I think one specific disease process example is diabetic peripheral neuropathy.

25:26
We are one of the leading states in diabetes in the nation. And we have a lot of patients who have severe foot pain, because diabetes damages the nerves in your feet.

25:40
And a lot of those patients ended up in my practice when I got here. And we didn’t really have an answer for it. You know, we tried a lot of things, I tried things that had not been tried before in the literature at all.

25:54
And some of it didn’t work.

25:57
But there was a new product on the market that was doing a multinational research trial. And they were choosing 15 centers around the world to try that treatment for this disease. And for me,

26:18
one of my passions is to make sure that those treatments aren’t just in San Francisco, LA in New York. And so I was and with my partner, Eric Peterson, we’re really persistent about making sure that little rock was a part of that trial. And that trial has been pretty successful. We just published one year data and we’re working on further data. But that is going to change the way that we treat diabetic peripheral neuropathy. Probably going forward. And we have been fortunate to have a few wins like that. And the other is with a disease called Complex Regional Pain Syndrome, which is considered the most painful disease known to man. And so

27:04
it’s it’s really been exciting and but it’s really kind of getting together with either my partners locally, or my partners nationally or internationally. And coming up to solutions to really complex problems that we’re all seeing in our individual practices. What I realized about two years into my career is you know, I can go to work, and I can be in a clinic. And I can see 15 to 20 patients in a day and have an amazing impact. And those 15 to 20 Patients are gracious, they’re thankful. They’re appreciative of what I did for them getting people back to work getting, you know, grandparents back playing with their grandkids is great. But there is there are ways that physicians can have much larger impacts. And when I look at our state, which is number two or and has been for the past four or five years number two and opioid prescribing.

28:15
And when I look at a rural state that doesn’t have access to cutting edge, high quality pain care, compared to the places I trained, Manhattan, Atlanta, where you could throw a rock and hit someone who’s a well trained, fellowship trained pain physician.

28:38
I quickly realized that I can if I focus on education, and policy, and recruitment and program building here in Arkansas, if I bring multinational research trials to Little Rock, if I bring in physician partners from four corners of the United States, if I open education programs for doctors in rural Arkansas, that I’m not just having an impact on 20 patients a day, I’m having an impact on 1000s of patients, because the entire of culture around quality of life care is going to change. And once I realized that it was a no brainer. And so I still see patients. I still, you know, I’m wearing scrubs right now and no one can see me but, you know, this afternoon, I’m going to do some procedures on patients to help with chronic pain. But I only see patients about 50% of the time and the rest of my time is devoted to really educating our state educating the physicians of tomorrow, educating the physicians of today and working on policy for UAMS and for for the state and bringing in Hi

30:00
quality research and partnering with other physicians around the world to advance pain care, and make sure that we have access to that right here

30:09
from Episode 28, Monica Millington, Titan of fashion branding. When I was starting a business, you know, I knew I always wanted to do something, but I really wanted it to succeed. I didn’t want it to just be a passion project, I needed it to be, you know, financially viable. And so I was always I didn’t want to rush the process. So I was always looking out for gaps in the market and interesting things that could potentially be innovated upon. And my husband, who’s, you know, he was wearing basically a suit every day. And he in Asia, we have a lot of custom tailors that do a lot of custom work here. And we were joking, you know, what if the tailor made your stuff out of Nike Dri Fit material? And so we talked to the tailor, like, can you do that? And he was like, No,

30:54
the fabric doesn’t work the same way, it would be a disaster. Absolutely not. And I was just like, I’m sure it’s possible. So I started doing my research. And I saw that there’s a few brands in the states that are doing similar type of things like performance dress shirts. And so I was like, it’s already working, why is nobody doing it out here, this is the hottest place in the world. And I started talking to people and got my idea verified, and backed by a lot of people. And I decided to go into product development to see if it was actually possible for me to do it. I started looking into all the people that inspired me that were doing incredible things. And I looked at their path. And you know, they started from nothing as well, like they didn’t they weren’t born with this business or with this idea, or this know how they had to learn it and figure it out. And I so I started looking around and having tons of friends in these corporate jobs that they hated and jobs that they were miserable in, it really hit me that the reason not everyone’s doing it is because people don’t want to do it, they don’t have enough drive or energy to keep on going and figure it out for themselves. And I thought I if I’m not the smartest person in the room, I’m I can be the most driven person in the room. Whenever you hit your limit, you only actually hit 40% of your capacity, you still have 60% left. And I can tell you like that’s 100% True. I think when you really put your head to the metal and you have the willpower, you can actually do some incredible things. I’ve read countless psychology books, which I actually think helped massively with marketing and understanding. It doesn’t have to be a marketing book, per se. If you can understand what makes people tick and how to relate to people and communicate with with people and negotiate with people. I think you can understand marketing and branding for that matter. And so I started thinking when I was building the brand, okay, first of all, where do I position myself, you know, do a competitive analysis, start seeing the comparable brands pop up, and then dive into those brands? And see, how do I respond to this brand? How does it make me feel? Why do I like it? Or why do I not like it? People really trust consistency. It doesn’t even have to be good. But people like consistency, it’s just a sight. It’s a psychological fact about human beings. You know, if you had a friend that was always really, really sweet to you, and then for no reason she’s screaming and shouting and punching the wall, you’d be like, Whoa, I can’t trust you. I don’t understand you. Why are you acting this way and you put up your guard. It’s the exact same thing with brands, people need to know that every time they interact with you or communicate with you, they’re gonna get the same thing every time. I just like to always stay on top of it and always be thinking about this and figuring out ways to apply it to my brand because the people that are going to get left behind are the people who are not treating Marketing and Communications like it’s their full time job.

33:44
So once again, thank you for listening and if you know a titan that is doing amazing things feel free to send an email to Hello at content Titan dot CEO or reach out to us at content Titan on social media, and make sure to subscribe for many more episodes of titans of industry.