Welcome everyone to another episode of Down, But Not Out. Today I'm joined by  Eric Frankel, Eric spent two decades at Warner Bros, serving as the President of  Warner Bros Domestic Cable Distribution for eight years, eight of those years  before leaving to co-found AdGreetz. AdGreetz is a leading video personalization platform that  empowers agencies and ad platforms to easily revolutionize their marketing by producing and  deploying thousands of hyper-personalized relevant data-driven video and display ads and messages  working with some of the largest brands across the globe. Currently  Forester calls AdGreetz an emerging technology for CMOs to watch. Eric thanks for being on the show. Nick, thanks for inviting me, pleasure to be here today. Awesome, so before we get started could you give us an introduction to yourself,  walk us as far back as you want. Eric: Sure, short version of my tale is,  I was lucky enough at college to realize the first day in a communications class that there were  500 kids who thought they were all going to get the next big communications job  the day we graduated so I decided to run concerts at syracuse university which is a very large  university I went to the communication school there and I ended up running more concerts in more  facilities than any other kid at any college in America and ran television commercials, and more  or less did about 37 concerts over the course of a year, in nine different facilities and so when I  graduated I had a big portfolio of success and in turn I got hired, I got offered a lot of jobs, not  to be arrogant at all here and god offered a job at Warner Brothers the movie television company,  as the world of home video was just coming on track, and I went to work there on a trial basis  for 300 bucks a week where my boss said if it works in three months you'll see a raise  to 335 dollars a week and three months later I was looking at my pay stub to see and I passed  the test and he had told me six months later if you know if and when I was hired he said six  months later I'll give you a bump to $375 and he called me in one day and said I'm giving you $390.  And that was the beginning of a career that lasted almost 30 years. After 20 years in working out of  New York I got a phone call from the chairman of Warner Brothers in Los Angeles saying I bet  your boss hasn't told you he's retiring, come move out here, become president of the division you've  worked on for 20 years, so I did that for almost another decade and what I did there was I ran US  movie and television distribution. If you turned on a television set anything you saw more or less  that had a Warner Brothers logo, myself and my terrific team would be the people who made  those deals whether it was Nickelodeon, HBP, NBC, or what have you and I decided many many  years ago that television was going to evolve from appointment-based 8, 9, 10, 11 o'clock  to on-demand. Press a button, watch what you want, when you want. I spent about 12 years  leading that charge and all of my clients to who I sold billions of dollars worth of programming to  said, "Eric that is the stupidest idea I've ever heard, no one would ever press a button and pick  and choose. I know they do that on YouTube but that's because they're watching a funny little  cat video or how to bake banana bread or their favorite rock video I know we pay four dollars  to buy Harry Potter in an early window but all of the television being that way doesn't make any  sense whatsoever," we disagreed we spent 12 years we convinced the entire industry to embrace it  next thing I knew my division was making billions of more dollars I woke up one day before I wore  t-shirts and jeans and Nikes' every day but used to wear suits and ties and luxury clothing  I said I have next to no relationship with any brand because brands don't treat me any  differently than the way they communicate with a 12-year-old girl or a 92-year-old grandfather  most of the messaging takes the form of an email that looks like a letter from 1964.  It looks like a print ad from 1986 that became an email or a banner ad or the tv commercials that I  grew up with on NBC moved over to Facebook, YouTube, Instagram what have you. So I said  there's got to be a better way to converse with past current and prospective customers so I ended  up leaving warner getting together with the former chairman of the Walt Disney company  the former chairman of 20th Century Fox the former chairman of HBO the former president of CBS  and many other illustrative really smart executives and we went into the business  of taking that ad that used to talk to you and me Nick about dresses and high heels and pocket books  and instead talk to you about looks like your button-down black shirt my t-shirt our blue jeans  remind us where the local store is remind you that the sale starts in eight hours  welcome you thank you and do it with compelling content and over the decade or a little less that  we've actually been doing this we do this on more channels meaning this is email this is app this  is Facebook this is Instagram this is Snapchat this is LinkedIn this is Twitter and more and  we've just begun doing it about two months ago on television primarily streaming so now  you and I could be sitting watching the Super Bowl on Sunday if we have that account yet and  and you could be seeing an ad for example telling you to go to your local McDonald's  and maybe you're married with children so would be saying thinking about food for you and your family  in Ottawa or whatever and i'd be seeing a Los Angeles version that's no longer talking about  me and my family because my youngest is 23 years old and he's with his buddies doing whatever he's  doing so smart data driven hyper personalized ads and messages directing an ad in a message a  message is an email or something you see on your app where there's not a media cost an ad you've  had to buy some media to talk to you or me and that's what we do all around the world and just  like the streaming story that I like to start off with it took 12 years to convince the world  and now you know it's friday tonight we're all going to press buttons and watch whatever we want  yeah absolutely and we're busy just chipping away at this world of brands agencies and ad platforms  and explaining that an ad that talks to me about diapers for my baby when my baby's 23 or lipstick  which I don't use isn't a good idea but if that same if that same drugstore chain talk to me  about shaving products that would be a good ad and are you the data as well in there or are you the  both we're data agnostic and only only going to say this because there's a lot of confusion  about data and it's pretty interesting so yeah whether you or I like it and we probably don't  except for the business aspect almost everything we do in life  every transaction is captured rolled up and sold to entities so there are  a dozen companies that know hundreds if not 2500 things about you and me we're men, are we married,  are we single, do we have children, are they babies, are they grown up, did we go to college,  do we rent apartments, own houses, have cars, are we looking for cars, are we thinking about getting  married, where do we shop, are we vegetarians, do we like the Beetles or Rolling Stones  or Jay-Z and any and every other data point you could imagine so depending there's a wide  variety of different types of data we'll do the easiest one brand data pretend you go to a popular  US department store called Macy's and literally tens if not hundred million people have bought  products from them and in turn in most cases Macy knows hey that's Eric Frankel  and he bought a black t-shirt and he had it shipped to this address in this town village  or he was buying baby clothes or his wife buys so there's brand data most ad platforms Facebook  knows several hundred things about all of us so you can pick and choose and target as does Google,  Facebook on top of that has tons of affinity groups so they know whether you like the bible  or whether you like snowboarding and in turn the difference between targeting which people have  been doing for a while and what we do many times people go we'll just talk to people who are 18  to 49 or whatever we don't believe that they're all the same so we'll talk to this woman about  what we either know or think she likes versus this woman about what she knows or thinks so  you know there's no reason to talk to me in sunny Los Angeles before we started Nick we were talking  about the weather where you are today be like minus five degrees I don't know whatever the  equivalent is you might need a snowboard you don't yes you know and I'm and if I didn't work I could  I could go to the beach or jump in my swimming pool today because we're lucky it's not it's  every day but this is unusually good you know week for warm weather so that's what we try to do some  people want to buy a car and are focused on their performance you know I don't really know about  different engine sizes and horsepower and all that but some people that's the most important to other  people it's about comfort other young families it's all about how safe is it for the babies in  the back seat so the data is available from brands from the ad platforms and then all of these other  data companies and it's becoming more and more prevalent and you sort of won't be  able to run an operation many of the giant data companies they have many many clients  who purchase this data but they don't use it properly or almost use it at all they feel it's  an obligation to have data but then they talk to you and me about address or lipstick even though  it doesn't make any sense so we work with those data companies who like the idea that we can help  them teach their clients how to utilize the data better and in turn make their data more valuable. Got it. It seems very useful obviously and where the world is going in regards to personalization  we at Visitor Queue have something new coming out as well where we're  allowing our clients to personalize their website based on the characteristics of the visitor  if you're in this industry if you have this amount of employees and so on. So I think you did a great  job at explaining exactly what it does I think it paints a very clear picture for the audience  so to kind of recap 30 years right out of school Warner Bros eight of those as a president Warner  Brothers and then 11 years ago it sounds like teamed up with the top of the top the of these of  the other entertainment companies to form AdGreetz did they join as co-founders in the company? So, no so it was "Eric we know you from your career Warner Brothers we think you're an honest  terrific hard-working bright person we'll all throw some money on the table" I threw money on  the table and we'll come to meetings one two-four times a year hear how you're doing offer a little  advice but no I then went out you know and hired I forgot what it was at the time let's pretend  15 people that's now closer to 30 people you know I had the office in LA and an office in New York  which has now expanded to Miami, Philadelphia, London, Paris, Sydney, Australia, Kuwait City,  and I think that's it off the top of my head. Yeah, so it sounds like over the past 11 years  things have gone well, but obviously, as we know you're on the show for a reason,  things don't always go the best how far into your journey did your Down, But Not Out story  occur and then start walking us through that. Well first of all you know just for everyone  you know this is I mean I would argue that probably eight out of ten people who could  be on this show aren't on this show because they went out of business so the Down, But Not Out you  know is an exception versus I think the rule it's very easy the out and fortunately I would say that  if it wasn't for some wherewithal meaning capital that I ended up saving during my tenure Warner  Brothers I wouldn't be here and we would have been out. Boss people don't pay you on time  you know whether it's rent, whether it's all of these technical monthly expenses that you know  that you acquire your AWS bill, and whatever else it might be it's very easy to be out, so  the major reason we're not out above and beyond my investors  multiple times putting more money on the table but eventually it was me sort of and me alone  until now we're at a level where people are coming in and saying "I think I'd like to invest  money in your company to help you grow even bigger," so very often you're up late at night,  wake up at three o'clock in the morning, look at the clock and you feel like you could be out  yeah but I think that the the story that I was going to talk about you know specifically I  wouldn't say this is out but you know there's there's always you know challenges and a  and an interesting one in this case was here we had a a nice business going in the United States  and we're big lead gen believers so we write very compelling notes that have success stories  and samples of what we do to many many many many many executives every week and  and one day I got an email back from a company called Flipkart in India which I had never heard  of them enough to write them a note but I didn't know them because you know it wasn't really  focused on India my job at Warner Brothers was US centric and there was another Eric who handled the  rest of the world and the the the version of this tale is he said we believe in personalization you  know when can we meet and way before anybody was doing this because of cobit this is how we always  did our business because this wasn't Warner Brothers anymore I wasn't gonna hop on a  plane and go to India let alone even New York typically because I found this worked you know 82  as well and I could get seven of these done in a day rather than spending three days to go to  New York at a lot of expense four deck cards into the deck this terrific gentleman says  I love it we believe this is the future of our entire business we have our largest sale of the  year happening in four weeks can we we've been doing two ads one that says the big sale is coming  the other ad for years says the big sale is on and you and I would be seat dresses and refrigerator  and cribs and high heels along with our clothing that we might like  so yeah we replaced that those two ads with a hundred thousand hyper relevant personalized ads  and we doubled their revenue multiple billions of dollars more than they did the year before  for this 10-day sale next thing we knew the phone started ringing a lot in India including  Amazon now in the world we're in even though this is a while back who doesn't want amazon you know  amazon's even though I think Flipkart actually outsells Amazon in India how long ago was this  it's a while back this is probably six years ago already okay yeah yeah so five or six years  so Amazon calls up and we have done one thing in the us we have done Amazon Prime  Video you know telling you about new shows coming to Amazon Prime and why you want to subscribe  and we had you know they had only done one and before I think we did 24 which is a very small  number for us and it broke every record that they ever had and next thing we knew the guys in India  wanted to do fashion with us broke every record Fire tv broke every record Alexa,  Echo broke every record so they said now we have our biggest sale of the year Amazon Prime Day yeah  and corporately amazon corporate makes four ads for Amazon Prime Day and those ads more  or less tell everyone who sees the ad that the reason you want to shop Amazon Prime day  is for the best prices of the year on items like these and they show us a dress high heels handbags  lipstick romantic comedies female oriented pop music the commercial shows a mother father and  baby sitting on a park bench in animation style and so we come up with a strategy instead of the  four ads for 41,000 dads and the 41,000 ads now instead of the mother father and baby version  there's a male version a female version and a family version instead of dresses and pocket books  it's go there are 13 different packages of clothing there are 13  different movie packages going to the specific correct audience 13 different television music  health and beauty electronics we call out lots of cities it's India, Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore  we departed looking for big savings this morning this afternoon this evening tonight and then  we had a 12-hour countdown clock for the last 12 hours so you'll have what they call fomo the fear  of missing out I better buy this big television set or it'll cost me several hundred dollars more  you know in a day and a half or in 12 hours we break every record for the company by a mile  and they immediately call up and say great we want to do this again in four weeks we're like  this is great we have Flipkart and Amazon and they say we want to do this in four weeks say  great next thing I know my client from Flipkart calls up and says "Eric I need a giant favor  we have it's now year two or year three I can't remember and I need to get  two weeks exclusive for our biggest sale of the year that we have coming up again,"  and I say well you know I come from Warner Brothers and when people buy exclusive things  from us they pay big fees Eric I can't pay anymore you know we've been this great client we've been  with you now for a year too whatever it is we do this every single day of the week with you  I'll be a hero can you do me a favor and I say well you know what we only have one other client  in India at that point maybe named Amazon and they seem to use this very selectively  and they've already told that they want to do something in a month and you want to do something  in 10 weeks I don't think it seems like it's two completely different windows  and there shouldn't be any crossover and wanting to please someone I said yes so we reach back  to Amazon and say, "Hey Amazon we got to start working on this thing happening in four weeks,"  and they say we'll get back to you, and they don't. They say we want to push it back a week  and we say okay it's time to get working we want to push it back a week we want to push it back a  week we want to push it back a week we want to push it back a week and I say I can't do this  I've already done an ex and it turns out what they really want to do is do a competitive thing at the  same time to try to fight Flipkart and I being transparent and honest said I'm really sorry but  we've granted another client who's been with us for two years 365 days a year a 10-day experience  and that's the only 10 days of the year I can't do it and they said how could you do that  you demon you this you that we will never we're blackballing you you will never work  with Amazon again so on so on and so on and so on and that was the end of our reality  with Amazon, Amazon India or Amazon ever like Amazon everywhere Amazon everywhere  we're starting to be rebuild we've started to rebuild the relationship we've now found very kind  smart people who understand what we do they're still not doing it they you know so it's coming  back but we lost what could have been one of the world's greatest international clients and  yeah they sort of put out the word you know people would say okay I'm interested in this  let me talk to the guys in India and they would say oh the guys in India say you're the devil  yeah because that's your only reference it didn't make us out  but you know as we were talking about it's like you if you get the phone call that Disney says we  no longer want to use you we're we're we're going to work with your you know competitor  so is that kind of that kind of a scenario but you know what this is  what our you know we're always about to get a big investment you're always about to get  this exciting new client some that you've spent five years talking to yeah and you know I mean I  won't mention this client's name because they're they're so unsophisticated but here you are  with the gigantic retailer that everyone in the us knows and you know here's what we want to do  we we you know here's our really ugly email and we have 30 million people on our email list  and so we build this gorgeous thing that moves around and you click a button and turns into a  video and it tells you eight things that would be good for you to buy this week and it's you  know I would call theirs about a one theirs is looks like a print ad from 1986 and ours is  really cool and think okay and we're go back and forth for a long time they say we want to change  here's what we need to do we need to get more people to download our app so we and they show us  what they've been doing to get people to download their app and it looks like this you know one of  the least compelling messages you ever saw and we build this great thing so I gotta get I'm gonna  get permission and I'm like I know we're dealing with the wrong guy this guy is not the right guy  then he comes back and you know meanwhile we sent him proposal after proposal we've gone through  pricing we've he's saying we're gonna do this we're gonna commit for a year and all of this  and says okay we're I just fine I got permission this is free right we're like oh it's not it's  not free will and let me send you let me send you the eight most recent emails which on the email  and the proposal have the pricing structure so you know you know now by the way they're not I'm not  we're not down and out either there and I'm still gonna try to win them back but you know those are  the ups and downs of running these businesses and almost running any business you know at warner  brothers you thought you know you had the same kind of challenges and problems it's just that  one you don't have to worry about how you're going to pay the electric bill when you're  called Warner Brothers very true or your own rent you do yeah when it's visited you know or Anthrax Yeah yeah back to the Amazon store who is the larger client Flipkart or Amazon well Flipkart  might be larger in India oh sorry revenue wise who is larger in revenue-wise toward  for you guys oh well they were both paying the same fee they were paying the same value  yeah so one did it every month and one was just jumping into the pool and you know I was about  to hire us for their for the fifth time yeah and is Flipkart still with you today oh yeah  yeah courts with us today 365 days a year and they're back yeah they're back at the table right  now negotiating a new three-year extension and but we like to think of ourselves we like to think  of ourselves more agnostic more like a facebook or a google where we can do this for anyone and  everyone we don't we'd like to do it for Toyota and for Chevrolet you know and and then for  Tesla and and and every auto company not just you know one or we'd like to do mcdonald's and  burger king not just you know one of them as you would expect someone who's a vendor  you know would like to sell to everyone yeah and how roughly how much was the amazon deal worth  I guess over over that time or well over the next five years on an individual basis you know clients  pay us in one territory they pay us about 400 000 a year the beautiful thing about Amazon was  they're in you know dozens of territories so in theory when you had the tremendous success  we did in territory one we could be to multiple territories Flipkart even though they're owned  by Walmart they're very standalone and they don't and and they don't have the  relationships with the various people at Walmart and in turn you know it's just been that India  centric although we've gotten you know 14 other clients in India on and off since then  yeah so if you factor in kind of over the course of the last five years and multiple territories  and hopefully as you said they're talking to you again so hopefully that's the the course but  potentially seven eight figures right of revenue that amazon could be for a client  for you currently and potentially was back then yeah and then another I'm sorry go ahead  no no go ahead I just only because we're talking financial model we're also now starting to work  for a lot of ad platforms we all understand Amazon yeah case was a brand Flipkart's a brand  as an ad platform that means that a Facebook hires us or a Twitter hires us or a streaming platform  and there's a different financial model there there we get a percentage of the ad spend or we  get a CPM based on based on the number of people we're going to reach so we just did a campaign  for a very for a very significant retailer in the us and they spent four million dollars so yeah we  either get a percentage of that which is hundreds of thousands of dollars or a CPM which is still  a very significant hundred thousand dollar plus fee on that so that's there are sort of a couple  of models we go with either a monthly fee for doing specific things in a specific territory  for a specific brand or doing it you know for Twitter and being a white label provider for them  and you know I completely understand that I come from the outside too  working a lot of those platforms during the Amazon period did you was there anyone working on that  account or a few people working on an account that you had to let go or did it dip further  into savings because they didn't renew no we're always understaffed and always and overworked  so I mean yes you know what we've had one layoff yeah you know we had one layoff not knowing what  you're doing when you build these things if you got you know sort of as lucky and or skilled as  I did and we raised X millions of dollars to start off I would argue we brought in we didn't realize  how hard and long it would take to generate revenue so we brought first of all right yeah we  brought in too many people we brought in too many of the wrong people meaning people my age you know  I brought in a lot of people from Warner in the world that I was in who didn't really understand  you know the technology what it takes in those early days and we paid them to a degree like they  were at warner brothers and at one point we made you know sort of significant layoffs and over time  replaced those executives with what I'll call 23 and 24 and 25 and 26 who are now 30 and 31  and 32 who understood the assignments significantly better and had skill sets  that were more attuned to what we needed to do and you know and worked on a on a fairer salary basis  because they weren't used to you know working at a big studio who who was who was quite generous  yeah well the goal is obviously the goal is obviously to pay everybody and be extremely  generous but for a very long time the goal is not to be out of the game yes to keep going  right that's that's the toughest part about early on and early on you almost need a different set of  employees than you need zero to ten employees the the type of employees looks different than  ten to fifty fifty to a thousand looks way different and a thousand above that's where  those executives really come in so definitely a bit of a bumpy journey but things seem to be going  well now you've got yeah I mean we're dining more and more it's all about you know recurring revenue  so you know you don't really want to hire someone to do what you guys do for the month of March you  want them March through next February yes and then you want more of them so that's what we're seeing  happen and and then this expansion into ott you know doing advertising being the platform's  white label provider looks like a terrific opportunity and we're signing a lot of these  platforms around the world we launch in Australia next month and many of them in the queue so yep  and then we're not really selling we're selling to the platform the platform's 50 or 150 sales people  then they're out talking to the Coca-Colas or the locals you know or the national supermarket chain  there and saying we have a better ad for you and they're paying a premium and then we either get  that premium or a good percentage of that premium yeah it sounds like as I mentioned things are  things are going really well right now I'm on all fronts you got new tech coming out you got a good  set of employees obviously and some some great offices out there tell me a bit about kind of the  surviving these ups and downs that we've talked about I know you have a few others as well that  we talked about before you mentioned having the money to back it up and dig yourself out  obviously helps anything on the resilient side that you think waking up at 3am and  getting through those well one of the biggest challenges you'll find is or I found is having  a wife who says why are you spending our nesting you know you used to be a high-powered executive  who got you know and and sort of a one percenter yeah and now you've more or less stopped paying  yourself or your pay or your lowest paid employee at the company you know put getting IOUs over on  the side if and when and so that makes it really rough because you know there's the expression you  know happy wife happy life so even though I'm enjoying this and having a lot of fun if you  have to go home at the end of the day or during COVID you're home and your wife is less happy  because she or your significant other or your partner are saying is this ever going to work  are we going to be living in a studio apartment and eating dog food or cat food which of course  isn't going to be the case um so so you have to be resilient and you know and look there you know we  all see as many bad ideas as there are good ideas and sometimes it may just be that as a founder  you've drank the kool-aid um and you may not understand what's a bad idea and I think you were  telling me that you do more different things you know than you did when you were telling me about  tracking users versus personalizing the website for the user who's coming so you know I'm a big  believer in morphing changing growing you know adding more more tools to your toolkit  to be you know more useful but yeah I would argue that there were days months and years and nights  where I come down from my bedroom at one two three o'clock in the morning and sit in my chair  and go what the heck am i doing and especially because as I left Warner Brothers for a long time  I would continue to get phone calls saying do you want to come and work at this giant studio  for lots and lots of money fortunately Warner Brothers I had a good closing agreement with  them so there was a cushion to keep me you know afloat and I had saved quite a bit but you know  it's interesting how quickly you can spend that cushion you know lose all the you know deplete  start to deplete that savings if it when you start to live like you did when you were this highly  paid executive at the other company you know until you sit there and go hey maybe we should you know  you don't need to go out for dinners that cost that much money or or whatever we'll go out to the  local ethnic restaurant and have you know a grip or the in and out yeah yeah or the it or the in  and out yeah so yeah there's always the first time yeah yeah there's a risk of sounding like your  wife sorry why what made you do it like what made you leave the the fortune 100 fortune 500 company  and chase the entrepreneurial dream is it the itch or well I think you know what I always thought  that I was you know I don't know why but I thought I was born to be an entrepreneur yeah thought that  based on how I reinvented this business in college where you know that the guys before me often would  do two three four concerts almost fail out of school lose all the money that the school had  given them to do this to do these concerts with and I watched the the the three people before me  and saw how they screwed it up and came up with a plan to be more successful and it worked so  I felt quite confident in my in my skills and ability at warner brothers I my bosses you know  let me reinvent quite a bit but yet I got a little bogged down going you know I saw a lot of people  who had very who had jobs more senior to me that were risk averse not very creative you know we're  getting paid 12 million dollars a year and you know and that's about all they had going for  them was you know that they have lots of money and then spent too much time in meetings that  nothing ever happened in so I said I think I can I think I have an idea and I'm going to give it a  shot what none of us know when we do this is that it costs a lot more money than any business plan  would indicate and that it's going to take substantially longer than one thinks so then the  question is you know can you survive or are you you know out of the game and for all the success  stories we think about or think we read about you know you know the overnight success takes 20 years  you know one of my competitors just got bought by for 500 million dollars they started 10 years  before me yeah so it doesn't mean that there aren't people who come up with amazing things  that in three years are you know phenomenally successful but there are also a lot of people  who sell businesses for billions of dollars that the acquirer says what is this thing what  did I buy and shut it down you know weeks later you know or they sell and they're selling for  undervalued right you've raised a hundred million dollars you're trying to like sell it for three  that's awful the interesting thing about being poor being you know Down, But Not Out  is you know is that you've built a company where it's not about foosball tables and kegs of beer  and leather couches and we do the dry cleaning for you which was sort of you know a big popular  thing five and ten years ago at the internet but you know we've always been down dirty you  know scrappy it's a big deal you know when people used to want to come to an office you  know hey we're ordering in lunch for everyone because it's friday and we want to be nice  yeah but you know so there isn't that much to lose and you know I've had times where my investors  have said you know you're killing yourself if this doesn't work we won't be upset at all you  know we're wealthy we understood it you're in as deep as we are and if you don't want to do it  don't feel you have to because of us but you know I think then you get into the whole ego of wanting  to make it work for yourself because you think you're smarter talented you want to show your wife  that you were right and you want to prove that you can generate as much or more wealth for yourself  in the same amount of time if you had stayed at one of these giant companies that pays you a lot  but you can do it with your own rules and without many of those silly meetings and the bureaucracy  and the risk adversity that happens you know with those other companies someone will pick I thought I thought I've thought or and said it multiple times that it's often about the money right  money's great making 500 million dollars making 100 million is great but a lot of the time it's  about the ego as well that you can't let down that as long as successful exit that it will feed the  ego and the money is usually just a determinant of if it's a successful exit or a non-successful  exit right I think that's a big thing and the more question yeah the more experienced they're going  you learn that timing is a lot of it you know in other words you know I thought the streaming thing  when I did my first pitch and told people hey this is what television's going to be I thought  everybody would say this is great and no you just it's about persistence in all these businesses  besides survival if your idea is good enough eventually the world will adopt it and embrace  it but yeah it could take 10 years instead of 18 months absolutely timing's a big thing streaming  was I forget who it was but I remember the story invented in the 90s it was just too early the  internet wasn't quick enough internet speed wasn't quick enough to actually support streaming but the  last question because we're kind of on opposite ends here i left very early in my career and  working for someone else to start my own company and at times i feel like I should have left a  leader and gained more experience learned from more people saw how these corporations work was  is there anything did you think you left at the perfect time have you ever reflected on you wish  you left earlier any any reflection on that you've done not a lot so I mean the answer is  I'm always about tomorrow because I can't really reinvent yesterday now if i want to be practical  I happen to leave on a really bad day a really bad week a really bad month a really bad period  where working at a gigantic publicly traded company I had very significant stock options  and I had many many many many many of them but when I left the stock options had appreciated  about 50 cents so even if you have several hundred thousand stock options at 50 cents  it's the math isn't very difficult it's not a ton of money two and a half years later the stock  would have been became eighty dollars a share more value so 80 dollars in profit or or or 70  versus 50 cents appreciation would have been the nest egg to be on my yacht right now now that not  that I'm a yacht person and I don't care about it and I don't want a plane or anything like that so  the only timing is no i felt you know you always learn more and the beautiful thing about this is  you know I learn every single solitary day and that's what I enjoy the most is learning but I  don't really regret it other than bad financial timing on something I couldn't necessarily control  which was you know stock price yeah but the the real answer to your to your story is  i don't know the end yet you know if we come back and do this in in one two or three years  there should be more of an ending to this story and it's either it could be hey I was wrong and  I lost three million dollars of my own money and didn't pay myself much for a decade or yeah  I made warner brothers money or I made you know money like I would have heard at Warner Brothers  or I made money like I would have earned at Warner Brothers times X and it's not all about money  but money's good to help nieces nephews pay college tuitions help care of you know do good  things in the world more than you know I've got I've got 25 black t-shirts and 10 pairs of blue  jeans you know yeah and you know I just need a new pair of Nikes every six months I mean I obviously  have dress up clothing too but in this world who wears it anymore so you know life is very true. Yeah yeah, well Eric it's a great story it really is many ups and downs throughout we'll wrap up  here so thank you that's all for this episode, and like I said thank you for sharing your Down,  But Not Out story to everyone listening to I hope you enjoyed this episode if you did please leave  us a review also subscribe to the show to be alerted of new episodes and finally like and  share this episode on social media help us spread the word of down but not out thanks again Eric Nick thanks for inviting me it was a pleasure to be here Cheers bye, everybody