Assistants Vs Agents - What is happening in Hollywood?

25:12Luke Girgis:team at my media business and we had very you know stressful ambitious hard to reach commercial goals every quarter because i had you know five million dollars worth of salaries and i had you know you just had to kind of hit these targets to pay everyone and make sure everyone's fed how does that work if you're outsourcing that to an agency you can't can you really drive them to targets and things it's just whatever they can get they can get right yeah but i'm running like i run a lot of our outbound still so like i'm yeah yeah so like the deals we're doing now i run outbound they help close they're bringing in new deals so they're running inbound or outbound we'll both help close got it they'll close you know negotiate but i get the the advantage that I have and as a company is I'm still sending 10, 15, 20 emails a day to all these brands saying, Hey, we have an upcoming live show.

26:04You want to sponsor it? Or we have a event or a, I saw you're releasing this movie. We should work with you. Um, so I can control that in a more structured way. I'm not handing that off completely ever. Cause I love that side of the business ever. What do you say? How big is the team now? We grew from, so again, eight months, um, We probably have eight or nine. We'll double that in the next couple months. Moving full-time, yeah. So just structure the whole legal thing, TopCo, exciting time. Hopefully when I watch this back in a year, I'll be laughing. But there's structure around something that has grown for seven years with IP, and not to get too technical, but now creating multiple businesses underneath.

26:43So we'll move to hopefully 10 full-time soon and in very specific areas. So the newsletter, we have a production team for the live show. we have um you know a growth team we have events team who will run that and as we as we scale but it's a lot building as we go and like that's exciting but trying to just create some structure and like i can't be in canva till like 2 a.m like i always have been creating memes and also like

27:09Luke Girgis:doing whatever we do on the design side where have you found the biggest gap in your knowledge experience getting to this sort of million dollars in payroll yeah you know as you're growing it's kind of until you you know the first three million dollars is the fucking it's fucking hard right in revenue and it's when you kind of always feel the most out of your depth yeah what has made you feel the most exposed in terms of your experience yeah i think it's you know i've been at six or seven companies in the past two three tech companies a big you know behemoth like wme and Live Nation, been at really small, 15, 20 person tech companies.

27:49This is the first time that you are, there's no safety net. And I think that's exciting, but it's scary. Every morning you wake up and say, okay, I have payroll due today. I have expenses. I also have rent that has to be paid. And that's for everyone, but that's coming out of a business that's making, I gave up everything else I was doing. So you are in the driver's seat for not only yourself, but there's now all these people relying on you. And that's exciting because they, but it's also scary. And like, I've been on the flip side of that. It's terrifying. And you don't really think about that.

28:23When you're at a WME, you're getting paid every day, every time you're getting paid on time, same amount, you're getting a paycheck. When you're on the flip side of that, it's something you don't really think about at these large companies. So yeah. And also the knowledge gap and like, I just move very quickly and I have terrible, great ADHD, which allows us to be in 40 different places doing these things. But there's also that internal financial structure, running a P &L and having like, you know, being in touch with your accountant and corporate lawyers like that. I didn't even think, I never thought that we would be talking about those topics around AVA, which was just a meme page at that point.

28:59So the gap in knowledge is a lot of the technicalities, a lot of the business structure um and uh you know again just like running a clean p &l and like that's just something where i was like in the past it was me so whatever i make i eat and take home put in my pocket i was also making another paycheck now it's like that's got to go to someone

29:17Luke Girgis:else which is exciting but it's i had the i had a very similar anxiety where i was managing bands and artists for maybe a decade and i kind of didn't give a shit if i fucked it because i was like if i fuck it i'll go get a job or it's just me and a laptop you know whatever i'll figure it out then you start a business and for me it was a media business and you convince all of these super talented people to leave their very safe jobs that they've been at for five ten years and come and start this thing with you and know like if you fuck it now you fucked all of them yeah so it's a real next level stress it is yeah but but again there's nothing you said it about every transaction on your job board is a win for you, it's become so personal in like an exciting way where every win is yours or ours.

30:08You share it with people versus you go and close a deal at one of these big companies. Maybe you'll get a commission if you're lucky or a bonus at the end of the year, but your daily life's not really changing that much. You know, it's exciting. But when you're in control of a business and your name's attached to it, the wins become sweeter and the loss has become a lot worse totally for sure i've got a friend who works at a bank

30:30Luke Girgis:very high level very well paid and whenever i'll ask him about his job once and he goes if i go to work today and i work really fucking hard and i achieve the world the bank is going to make a lot of money yeah if i go to work in my pajamas and i play video games all day and i have a nap under the couch the bank is going to make a lot of money it was the most depressing phrase i'd ever heard about someone's job and i think when you're working at a small business and you're in the close vortex of maybe the first 50 employees somewhere it's like it makes you feel alive yeah really it does and the tech company totally separate co-founder there um you know we're up to six or seven we'll triple that soon and like that's also the same feeling so we have these two things in parallel that the tech company totally separate but I'm a co-founder on that with other people.

31:23And it's exciting to build with someone, honestly, at that co-founder level.

31:25Luke Girgis:Cause I've been building in a silo on AVA for so long, bringing on super smart young people that are working on AVA and then seeing the same thing happen on Lloyd. It's our tech company. I don't know if I should have said the name, but, but it's, it's exciting. And yeah, it's like, it's cool. Very funny name. Sorry. Yeah. No, yeah. So Lloyd, L-O-Y-D. But it's, it's a different feeling. also build with people right yeah you're all aligned with to on the co-founder level so i don't know did you have like at your prior businesses like co-founder like that like relationship with i was i don't think i could have been more lucky my co-founder at the media business was also the sole investor he was the majority shareholder i was the ceo minority shareholder and he actually also acted as my mentor and i feel like i did an mba underneath him i just i i hit the jackpot um so i know how you know unique and lucky that was yeah yeah and like that to me is is really important for this next stage of business is like you asked where my biggest gap of knowledge and it is in every area we are in i never read a newsletter before i started writing one i never i don't think i've ever been on a job board besides linkedin before i launched one and like there's a lot of being naive which i think has made us successful because we're just doing things like very different but the same time like i know how important it is to now surround myself with people who are smarter than me and experts in their world and that'll take the business the next level which we're actively doing right now that's awesome so i see attention with your business and i'd love you to kind of be honest about how you've been thinking about it yeah so your audience are assistants who don't have much money yep and if those assistants become successful they turn into executives and then you kind of lose them as your audience and so you've got this natural turn style of audience and that makes it very challenging to build a long-term business when your audience cycles so quickly if they become successful how are you thinking about that yeah it's been something great question it's been something on my mind the past eight months.

33:41And the reason why, one of the core reasons why I decided to go full time was because we built a big student pipeline. So there was that replenishment of people in those roles. But also when I started the account seven, eight years ago, those people who were assistants sitting next to me are now in leadership roles at a lot of the companies I've mentioned before. And we're doing deals with them from an enterprise level, but that's not enough, right? Just taking a check from one of the big studios to promote their IP. But what we're doing now is aggregating a lot of data, providing trends and working with those companies to then create structure and training programs within a lot of these companies that we're just starting to roll out that then aligns us with a lot of executive level people who are leading these companies in a way that makes for a durable, scalable business.

34:30And on the flip side of that, we do host very often dinners with execs that, you know, my peers or others, where that gives us an ability that most people don't know that because a lot of it's buying closed doors. But, you know, we'll sit down with 40 of the top young execs in the industry. You got to come to one of them next. I'll invite you, of course. And we just, you know, we talk about their challenges, you know, what things that would be helpful for us to build. So a lot of the B2B side of the business is what I'm 95 % focused on and allowing the other act like other aspects of the business to remain top of funnel and not charge again like that's why i'm not charging the student who wants to find a job five dollars but i will charge a big company to go and create training programs or um all right churn and burn

35:25Luke Girgis:high volume of work very low pay i want you to answer a few questions like finish some sentences for me yeah unpaid internships in entertainment should be banned for sure but you know i i think like i think you should compensate people for their time but i did i did unpaid internships that changed my life but i think it's hard right i mean i think from a company standpoint to your point if you are and i'm not gonna name names a large company or any company that's making revenue you should pay interns whether 20 bucks what is what is like 20 bucks an hour to a lot of these large companies but i will say like i got a lot of my experience from just being like i will volunteer to do whatever it takes to get my foot in the door and that's how i did it but at the same time from a company standpoint they should be paying interns like i pay every single person that works for me and i'm like i was a one person company but so it's hard every successful ambitious person i've ever spoken to i don't think there is an exception to this rule there might be has always done unpaid work yeah i agree so why is there such a hostility to the unpaid internship yeah and i'm going to contradict myself later in this podcast because i'm going to show you something but your first instant instinct was it should be banned and then you finish your sentence buying by saying i did it and it was awesome yeah and i also approached that was me actively approaching companies to beg for any opportunity i can get so from a legal standpoint point i don't think i think in california i think it's it's illegal um but look every person has to make their own decision and like the reason why i am entrepreneurial and others are probably because they went out and said look like i'm just i'm not gonna wait for an opportunity everyone wants these paid internships you know i took a risk and approached a promotion company in dc and said i will literally do whatever it takes to to get my foot in the door and start booking shows and it was a graphic design position i essentially lied and said i was a graphic designer i'd taken two Photoshop classes and just started designing posters and learning how.

37:25And that was my break into the industry. And I think to be successful, you have to be really scrappy. You have to take risks. You have to bet on yourself. And that doesn't always come by just applying for a paid internship, which everyone else is trying to do. So it depends how successful you want to be at the end of the day. But from a legal standpoint, they probably should all be paid. Yeah.

37:45Luke Girgis:Okay. I don't know though. I probably contradict myself a lot, but it depends. I don't know. depends what side of me you're asking spiritually it's like pay everyone but

37:57Luke Girgis:i i think you should be paid for your value yeah and i had never had an issue with me not getting paid i i did an internship at a booking agency for maybe five years i only did it a couple days a week like for a few hours every day but i didn't get paid and i didn't ever feel upset about not getting paid because i was just absorbing and learning so much it's like people pay to go to university yeah and i just treated it as free university and so i think a lot of people do that a lot of the ambitious people do that i mean every single person i'm just racking my brain have definitely done that yeah like i did too but again that is how how bad do you want it at the end of the day right and if you want it bad enough you'll you will do whatever it takes to get in front of the door and that's what i did like i i did zero people i knew in the music industry uh and it worked but you know it's it's a personal decision i guess the end of the day and the other thing that you hear a lot from the people in the comments are you know it's only for rich people because rich people can afford to work for free or whatever and that's not true a lot of successful people i know including myself didn't come from rich families and i didn't work full time unpaid i had a bar job i went to university i didn't have a bar job but i have a retail job and i did the hours that i could for free you know so there's always wait time to hustle 100 there's not i always say people care way too much about titles and way too much about the company they're working for and should be caring a lot about the rooms they're in and the company they're keeping at those rooms because you will get an opportunity that's life-changing through a relationship you make at an opportunity that might be shadowing someone you admire successful way more so than trying to you know compete with everyone and just get like a flashy title at a company and i it's changed my life to just be like i want to get in that room because i want to work for that person and and it that that takes like sacrifice to go and do and so to your point yeah like on a personal level like i i will still do it like sometimes i will still do free work to prove to people that that it that i can provide value and then flip it and you know 10x what I was probably going to get before my view is you should optimize for one of two things ideally both proximity which is what you're talking about be around the action be around the people that can move the dial or skill development yeah ideally you want to be in a place where you're in proximity and skill development but taking one out of two is still pretty good yeah and so I think that has a lot of value and people that get upset because they're not getting the 20 an hour don't appreciate one of those two things I think yeah and I mean that's why i went to wma i actually just posted something about i said proximity is the biggest single indicator of success in this industry and i believe it um the skills thing too it's like the my biggest the the my biggest fear in when i was involved in corporate america or whatever you want to call it was being in a spot where i wasn't learning every day where i wasn't being challenged and it happened you know at some opportunities and i left because i just like the feeling comfortable is like makes me sick.

41:06I don't want to be comfortable at a job. That's like, you know, I'm not like there. I am, I have like, there's so much, there's more drive to then just taking, getting a paycheck and going home. And like, there were some opportunities where I stopped learning or I wasn't in the right rooms that I, you know, maybe I held onto them for too long, but that was exactly those two reasons where I know I needed to pivot and I just went for it, you know, probably like sometimes, you know, with just probably should have a better, bigger plan, but Hey, we're here.

41:33Luke Girgis:So when you jumped from employee to starting AVA as a business, was there financial risk in that jump in terms of your own personal income? Or did you already have a lot of revenue in the pipeline over here where the jump had a kind of a cushion? Yeah. So I got asked that question pretty recently. And like what I did was made very calculated bets on a couple different areas of the business to ensure that when I did make that jump, that I had enough of a runway to make sure that AVA was going to be successful. So I'd locked in. I gave myself a number and I said, I need to get to that point of deals in these next three months for AVA for me to take the leap.

42:14Because I calculated the runway based on that and the ability to hire someone or two people at that point. once i hit that i think i had a shitty day at work i worked for a time i won't get into it but at a digital agency i worked in a toxic environment with people i didn't like and like i was like it just was a combo of hitting that number in mind and also i think it just having a bad week at work and i said screw it i'm going for it like i went for it and the first couple months yeah it's like you're working on net 30 what's net 60 that's what i'm working on for some of these deals and you're like oh shit i'm gonna lock this deal in and not see

42:48Luke Girgis:hang on explain net 30 net 60 because cash flow that's next next next 60 should be illegal but that's the biggest kick in the dick for any entrepreneur when they learn about net 60 net 90 all this cash flow stuff yeah and so getting a paycheck in the corporate world is net zero you're essentially being paid on the day that that that you're closing whatever that you're being paid in the same day every month guaranteed check in your bank net 30 is 30 days post deal closing or contract signed or sometimes invoice issued so the deal the the problem that a lot of entrepreneurs face is you'll close a deal say you close it today then you have to go negotiate a contract based on that there could be some red lines that could take a week or two or three hang on hang on hang on i'm gonna get you to draw this out let's start again you're gonna make me draw the timeline of how a net 60 deal would work yeah and and assume that it's net 60 after the event has run or the thing has been published or the activation has happened so talk as you're drawing so i'll put a star here for event or activation happening um event could also be a deal closing so me and you you know you agree to pay me 100 bucks for something i'm doing hopefully more um i can survive on that but um and we say great we we agree to the terms being a hundred dollars for an exchange of something, um, a service potentially, or an event, um, you know, sponsorship, then either you or me issue each other a contract, um, that could take, you know, a couple of days to, to write up.

44:20Hopefully you have something that's pretty, um, you know, formatted for your business or mutually agreed upon between two businesses. Um, but that could take, you know, I'm dealing with a situation now where like we did a deal two months ago and the contract is still being negotiated in some terms but the event already happened um and i won't get to who but so that two months and we're on a net 60 so that that contract's not done then the invoice has to be sent once that contract is two months is 60 plus you're on a net 60 so this

44:51Luke Girgis:is 120 days you're not getting paid yeah you're not getting paid yeah and like so you know and And yeah, again, like there are many situations of ideally you close a deal, you sign a contract or sometimes you don't even need a contract for some of these smaller deals, um, issue an invoice and then, you know, hopefully they'll pay you before net 60. And that's 60 is pretty rare and like in my world, but it's happening right now. Net 30 is, is more common, but again, that doesn't, that net 30 doesn't kick in till you issue that invoice or get that contract signed. And then the problem is like you're as an entrepreneur, like what you don't have much leverage against a massive company who's two weeks overdue on their, on their payment.

45:31Like what, I'm not going to go to a studio and like, I'm going to threaten a lawsuit over X amount of dollars. Like I want to lose a relationship, but also like they're like, ah, like good luck, like taking us to court. Yeah. So like as a, as an entrepreneur, you quickly realize that there's not a lot of legal ramifications for big companies being late on their payments to you. So there's nothing you can do.

45:52Luke Girgis:Why is it a problem for a small business to have a payment late when you know you're going to get paid anyway? Why is this a big issue? Payroll. And so there's people, right, that expect getting – they're now in the position of I get paid on this day every month. And I wake up every morning with like a hole in my chest being like, oh, man, I feel like there's a pressure on me to be like, I have to go and get this money in. And luckily now we've created a longer runway. But, you know, it falls on you. And like, I, the last thing I want to do is like ever miss a payment for someone working for me.

46:25Cause like that's, you know, they could quit. And like, if they're a really talented individual, the promise that I have with in any, any, I wouldn't call myself an owner or whatever it may be, like people working for you is that you're going to uphold your end of the bargain, which is paying them on time. So I, I, I struggled with it right now. We're in hyper growth mode and like, I can only hire people when we get that money in the door. So it's something that I know every business owner, every operator struggles with is that. And then again, that's why we're shifting hyper-focused to an IP model because that's more recurring.

47:00That's owned. That is something that you can control versus just hoping that companies will pay you on time. Oh, can I show you another version? Please. The more horrific version.

47:10Luke Girgis:Yeah. I got to finish this. That's okay. I didn't finish it. So you do a deal with a brand in January for$100 ,000. And the event doesn't start till May. Yeah. Right? How many months is that? That's five months. They are on a net 60 deal. They are on a net 60 deal, May, June, July. So then they pay in July. And that is pay. And that is May, June, July. That's another three months. So now you have not only eight months of payroll where you're servicing this deal before you get paid, but the deal also has costs. The costs of the deal that you need to run might be 60K. Yeah. So you've got to put the 60K up front.

48:10Luke Girgis:You've got to pay eight months of payroll. and then if they are Jesus and they pay on time, you get paid eight months later. Now you stack that onto a business that's running four or five of these deals at once, a small business. This is how profitable companies still go bankrupt. So we threw an award show on January 22nd. 500 assistance cost me, just being honest, 40K out of my pocket for just hard costs. And we decided to put that on four months prior and closed a lot of sponsorship for it, 15 brands. we're net 34 right now and like there's some net 60 deals there too so like yeah that is i'm you know coming from the event business great point and like that this is something i'm dealing with at this very moment and like so what how do you fix it can you like i don't i mean i'm asking like how are you people navigate it i mean obviously like 50 up front deposits but i never fixed it like my my up until the day i exit cash flow was always a real real pain yeah um And the only times we got by was when we just had enough cash in the bank to continue bankrolling the rest.

49:17Luke Girgis:But there were multiple times we had to go back to our investor and say, hey, we need another$500 ,000 here if we're going to take these deals because we can't afford to take these deals unless you cash for us. It's why I was so happy with the job board because it was zero upfront cost. The money came in when something closed. and building businesses that have closer to a net zero cash has been my whole brain change since running that media business and so that's why the pie chart changed so drastically like that's why i want 90 of my revenue to be guaranteed and have a clear schedule at which it's i know when it's going to come in because we're in the process now where i bankrolled this to this point but we're having conversations with vc and many angels and we raised for our tech company but you know people make those decisions to take on a lot of cash because they have cash flow issues and regret it later because you're giving up you know ownership your company and it's something out of necessity maybe not even for yourself but to make sure you're paying other people that work for you totally yeah all right you're building a tech company you're gonna in the ai space for the entertainment industry there's going to be a lot of interesting things to talk about here Matt, can you pull up the tweet that Jack Dorsey just posted a day or so ago?

50:30While Matt's pulling that up, I currently advise a lot of different companies.

50:37Luke Girgis:One of the CEOs that I'm advising has probably got rid of 75 % of his team in the last four weeks. His business is better than it's ever been. yeah he make you know it's a multi-million dollar business right it's doing doing pretty well and he's telling me that the ai agents and the ai systems mainly built on open core and similar things are now performing better than any employee he can hire that's 70 grand or under yeah which at the moment is your whole audience yeah right that these this is your community yep so um if we read this tweet by jack dorsey just so that we can prove here that this is scaling globally and not just my anecdotal view of the last of the few companies that i consult jack dorsey just tweeted this right jack dorsey is the founder of twitter he now runs blocks which is square and a whole bunch of other big tech companies that are public this is what he says today we're making one of the hardest decisions in the history of our company we're reducing our organization by nearly half from over 10 ,000 people to just under 6 ,000.

51:47Luke Girgis:That means 4 ,000 of you are being asked to leave or enter into consultation. I'll be straight about what's happening, why, and what it means for everyone. First off, if you're one of the people affected, you'll receive a salary and he goes into how he's looking after everybody. Let's scroll down, Matt. He's paying people a lot. He's giving people 20 weeks worth of pay, healthcare. He's giving a budget. Can you scroll, Matt? I That's it, beautiful. So he's paying everyone 20 weeks of pay. He's giving people a budget for transitions. He's being incredibly generous. And he says that we're not making this decision because we're in trouble and that's very key.

52:24Luke Girgis:Yeah, exactly. Our business is strong. Gross profit continues to grow. We continue to serve more and more customers and profitability is improving, but something has changed. We're already seeing that the intelligence tools we're creating and using paired with smaller and flatter teams are enabling a new way of working which fundamentally changes what it means to build and run a company and that excel that's accelerating rapidly a little bit more down matt so this is him this is an executive thinking about his business org chart right now right i had two options cut gradually over months and years and and as it shifts and he explains that he could do these these cuts gradually but it kills morale and it's terrible or he just makes the action now keep scrolling down matt and a decision at this scale carries risks but so does standing still we've done a full review to determine the roles of the people we require to reliably grow the business from here and we're pressure tested those decisions from multiple angles i accept that we may have gotten them wrong but we're building in flexibility to account but we built in flexibility to account for that and do the right thing for our customers.

53:37Luke Girgis:And so this is a long tweet, but the punchline is he's firing a lot of people. A lot of companies are firing a lot of people and it's not because they're in trouble. Yeah. So who do you think of this? He's got 4 ,000 people he's fired out of a company that I think had 9 ,000 people. Yeah. Do you think the type of person that he's fired or he's got rid of is the entry-level employee or do you think it's the kind of more seasoned experience operator executive team runner yeah for this usually when you're making budget cuts and would love to hear your thought on this you're you're going for that mid-level because they're making enough that they can be replaced by someone less who's making less someone you know less in rank to replace some 70 80 this decision is going to be a lot of entry-level people i also think there's a lot of senior level people who probably have been there at other companies, you know, who can be replaced by, you know, these autonomous agents, these agentic, you know, this doesn't seem like, you know, not verticalized that we're building, but absolutely.

54:47And cheap as hell to run one of those. So that's the reality of the situation. And that's why we're building what we're building. um what that isn't what that doesn't have that industry necessarily is the relationship based in type of connection that entertainment has i think what makes us unique as an industry is it runs off of relationships they i guarantee you if you you manage a bunch of artists i've worked with a bunch of artists if you hand them a an agent from the technical standpoint to run their business versus an agent to go and approach them with deals not a single one of those is going to see that as an upgrade even if they're making a little bit more money i can't see that there's a relationship there and a trust layer where that still exists in our industry and who knows where it'll go in the next couple years but but tell me if i'm wrong here right because in the relationships

55:38Luke Girgis:fundamentally important executives in the entertainment industry have two values they make decisions yeah and strategy and they actually the ones on the phone they're the ones in the meetings yeah the entry-level employees are neither of those they're chasing the they're chasing emails they're doing administrative stuff so they're not the relationships or the strategy so replacing them doesn't actually sacrifice relationship because they're not the ones that have or are building the relationships right now couldn't agree more there is a relationship aspect strategy now for the most part what happens though in three to five years when those execs start to age out and need a new crop of talent, how are they going to then continue to build a company?

56:19Live is not going anywhere. I am extremely bullish on live. Ari Emanuel is building an entire company around it. Many people are taking bets on live right now, including myself. What happens in years down the line with those companies that replace their entire entry-level workforce that now need to bring on people who can grow within the company or take over positions of power, they would have to go, you know, assumingly like go and hire people from other companies who are senior as well. But those people had to have come from somewhere. And I think you're in, in certain industries replacing, if I replace, I could, I could replace people probably at our company that are doing, you know, certain tasks, but for me to be successful, I need to grow people within for them to take positions of leadership and then take on, yeah, the job board, for instance, like have someone grow from understand it and then lead that position.

57:11If you eliminate entry-level employees, it will help you in the short term without a doubt in your bottom line, 100%. Not a lot will change, you know, on the strategy side, but five years on the line, three years on the line, that's extremely short sighted decision for a lot of these companies. What happens to your, to your team at that point? Cause you need to go and then hire people to replace. What if people, what if, what if, you know, 10 % of your team has moved on in the next three months to different roles. maybe people are paying them more. You need to replace those with people and just continuously hiring people is extremely expensive.

57:43And so - That's a very optimistic view

57:46Luke Girgis:I hadn't thought about before. Yeah, but I mean, look, like that's our bet is that assistants or entry-level people using AI will replace those who don't. We're delivering them a product that are going to allow them to eliminate a lot of the admin because I guarantee if you go into any of these agencies or any of these management companies and say, we'll replace your assistant with a chat bot AI agent, none of them, maybe some of the younger ones, but none of them are going to want, um, you know, a essentially like, like, uh, open AI or, or chat to replace their assistant clawed bots and saying, I mean, I use it every day and like, it's helped me out a ton in certain areas, especially my personal life and finances, but they need a human being to be able to, as crazy as it sounds like take responsibility for a lot of things that happen.

58:32And like, that's kind of in a weird way like that's why i think human assistance will remain um because

58:40Luke Girgis:will they happen at a tenth of the volume that it is now though because if you're even the software you're building which relies on human yeah intervention in order to in order for professional development it sounds like yeah yeah i mean if that person's doing 80 100 more volume well then you need half the assistance i won't get into the the number there because i hear what you're saying and like what you're saying isn't necessarily wrong but by i used to work 16 hour days they still do we 56 we did a big mass survey is um scheduling and so that's the biggest pain point of admin if you can lift that and start to, look, I don't want to be preachy, but like empower these assistants to actually be creative, to go and create relationships, to have strategy, then it becomes a lot more valuable to their company than just being a like whatever desk monkey and just like here, like schedule, schedule, schedule, move, move, move.

59:41Like that's all, if you can replace that with a human who then can provide value and increase your bottom line for your company, you've then just turned a corner of profitability for that specific role. And again, that's, it's very different in other industries which are trying to enter entertainment failing all these companies are also trying to build bring on people from slack and other companies to try to build internally but that very thing about there is a relationship base even at that assistant level that can't be replaced by in the shortest term i argue by ai agents um completely autonomously it makes me hopeful for the next at least three to five three years but who knows what will happen man like think about how much has changed in the past like 30 days i think like perplexity just came out perplexity computer today or it's just like every day there's something new so i'm optimistic but i i felt the need to deep desire to build something to try to help empower people but also at the end of the day like save enterprises on churn and burnout who still need human capital i think if it comes back to this what we're talking

1:00:42Luke Girgis:about is we will are you willing to work for free yeah i think that's going to come more important than ever with this disruption because there's not even going to be the assistant roles at these big companies as much you know if your tech can save half the jobs fucking amazing there's still going to be only half the jobs there yeah and so what does how do you get an unpaid internship if there's no unpaid internships available and that probably means grinding yourself somehow and starting your own thing and figuring out how to work for free and add value to other companies or bands or artists or actors you know in your own sort of way yeah and i think that's like going to be the only path forward in the new ai world where you just got to figure out how to add value some way i mean that's what i'm doing now and like that's why i took a bet on myself and our business um and we're seeing it happen i mean you see it happen every other industry even even ours like entertainment hasn't been affected as much they're extremely built on archaic platforms and you you aren't seeing a lot of layoffs because of ai yet i think a lot of it is is when you're looking at traditional hollywood we were talking about this yesterday there's a contraction at the top of of players you know you're seeing what's happening not to get a tv film but warner bros whatever happens there paramount will probably win maybe netflix looks to be winning now there will be a bunch of layoffs but that's that's a contraction on the budget side i'm not seeing yet a lot of contraction on the ai side for client-based um entertainment but it'll happen for sure and like it's it's crazy to see what's happening in other industries though especially coding like i i vibe coded like four or five things to this point i have zero experience on the technical side of things i just wanted to build something one night stayed up all night built it built it like an interview test prep that will release but yeah i mean that replaces a lot of people but it's uh i'm nervous for our kids generation for sure and like i'm very happy that we got to experience pre-AI world for sure.

1:02:39I know.

1:02:40Luke Girgis:Yes, yes, I agree. So Warner, our newsletters, the Black Hoodie and Artist vs. Assistance are the opposite ends of the spectrum. So we have a few thousand executives at the top level of the music and comedy industry all around the world. You have tens of thousands of assistants all across America. If your audience could say one thing to my audience that they wouldn't say to their face, what would it be it's a great question pay us more no i mean probably but um even though we just spent a lot of time talking about the value of working unpaid internships yeah i mean i i think a lot of it um you know is wouldn't not to go back to the word empower but so many of these young people have incredibly creative minds that have that level of strategy that previously weren't given a chance at these roles like when i was even everyone who was an assistant at all these companies you're in front of a screen doing admin all day so i think i don't know how to exactly phrase it but listen to us hear us out give us a shot that sort of thing you know i how does an executive listen to you and and give you a shot so in signing meetings for instance one of my favorite stories that i always tell is someone who did give assistants a shot um houston powell you may know him, used to call my boss and, you know, he books some of the biggest festivals.

1:04:05And he would ask me, he would say, no, stay on the phone. Here's two artists. Who should I book? And he's booking for some of the biggest festivals, you know, in the US at that point. And he understands that his crowd are the people who are at that level, 22 to 25 primarily, with some disposable income, hopefully, you know, aged up probably now festivals, you know, in some, in some regards have aged down even. But that's giving a shot to people who are in your demo of selling to. For me, I only hire people right now on our team who are either just seniors in college coming out or just out of college.

1:04:45That's not to save money or whatever. It is because they are the ones I'm selling to or in our community. How can we build for them? I was at a tech company previously that had brilliant 24, 25 year old, uh, three co-founders brought in senior exec, um, who had been in the industry for a while, you know, talk big talk and put on a good show and drove that company to ground in four months because he just didn't understand like that wasn't his world. Um, so I think this generation has a ton to offer. I think they get a bad rep and like, I'm not, I'm aged out of that generation. So like, I, it's kind of funny to like, I've now seen as like speaking for them.

1:05:19And I, I, I try not to, But I think a lot of them deserve a shot to be heard out, like not just be put in front of a computer and have to do admin all day. And, you know, they're the ones that are the tastemakers. Influence flows up at a lot of these companies. So, you know, not all of them will want to have a POV, but I think a lot of them do have really unique ones that I hear. The reason why we've scaled so fast is like we have high feedback loops that we can talk to our audience. And what do you want to build? What are the things that are important to you? and we build them and they're received really well so that's what i would say just like give us a shot hear us out uh but i'll let them speak for themselves like again i'm i'm it's funny that like people look at me like the assistant i'm like 33 i'm like out of that world for sure but uh yeah i think a lot of smart people in that generation so that brings me to my last question

1:06:08Luke Girgis:then so you spent all this time building the voice of these assistants entry level of the entertainment industry and now you're signed to eta in your uta i'll say it again and now you're signed to UTA and building all of this IP and you're building what will hopefully be a very big business at what point do you become the person that everybody starts making jokes yeah I mean it's already happened for sure when I signed to UTA I was a client at CA for years before so whatever but um I gotta you know I I I have to prove it and like I I hopefully have to this point um but it's it's a great question like I think about all the time it's like someone uh his name Liam like wrote a comment about like okay you made fun you weren't at an agency you made fun of an agency you left an agency you're signed to an agency now your clients the full circle but look like you know I'm running I'm less so um like I don't see myself again as a creator I see myself as building businesses for the future of the of the industry so as long as I stay aligned to that path but I want to be checked right if I do something if I start like if you see me start recording like a selfie video out in the street being like look at me with this whatever like check me on that i deserve to be canceled at that point but i'm not gonna get to that um but pay j selfies no man i'm i don't like being in front of the camera besides doing this like um you know talking about things that are important i think building in public is also really important so yeah i mean it's it's uh ironic as hell but again i never meant to like turn this into into anything more than an instagram but um i'm purpose-driven now to to grow into something that that does some good in a in an industry that we're we're told every day is dying it's gone it's you know like live was gone and now it's back and hollywood shrinking and dying and our whole lens is uh entertainment's you know never been a better place to work you just have to be pretty creative on where to look you know and where the opportunities are and you know you look in the creator economy like i think legacy really looks down on them but there's a ton opportunity there so yeah it's ironic as hell we have i have a agent agent team now after coming from in the lens of the account.

1:08:17But again, like they allow me to provide more resources to hopefully be helpful to a lot of people.

1:08:24Luke Girgis:Warner, I'm super inspired about how you started, what you're building, the business you're growing. It's actually very inspiring. I tried to get you on the podcast many times. I'm very grateful you finally said yes. Thank you so much for coming on The Black Hoodie. I appreciate you, man. It means a lot. I was here and congrats to you. And thanks for the combo.