From TV Mogul to CEO: Joey Carson’s Blueprint for Scale 📈 E157

0:05Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to a special edition of the Money Mondays where we cover three core topics how to make money and invest money how to give it away to charity it is very rare that i don't do this podcast inside of my rv motorhome it's also very rare that i bring on a guest for a second time this guest you're going to see on every single year because he's been the ceo of my company for five six seven eight years now ever since 2018-19 range so without further ado i'm going to have mr joey carson give you a quick two minute bio so we get straight to the money a two minute bio good luck wow well maybe I'll try to condense it to under two minutes a 30 year career in television and film mostly television going back to the late 80s early 90s on the studio side then as an independent producer in the early 2000 early to mid teens and I've had two tech companies and I've punched in a few times as a turnaround CEO for a few companies.

1:14So just keeping it at the high level there. So as you guys know, these episodes are between 32 and 36 minutes for your listening pleasure because we have a 93 % listen-through rate compared to most podcasts that are just too long, too boring, and too much interpersonal talk. We are very straightforward here because I want you guys to be able to listen to this podcast and it's not just for you. You can share it with your friends, family, and followers, and also with people from your past, present, and future. So it's very important that as you're listening to this, you might think about things that are useful to someone else in your life.

1:45All right, Joey Carson, you were just kind of casually going through your 30-year career. Let's talk real. Talk to us about Beuna Murray, The Real World, Road Rules, Simple Life with Paris Hilton. These are major shows that I grew up on and so many hundreds of millions of other people grew up on. Talk to us about that time in your life when you were the CEO of Buna Murray Productions? It was probably the funnest time in my career. Second funnest time. I had, prior to that, I was the head of production and finance at 20th Television at Fox. And I left to go join Buna Murray. I had actually worked with them before.

2:25They had come to Fox and we worked with them to do a pilot. it. And we got along very well and they were just great. And then I had heard later that they were looking for somebody like me or somebody to take the company to the next level. And we had a mutual friend and their agent was this legendary Hollywood agent, was their agent. He was also friendly with me and actually one of my biggest mentors. And so we had a few meetings and they told me that they wanted to grow beyond where they were because at that time they had really just had real world and road rules. And so I left my big cushy studio job to go over there, which was really the, I always tell people I kind of did my entrepreneur career in reverse because I worked in the corporate side for 10, 15 years.

3:19So that was really the first foray into being an entrepreneur, so to speak. And the motivation was at the time, I had a lot of responsibility at Fox and I worked on a lot of great projects there, but I wasn't running the entire business. I wasn't in charge of sales or distribution or marketing or those sort of things, even though I was responsible for a lot. And I always had this thought on the back of my mind, I really would like to see if I can run an entire company. And so they trusted me, and I went over there. And it was interesting at first because at that time, there was kind of like just a couple of shows going on.

4:04There wasn't like this unified. There was in various degrees of the company. So one of the goals I had was I wanted to turn it into a studio. And so I tried to, and I think successfully with the help of the people there, you know, brought some kind of the best practices that we had on network broadcast television and films and things like that. And so we worked together and created, you know, kind of like a functional processes across the entire company. The other thing that I wanted to do was I wanted to make sure that when I went in there that I didn't bring in people from the outside. because when I got there, there was tons of talented people, from creative executives to producers, casting people, editors, camera people, like all of this.

4:57And they had actually effectively invented the way reality television works. So I thought, how can we work together to kind of put this so it can scale? Like, let's think beyond just having a couple of shows. what if we have a show on every network? Let's have a cable show. Let's have a network primetime show. Let's have a daytime syndicated show. Let's do documentaries, right? All of that sort of thing. So it took a little while. You know, it's always, you know, when you step into a company like that, a lot of people are like, well, who's this guy? What's he going to do? And, or am I going to lose my job and that.

5:36But the truth is I went in there with the intention of never, ever wanting to bring in someone from the outside. So I was able to create departments and the people that rose to those positions were kind of already doing them anyway. And so we started to function as a team. And then on the development side, we put a process in place that we followed at the studios where we would just generate new ideas, take more outside meetings, all of that sort of thing. And then we just started to really, just by following that formula, start cranking out a lot of things that were ultimately very, very successful.

6:17So someone that's listening or watching right now, they're at an interesting juncture in their career. They're running a company, but they're not the CEO or they're not the president. So they're kind of capped, they're like number three or four or five at a company and they're not sure if they're going to get to number one or two and they want to potentially go make the jump like you did going from Fox to Bina Murray. How do they decide? Like when you make a huge jump, like you had a cushy job, you're making good money, your household name corporation you're working with at Fox, like how do you decide to make that leap to a different company and leave behind the guaranteed income?

6:50That's a great question and I faced exactly that. Like I could have stayed in that Fox job and people do. People stay in those jobs for 20 years. But I've always had the personal, I don't know what you want to call it, but I always want to feel like I have unlimited upside potential. It's almost like when you buy a lottery ticket, like the day before, until they actually call the numbers, you start visualizing, okay, I'm going to do this. And I like the feeling of knowing that there's unlimited upside. So on the other side of that, anytime I found myself in my career kind of bumping up this, against, like you just mentioned, like there's no way out.

7:32I get really, like a lot of people like the safety. That drives me nuts. Like I like the uncertainty because again, anything can happen. So in fact, each time in my career, when I made a move and Buna Murray is a great example, I took a, actually a backward step. Like when I left my Fox job to go do that, people thought I was insane. They were like, what are you doing? Like you, you know, you work so hard to get, Yeah, you're in charge of all this. You're doing this. You're meeting with famous people all the time. But that wasn't it for me. It was really more of like a personal challenge. Like, you know, how can I?

8:08And I really wasn't thinking about the money. Actually, when I first went over there, I was making less money and all the other things around that than I was at Fox. But it was really more like, can I do this? And then again, in the back of my mind, if I'm successful, then it's just going to pay off. it's, you know, by doing the work, the results will come later. So that's how, so for me, when I've talked to people before, you know, I talked to a lot of young people or mentor other CEOs and things like that. To me, it's always like, one of the fundamental questions is, are you growing? Are you growing as a person?

8:41Are you growing with your skillset? Are there, are you stagnating? Right? Like, are you, cause I'll give you an example. Like in Buna Murray, we were doing all these shows we kept doing more and more but I way back early on always had an interest in digital media and this is way before the social media world we know today and so I actually created a separate division in there specifically to just do digital programming that would go on the phone and that was in 2004 that was three years before the iPhone right and so And then also putting shows on the internet, as we used to say, right? Before YouTube, before any of that sort of thing.

9:27And you're just kind of pushing the boundaries. And so I would make these little bets, these little tests, and they paid off, like in a big way. And it just ended up that it's not like I'm some genius that came up with this. It's just I saw an opportunity there. It made sense to me. And there's actually been articles written about that, how I did that in other magazines. But so again, but that was really more like going in a new direction, right? So because it's really easy to get. To me, complacency is the biggest enemy of everything. So someone out there has this vision. They're like, you know what?

10:03I know how my boss and my company could make more money by doing this, like what you did by bringing it to the mobile phone or bringing in sponsorship deals for the real world or different things that we're doing. Yep. but they're scared to go talk to their boss. They don't want to get fired. How can they bring up this idea that they have that's there to help, they're there to make more money for the company and for the CEO, how can they walk into that boss's office and say, here's the idea, without hurting their ego? Yeah, that's another great question. Well, I think a lot of it, too, that feeling will depend on what kind of leader the company is.

10:38So if you have somebody that's more of a micromanager who wants to control everything, that conversation might be a little bit harder to have. I always try to have an environment where, like, we're a team, right? So I want to hear the other ideas. I want to be challenged on, like, I'm not the smartest guy around. But if you're sitting there and you have an idea or you see an opportunity that you think everybody up here is missing, I think it's, and I actually did that many times. In fact, I did that at Buna Murray when I was talking about the phone. I said, I think we should try to do this. And to their credit, they said, okay, yeah, let's do that.

11:20So I think if you're going to make a move like that with your boss, have it really well thought out. Have all the data, do all your market research, this sort of thing, to support your idea. Because you always want to go in with a solution. You don't want to go in with a problem or complaining about this. It's like you want to go in and say, and in this case, it's more than a solution. It's like, here's an area of opportunity that I think we're missing. Or for us, you know, our business is here. All we have to do is step over here a little bit. And all of, like I did that at Buna Murray where we were doing all this unscripted stuff.

11:56And I said, well, we're basically documentary people, right? So why aren't we making documentary films? Like we're basically documentarians. Like let's do that. So that was just a one step over to do that. So I think that helps in a scenario but I think just being armed with the facts and being enthusiastic about it and And also I think if you have a few other people that are on your team Like maybe it's maybe it's a small group of people or you and somebody else so you're not just going in by yourself I think that helps as well so They got this idea they walked in the boss says yes but they've never had a mentor before and I heard you mention that you were mentoring people why is it important for someone to either have a mentor or be a mentor why is that part important to like learn things before they go talk to the boss before they really hone in on that thing that they want to do why should they get some mentor advice well this I think is one of the most important topics in anyone's career and I'm glad you brought it up because I was really lucky that I had phenomenal mentors throughout my career, like industry legends.

13:06If I named them off, you would know who they are. But I didn't start off that way. Early in my career, I was very much a solo go-ahead guy. Like, I'm going to do it myself. I don't need any help. I don't want it to even appear like I'm doing this because I'm trying to kiss this guy's ass or be in this little clique of people over here. Because, you know, especially in corporate environments, a lot of it's like that, right? There's, you know, people that are just, you know, trying to play the political game rather than, and I was always about results. So for a long time in my career, I was, and I think I probably could have gotten further faster, even though I did pretty well, because I had that closed off mindset.

13:52Once I opened myself up to that and allowed myself to be coached effectively, the entire world opened up. More than you can ever imagine. It's almost like I had a kitchen cabinet of these older executives that had been around for decades. If I had a problem, I would call them up. There's some things that I had to deal with in my career which were making national news at the time. in real time they were like it was scary and the way i navigated through that was by leaning on my mentors to give me the advice what do you think i should do here's the situation blah blah blah and they would they would help steer me through that and so the older and now interestingly enough i'm one of the old guys that you know talks to a lot of younger people but what i've come to understand is that this one issue right here is probably the, to me, it's the greatest determinant of someone's success.

14:54And it is, are you coachable? If you're not coachable, nothing can be done. And we all know people like that, that they have to be the smartest person in the room. Or if they listen to something, it's yeah, yeah, okay. And they think that they know more than everybody else. I think a lot of that comes from insecurity. And I think it's just insecurity, quite frankly. So to me, that's the number one question. Are you coachable? Because a lot of people say that. You and I see that a lot. How many times has a business owner come into us that we're talking to or whatever, and they have a phenomenally successful business, $100,$200 million business.

15:41And they'll say to me, oh, I'd love to have a guy like you come in. That would be great because I want to bring in an operator. And then I'm really going to scale the business. And the first thing I say to those guys is it's not about me or a guy like me. It's about you because it's one thing to say it and it's another thing to do it. And they all say it. They all say, hey, I really want to do this. I really want to grow the company. I'm really ready to delegate, which, by the way, is a skill that has to be learned and executed. But none of them ever do it. In my experience, that's the number one problem I see with business owners is this iron grip they keep on companies.

16:30And again, they're doing great. They're making$200 million a year. But a company making$200 billion, they could be a billion-dollar company or a$2 billion company. And they're the number one thing that's standing in the way because they're not coachable, right? So to me, it's a limiting factor. So around eight years ago, you're working with a household name in the TV space. You're working with some companies. Why decide to accept the role to be the CEO of Elevator Studio, an agency doing mostly influencer marketing? Why step into that role? Because of you. But honestly, when you and I first met, and everybody thought we already knew each other, but we didn't.

17:23And I think the first time we met, we had lunch or something. It's been so long, I can't remember. but we talked and um and i had a lot it was that sort of meeting like you were asking me a lot of questions like what's your story here and i was asking you a lot of questions about the business what's going on here but so beyond your you know just personality and the way you operated and your intellect uh i saw you reminded me a lot of like if in my past when i'd work with like a great director or a producer, right, that, you know, had a good command of things. And it was very analogous to the Buna Murray situation in that you were doing something that you were the first guy to do when nobody else has done, which was the influencer marketing, right?

18:08Like you saw that, you're like, huh, I'll get some brands, we'll pay here, we'll get these influencers. Influencer didn't exist back then, 2011. 11. Exactly. So you saw that opportunity and you created that whole thing. And back when we first got together, that was still kind of, you know, on the upswing. And so I thought, and then I saw, and this is the credit to you in the sense that, and you were also doing the speaking thing, but not at the scale you're doing it now, right? If you remember back then, it was very limited. And so in my mind, I thought, well, number one, this will be fun because you and I get along great.

18:47Number two, we have, if my skill set is out here and yours is out here, there's a big overlap in the middle, which I think is really good. So you don't have to explain things to me and I don't have to explain things to you. But at the same time, it's like the best use of you is not back at the office. right the best use of the highest use of you is being out there doing what you do right and uh and i'm at the was and still am at the point i don't need to be out there doing that's not the best use of my time i could do it i used to do it a lot but that's not the best thing for me and uh i always remember um a great piece of advice i got from dr phil once um and again this is where a mentor comes in, right?

19:39And it was back earlier in my career when I was doing all these things or whatever. And he said to me, he said, you know, you're doing too many things, like you shouldn't be doing that. And then the quote was, only do what only you can do and delegate the rest. And then he gave the example. He said, for example, I'm Dr. Phil. I'm the only one that can walk on the stage and tape the show because I'm Dr. Phil, right? He goes, so I focus on that and everything around that. And then I have a great, you know, you have all the producers and writers and all those. And I thought that was just a great visual analogy of that.

20:20And it really shifted the way that I approached business and things. And so by the time you and I met and got together, that's when I thought that quote came into my mind because I can't be you. I don't want to be you. but I can allow you or give you the ability to be you by just staying back at home and doing whatever it is I need to do so to me when we first got together I just saw all this potential not only for the company but like for you as well and then I think that's borne out over the years like it's you know I remember when you were you know not speaking right you know a fraction of what you are now so and and also making that it's not like you're just going out and getting speeches or whatever.

21:03You're actually out there delivering information and making great relationships and contacts and doing a lot of business development. All right. So there's Elevator Studio here as the social media agency for 17 years now. There's Elevator Syndicate, 1 ,100 investors. There's Elevator Mortgage. There's Elevator Funding. Soon there's going to be Elevator Credit. There's Elevator Knights. There's all these different visions of Elevator Studio and all these subsidiary companies. How are you managing and orchestrating all the moving parts?

21:34That's a good question. Well, you have to remember, I'm used to doing things like that. So back in the day when we were doing television, whether it was at Fox or Vieta Murray, I always had like 10 television shows going on simultaneously. Simultaneously? Simultaneously. Like all over the world, right? So there'd be two shows going in Canada and there's another one in Mexico and then something in Miami, whatever. it was travel production permits budgeting right so in each like you got to think of a television show or a film is like that's a that's a company that's that's like 250 people um and you know the budgets can be anywhere from 10 million to 50 million or even higher right so for a few months yeah for short periods of time there and everything has to be on time on schedule on budget all that stuff and then obviously i can't be everywhere so um i was always very instrumental in the big in the very beginning.

22:30So elevator's easy then. Well, there's certainly not thousands of people running around. And again, a lot of this is generated by you and your ideas, right? So you're the one that has these ideas or sees these opportunities. So for me, it's actually just a simple matter of just being in the background to support that. So yes, compared to doing something like that where there's thousands of employees running around all over the place with real-time problems and weather and different governments and things like that to deal with. By the way if you guys want to see any of those things, Elevator Mortgage is elevatormortgage.com if you need a mortgage or refinancing for commercial properties, your own individual homes, etc., investment properties.

23:21Elevator Credit is coming very very soon. Elevator Funding is for business loans. We've done 28 million dollars of loans to businesses anywhere from 10 20 grand as high as 500 000 for a loan you can answer you within 24 hours at elevatorfunding.com elevator syndicate it's free to join but you have to be an accredited investor and really someone that's going to be a mover and shaker to help companies we've raised 56 million dollars for food and beverage brands consumer products that's elevatorsyndicate.com again you have to be a credit investor and then we send out updates once a month and you can optionally invest into companies what else we got elevator nights that's for free we've thrown that event 57 times around the country totally free 300 to a thousand guests that's elevator nights you can see us on instagram for elevator nights those events are pop-ups we only announce it about three or four days in advance because they're free and there'll be too many people and then elevator studio is our main agency we've spent tens and tens of millions of dollars with influencers for brands products and mobile apps.

24:18We literally invented influencer marketing back in 2011, doing campaign deals with celebrities, rappers, models, and everyone in between. And we're still doing that to this day, paying influencers for brands, products, and mobile apps. So that's our ecosystem in our world. So you can check out some of those websites. Joey, you start to make money. Someone out there is listening. All right, they're making money. They go from 80 grand, 120 grand. They start making a quarter million dollars. They're really saving up. They bought an investment property, but now they're getting bombarded. People are pitching them, invest in my clothing brand, invest in my music company, invest in my production company, invest in my pillow company, invest in my this, my that.

24:53How can someone decide if they're going to invest into real estate, stock market, cash line business, their buddy's new idea, how do they decide and weed those things out? Well, I probably have a somewhat different approach to that. I like how you talked about the increase in your salary over time. I remember thinking early in my career, if I could just make 50 grand, I'm set. And then I'm making 50 grand and I'm like, this is it? So I'm like, okay, 100. If I can make 100, then I'm going to be fine. Then I get to 100, I'm like, what? It's just a Wednesday. So then I said, okay, 250, like for sure.

25:32And I get to that number and I'm like, what is going on? But in terms of my own personal investing style, Well, I remember the first half of my career, I was a corporate guy. So it was all like 401k stuff. And then I had separate like brokerage accounts that I did. I didn't start investing into real estate, which was like outside of just regular stock portfolio. The other things that I have are like real estate holdings. That came much later when I had more disposable income. Like so to me the earlier are and you are in your career. I think just building a regular Even if it's something as basic as a mutual fund or something like that, maybe play around with you know, we didn't have The crypto back there Bitcoin back then I remember when I was in college I was a finance major because at that time I thought I was gonna and Wall Street the movie was really big so I thought I was gonna go to New York and And we, yeah, and we, everybody did because of the Charlie Sheen and Berkshire Hathaway stock was$500.

26:39Oh my God. And I didn't have enough money to buy. I just wanted to buy one share of it and I didn't have enough money to do it, but I'll never forget that. It was like in the late 80s. But so to me, I think it's, it also, I mean, you talk about this a lot. It's like your personal risk tolerance. I like the way you break down, and I'm sure your audience has heard it many times. I think that's a great rule to follow. Until you have a certain level of disposable income, it's going to be hard to take that extra little piece and invest in startup things. To me, I think investing in any kind of startup or even early stage company, to me, you should meet all the criteria of being an accredited investor and what that entails.

27:23but that doesn't mean you can have your own little portfolio. I remember one of the first stock things I did was I bought some AOL stock. It was like$10 and it went to$70. You're a genius. Yeah, and I thought, well, that was easy. Yeah. So I had a few of those early on that were good and I was smart enough to pull it out of there. So I think, and again, that was kind of like, I really didn't have the money to do that at the time, but I did it. So I think the earlier you are, but to me, like start saving early because you never know what's going to happen in your career. And you just need to start building that wealth.

28:11It's really, I look at when you have a family or you're married, have kids, or just in general, you're really building a company, right? You're like, you're the CEO of you. The household, yeah. Right? And so what does that balance sheet look like? And is that the company of you making money? Is it growing? Is it doing new things? So I kind of approach it that way. So when someone pitches me a company, my rule is that it has to get approved by what I call the four horsemen. One of the four horsemen is sitting right here. I call the CEO. The second one is the accountant. Third one is the lawyer.

28:44And the fourth one is an advisor. And that advisor is interchangeable. The CEO, the lawyer, and the accountant are the same three guys over and over and over. But the advisor can be different because it could be a beverage company. So I might go to someone from food and beverage space. It could be a music deal. Well, I'm not going to ask the food and beverage guy. I want to ask somebody in the music space. It could be someone's making fancy tables with plants inside of them. Okay, I'm going to ask someone that's been in the furniture space. I want to ask the advisor to be that. So the four horsemen help me approve deals because I might get excited by your pitch, but I need the facts and fundamentals from the CEO, the lawyer, the accountant, and the advisor.

29:18So find who those four horsemen are for you. All right, Joey, we talked about making money, we talked about investing money. Let's talk about the charity side. For a company or a brand, why is it important for their employees, their customers, their vendors, their clients to see them do some type of charity or philanthropy work? Well, I think it's really important on a personal level. I think people have the wrong impression maybe in that, or sometimes people think that their motives might not be good, like they're just doing it for optics. Like we need to have a charity so we look like we care.