BUSINESS IDEAS, THE POSITIVES OF HITTING ROCK BOTTOM & FEELSCREEN 2024!

Welcome to Potentially Focused and Thursday, June 13th! ?We’re mid-month already and hope you’re all getting set for a great summer. Today, we … Help you come up with ideas for your side hustle, find the positive in hitting rock bottom, reunite with old friends, and as always, share some fun things for the weekend.

Plus, we’ve got a great and timely piece of guest commentary.

Fred Grinstein is a fantastic media executive and executive producer who has had consistent success whether working for great platforms, production companies or on his own projects. Fred’s storytelling ability runs the gamut from overseeing massive hit series during cable’s heyday for A&E like Storage Wars and Dog The Bounty Hunter to developing thought provoking youth-skewing series like Weediquette and Hamilton’s Pharmacopeia during his time at Viceland.

More recently, Fred has been on the producing side. Following an impressive stretch at Anonymous Content, he’s done great work as an independent producer. ?Fred recently served as a consulting producer on "How I Faked My Life with AI" (now at the 2024 Tribeca Film Fest),?the Oscar-Short Listed “Hidden Letters”, and as an executive producer on “Lowndes County and the Road to Black Power” ?co-directed by Geeta Gandbhir and Sam Pollard. Not too shabby….

One of the many things I like about Fred is he is always learning and focused on conquering something new. Currently, his goal is to build bridges between traditional content and the modern creator economy. Something much needed and knowing Fred, I know he’ll get there.

I’m excited to learn from his journey and think you will be too. Much more from Fred in a little bit….

Potentially Focused is a newsletter for busy people in the TV business (or not) who are curious. Everyone interested in growth, great new possibilities, and the stories we tell ourselves that get us there or hold us back. Each edition features quick links to at least one great piece of content on professional development and one centered on personal growth. It's useful information for wherever you want to go next.

Please subscribe and share with your favorite Taylor Swift fan or the 14 non-converted people remaining in the world. This newsletter is for everyone!

Huge thanks to each of you for reading!

And we begin…

FEELSCREEN 2024

A big note of thanks to Katie Kolben of IAG (who was named to Realscreen’s Factual Under 40 list earlier this year) for setting up a terrific unscripted gathering Tuesday night in NYC. Katie and her organizing partners got a great group together for drinks, conversation, and lots of much-needed laughs.

Between the changes COVID brought to the business world and the current state of the TV industry, there’s a loss of community everyone’s been feeling. Great to see creative people comparing notes and formulating ideas. While we may not have cracked the 100% perfect way forward, I believe it’s conversations like the ones we had on Tuesday that will get us there and collaboration will be the key.

So great too to see people from all sides of the industry – platform executives, producers, agents, and tech (randomly, there was another group gathering happening at the same time and they had name tags, but I won’t judge…)

Lastly, huge thanks to Patrick Reardon , who is President of Jupiter Productions, for making a point to be the first one to come over to say hi when he saw I was awkwardly standing alone when I first came in. Truth be told, I was fretting that I wouldn’t know anyone. It turned out to be quite the opposite. Wonderful to catch up with Patrick and his team who continue to do great work in true crime and other spaces.

And I think all the attendees were thankful to catch up with old friends and make some new ones.

Here’s to the next one!

COMING UP WITH YOUR SIDE HUSTLE

Many of us in the creative world of TV are now looking (or being forced) to get creative in terms of how we make a living. That can be a painful process. Whether you were in a staff job or had steady freelance work, the idea of coming up with new ways to make money is daunting for most people who’ve had a reliable source of income in the past.

One of the biggest hurdles is figuring out how you can be entrepreneurial. Put more plainly, what kind of business can you start? What does the world need? What are you uniquely positioned to give it?

This article shares some good advice on how to get started.

Most people go in wanting to create something brilliant. Nothing wrong with that. We all want to be thought of as brilliant and see our brilliance proven to the world. But, that approach doesn’t do much to help you target an opportunity.

Instead, the people quoted in the article suggest trying to fix something. Find a common problem and figure out a way to offer a solution.

And for once, your personal pet peeves or problems can be helpful to you. If there’s something that you find problematic or just think there’s a better way to do something, chances are others will be feeling the same thing.

If so, the solution to that problem is your business idea.

Another great point the article makes is something that also holds true on the creative side of things.

Originality is great. I love nothing more than an original idea.

But, the reality is that there’s not much in the world that’s 100% original and to succeed in business you don’t need to be 100% original. Improving something is a completely valid approach to identifying your new business opportunity. Some say Steve Jobs is the ultimate proof of this, but there are many other examples as well.

Moving on now to...

THE POSITIVE SIDE OF HITTING ROCK BOTTOM

The Guardian does a fantastic series featuring stories focused on moments that changed people’s lives as told by the people themselves.

Here's a link to a story of a young woman who was in her early 30s, freshly divorced, and completely broke. With her life in tatters, she decided to make a bucket list and try as many things as possible, especially those things that frightened her.

Ten years later, I’m happy to report she is loving her life today. She credits the decision to embrace boundary-pushing and face her fears with helping her get to where she is now.

Reading her story, what jumped out at me was her admission she’d grown up believing that things were only worth doing if you could be good at it or make money from it.

Ringing any bells for you?

It’s a good reminder that you don't always need to be the best at something or frankly any good at something you enjoy.

You’ll excuse me now as I’m off to some extremely off-key morning karaoke…?

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GUEST COMMENTARY - FRED GRINSTEIN

Ok, so I have known Fred Grinstein for a long time. Many years ago, Fred would pitch me show ideas when I was at (what was then) Viacom trying to figure out how to help TV Land get original programming off the ground in the age of the DVR (which seems very quaint now).

As I’ve often said, I am an ideas person. And when you are driven by ideas and possibilities, you very quickly identify and spark to people who share your passion for them. In those first pitch meetings, I immediately sparked to Fred. He struck me as deeply intelligent, able to think in the abstract but grounded in the realities of the world and our business.

Turns out, those early impressions all proved true. Fred and I have a good friend in common and as the years went by and we each moved from company to company, we stayed in touch and got to know each other better.

In 2023, as I was just starting to try to figure out what to do with my career (and life) next, I reached out to Fred. No surprise, our first conversation gave me a lot to think about. ?It’s since turned into an (almost) monthly catch up. A meeting of the minds that I look forward to and consistently learn from.

Between what I wrote at the top of this newsletter teasing Fred’s commentary and what I just wrote above, you may have noticed the word or theme of learning came up repeatedly. That’s no accident.

Fred, whose mother is an educator, is a lifelong learner. He is also a great teacher. As part of our monthly talks, he’s patiently given me great 101s on AI, WEB3, and other topics. I always emerge from our talks a little smarter and much better informed.

I’m looking forward to seeing where Fred goes next and how he’ll apply his talents and the new knowledge he is continually gaining to storytelling.

PS – Fred’s father is a physicist at Los Alamos. Another lifelong learner.

And now over to Fred….

Going West with Robot Assistance

By Fred Grinstein

Like a lot of people I've been doing a lot of soul searching as the industry has turned in the last few years. There's plenty of smart people documenting what's happening around us -essential follows for me on Linkedin and other platforms are Evan Shapiro, Richard Rushfield at Ankler and Matt Belloni at Puck, smart straight shooters with great career vantage points, making sense of the data and the news. I've drawn my own conclusions, and I think it's not a controversial point that the state of things might be a new normal.?

I'm still taking on films (I consulted on a feature doc "How I Faked My Life with AI" which just premiered at Tribeca Film Fest ) and I still pursue the TV series business, (I'm working on a next gen Content Studio model with a creative partner). I love the craft of film and TV and even more the community we've all built over the last several years. But as an industry, as a setting for people to make financial projections that take care of workers and their families, their mortgages, their kids' tuitions, this has become a trickier proposition for a lot of us.?

My sense is that some people are realizing they were in these jobs because it was a good business to be in. Once upon a time running a horse and buggy company was a good business, and then it wasn't. Today I see some of the pure business-minded people pivoting in a big way to other industries they'll similarly thrive in. One friend is opening a gym, another is starting a minor league sports team, another is starting an Etsy furniture business. So many among us are showcasing that they are entrepreneurs at heart. Will they succeed? I hope so. Will they keep hustling no matter what? For sure.

Other people are struggling because in their heart of hearts they're artists or storytellers,?and the media business has been a home for their gifts. For the foreseeable future I'm in this camp, determined to grind through this phase of uncertainty.?

Each of us have different superpowers we lean on: some are pure executors, others are sales whizzes. For me, I deeply identify with being a development executive, living in the trenches of start-up, the ideas phase, when we are cracking eggs and trying to figure out the recipe not just for innovation but for success and impact.?

With this POV, there's two theses I've developed in the last few years that drive me on the current leg of my journey.?

1)?The Unscripted Industry is a tech story... Once upon a time all TV and film made at scale came from big studio lots, with scripts, actors, lots of guilded departments and lots of PA's. Then smaller consumer-ready cameras and laptop-enabled high quality editing tools emerged, and soon many others. The net effect was democratizing access to storytelling on big and small screens. The proof is in the pudding for?what exploded in the early 2000's, employing many of us, vastly expanding the Cable business and arguably birthing YouTube and social video. For this reason I've been drawn to new tech intersections with storytelling, speculating on what could be the next wave of creativity and productivity.?

Settling into a learner’s mindset, this Fall I'm pursuing a Masters Degree in Narrative and Emergent Media at ASU's campus here in Downtown LA. It's a unique curriculum with a small cohort focusing on XR/ AR and Virtual Production, led by two amazing filmmakers Nonny de la Pena and Mary Matheson, both pioneers in new media, but also rooted in journalism and narrative.?

On the Generative AI front, I've been going out on some dates with these shiny robots, experimenting and?immersing in a new community of creators and builders. I've been doing a monthly column for Realscreen called "Brave New Worlds" documenting this journey of mine, examining opportunities but still keeping an eye on the concerns. Additionally, me and my business partner Minh Do have been conducting a new series of monthly events in LA we call "Machine Cinema", here's our new?website.?TLDR we throw nerdy parties where learning and creating go hand in hand. If you, your friends, company or organization would like to learn more please do reach out. Admittedly much of the creativity in this space drives toward sci-fi, animation, fantasy. To this point, I believe…

2)?The Business of Authenticity is set to boom.?While AI is exploding into an age of the Infinite, my gut feeling is that the world of true and real things and the people involved in telling stories about them are exceedingly well-positioned to thrive. With predictions about so much noise and low effort AI content soon filling our feeds, I predict that "the real stuff" will only go up in value for consumers. Live content - music, sports, comedy, theater IMO are going to be stable economies and safe spaces to be in.?

But outside of these genres, there’s the greater mass media business most of us call home, and it has been in trouble since well before Generative AI showed up. Let Shapiro, Rushfield, and Belloni per above help you form your own opinion. Adding my own optimistic seasoning to that prediction soup, I believe we?make flawed assumptions that our only Unscripted product?requires a TV, or a streaming service, or that it is necessarily linear. With new growth sectors?like EdTech, or the Experience Economy, new XR devices shipping from Apple and Meta, and emergent generations that spend?more time gaming/ interacting than watching passive content, I believe unscripted creators stand a chance to build wholly new products and experiences, by extension new marketplaces, using our superpowered abilities to illuminate, intrigue, and inspire other humans?with the very real world.

Some people liken this?tech x media moment to the "Wild West". In that metaphor I think there's 3 types of people, all equally valid that align with?personality type and risk tolerance.

1) the ___ folks that go West and explore?

2) the smart ones that build “picks and shovels” - ie create utility businesses for those explorers.?

3) the reasonable people who stay back home, read about it in the News, and make a move once dust has settled.

For now, I'm in the first category, though not yet sure what the right adjective is in that blank. :)

Thanks for our monthlies, for sharing your always interesting POV, and wishing you great success with all your next steps, Fred!

And now we take an early step into the weekend….

HAPPY WEEKENDING!

It’s Thursday AKA Friday Eve and as usual, sharing some fun stuff for the weekend. Enjoy!

ZERO pressure! But if you’re a movie fan and not opposed to sharing a drink with friends, here’s a link to an article that suggests drinking games to play tied to particular movies.

And if you’d rather not drink and/or watch a movie, here’s a list of potential gag gifts for those you want to prank. (PS – it’s from December of last year, but think it generally holds up)

ALL DONE FOR NOW!

In this edition, we …. Helped you think of ways to create new business opportunities, learned it’s ok to be bad at something you love, and reported from Feelscreen 2024!

Plus, we got some great POV from Fred Grinstein. If you’re in LA, make sure to check out one of his monthly Machine Cinema events.

But whether you’re in LA or not, have a wonderful weekend everyone, and hope you found this newsletter useful to you in some way.

See you for our next edition on Tuesday when we’ll have another great interviewee on tap. Hint… It’s someone who has gone from the corporate world to running his own startup and from legacy media to the creator economy.

Thanks to you all for reading. Please let us know what you want more or less of. Please feel free to share information you’d like me to pass along to our readers. Also, always happy to feature guest contributors.

And of course, please subscribe and share.

As my relatives in Italy would (and do) say…

Molte grazie!

Marco

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