UTA Co-Founder & Former CEO: Jeremy Zimmer – Talent Powerhouse, Influence, & Representation

When we met for the first time and we were in Stockholm and then Stad, we had the pleasure of talking about all your amazing work with UTA and what I'd love to step into on a personal basis. And since then, I've been a client of UTA's and a friend of yours. And it's been an amazing journey so far. So very grateful to have you here.

Well, I'm thrilled to be here. Being asked was really, really nice, and spending time with you is always great. So I'm happy to be a part of this show, and I imagine it'll be very successful.

I hope so. Thank you.

Around the world with your host, The Stadguy. We welcome you back to The Stadguy Podcast, sharing stories of excellence with those in the know for those who just know.

Well, Jeremy, thank you so much for being here today. I would love to start off the conversation with your journey with UTA and why you've chosen to start the United Talent Agency when you did.

Yeah, it's a, it's a, it's, it was actually 34 years ago. Kind of this week that we started UTA. And UTA really came out of— I had been at 2 large agencies, William Morris and ICM, and I left ICM and I was sort of frustrated with the size of the agency and the inability to sort of rally people around the things I thought were important. And I really was interested in You know, how could we— you know, I was really interested in just doing my thing with my clients and not having to be part of this big machine. And so I left ICM and I was, you know, I was 29 years old and I was the sort of number 3 guy there with a bunch of people reporting to me and a lot of responsibility. And, and I left and went and joined these 2 guys, Marty Bauer and Peter Benedict, who had an agency called the Bauer Benedict Agency. And I was the 3rd partner and probably the 18th employee.

Wow.

So I went from this agency that had offices all over the world and 1,000 employees at this, and suddenly— and I was there for about a week, and in that week I had lunch with Marty and Peter like 3 days in a row, and we had Chinese chicken salad and had the same conversation. And I thought to myself, I've made a terrible, terrible mistake. That, you know, suddenly I realized I missed— as much as I didn't like a lot of the nonsense of the big agency, I missed the scope and breadth and input and all that other stuff. So pretty quickly thereafter, I started thinking about, well, what should we be doing here and how can we grow it? And we started hiring a few younger people and started focusing on a couple of other things. And then maybe a year later, I was on a raft trip in the Grand Canyon and, uh, with a bunch of Hollywood luminaries. Jeff Katzenberg, who was running Disney at the time, would put together this raft trip and he would invite, you know, Don Simpson, who was a big producer, and Jerry Bruckheimer, and Tom Cruise, and all these people on the raft trip. And he invited me. I did a lot of business with Disney at the time. And he also invited this guy named Jim Burkus. But Jim Burkus and I were on the scale of things in the Grand Canyon, with the Grand Canyon being the biggest thing, Tom Cruise being the next biggest thing. We were very much one of the smaller things in the Grand Canyon and very aware of feeling that way. So the two of us, and during, you know, while you're going down the Grand Canyon, you stop for lunch and stuff and you take these hikes into the back. And we go through this hike and we're fine, you know, we find ourselves at the end of a ravine and there's a waterfall. And I end up sitting next to Jim Berkus in the— behind the waterfall, and we start having this conversation about kind of how small we feel. Like, look at all these famous people, all these big powerful people, and we kind of feel like this these 2 schnooky guys running these 2 small agencies. And, uh, we came to the conclusion under that waterfall that we should put our companies together.

Okay.

And, uh, that's where it started. And, and the, the impetus that I felt in the marketplace at the time was that there was nobody really focusing on that next generation of filmmaker, the writer who wanted to be a director, the independent filmmaker who wanted to make bigger studio movies. Sundance had just really gotten started. It was a very small festival, and the whole notion of independent film— it was sort of like Sex Lives Videotape had just come out, you know, Quentin Tarantino was just making Reservoir Dogs. It was just the beginning of that burst of energy that would come from the independent film market. And, uh, I think our timing was really good. And we put the 2 companies together and that was the beginning.

I've always been a skeptic of the idea of these big agencies and working with a big agency out of the fear of getting lost in the sauce. And when I started working with you and UTA, I found that there's this amazing strategy of although it's a big agency, it feels like lots of startups within this larger group where you still get that nimble feeling and productivity that you would if it was a small and tailored team. And I could say that that's just a coincidence, but I find that unlikely. Was that always part of your, your hopes for UTA?

Well, we definitely felt that if we wanted to continue to be able to compete and to thrive, we had to be able to be entrepreneurial alongside our clients. And that we had to put teams together, but real teams, not fake teams. Teams where people were as excited about each other's success as they were their own, and certainly as excited about the client's success as they were their own.

Mm-hmm.

You know, we always tried to be, you know, client first, you know, 100% client. If everybody had a model, you know, where, you know, At some point, I think, you know, William Morris came out and said, we're going to be top 2% of market, you know, top 2%. We only want the top 2% of clients in the world. And CA was going to be, we want 100% market share, whatever it is, we were going to be 100% client. And we've tried to continue to embody that through the growth and through the expansion and diversification. And I think on our good days, we do it really, really well.

I think so too.

And hopefully we have more good days than bad.

I love that you say talent and that your team uses the word talent and doesn't box the creators or athletes or actors into specific groups. Because what I see happening is a lot of people, no matter how much they love their craft and how focused they are on their craft, they're often curious to expand beyond and to nearly be successful generalists where an athlete becomes a content creator or a podcast host and then an actor and kind of like that Arnold path, which starts off as bodybuilding and then maybe governor and who knows. And the, the process of taking people through that growth is highly strategic, but also you're, you're making bets on people that go beyond their specific craft. Has that always been something that you see in people that you work with, trying to help them?

I would say we really started thinking about that, you know, sort of halfway through the journey where, you know, the first part of the company was, okay, we're gonna put the 2 companies together, we're gonna announce ourselves as the 4th, the number 4 agency, right? It's no longer the Big 3, it's now the Big 4, which is kind of a joke. They were like, 35 of us at the time, but we're the Big 4. And we kept saying the Big 4, the Big 4, and people were like, what are you talking about? But we believed it. But the battle to survive in that time, UTA 1.0, was about establishing ourselves as a real agency that was going to stick around. And at the time, you had 3 big agencies, CA, William Morris, and ICM. And all they wanted to do, you know, they didn't want another competitor. They wanted to take as many clients from us as they could, keep us from thriving, while at the same time battling with each other. So the first part of the agency was really focused on that. And then it became clear to me that diversification was gonna be really important. One, there was so much business outside of movies and television. And two, our clients were interested in doing other things. And three, in order to grow and be a global agency and have capabilities of doing a lot, you know, we had to start thinking about diversification. And what I realized is I never wanna be in a place where a client says, I really wanna do something, And I go, well, sorry, we don't know how to do that, but we'll— we can introduce you to an agent somewhere else that does that. And there were some incidents of that in publishing and some incidents of that in other areas. And we didn't want to be in that position. We wanted to maintain the relationship with the client, be incredibly principled to the client's interests. And, you know, you want to dream alongside your talent, right? You don't want them to have Dreams that you can't fulfill.

For sure. So did that start with specific talent where someone would request a service and you would build that team for them?

I mean, there was one incident that sort of spurred us to think about it differently, but no, it really was about a plan to where should we be going and building and what are the things that make sense for us and where do we think we can add real value? So I think our first acquisition was in the news and broadcast space. And it was clear to us that, you know, the— a lot of the broadcasters were looking to have other services outside of just making their deal with the network. And that there was a large independent broadcaster agency who was losing their clients because of their inability to service their clients outside of that. So we said, oh, this would make sense. We could add value to them. They can add value to us. This is an area that makes sense for us to diversify into. And that was sort of the logic of, of growth. And then, you know, and then it was music and on and on and on.

And you did a lot of those through acquisitions, right?

Yes.

You would buy a team or a business that's already established in that space. Why would you go down the acquisition path versus building that yourself?

Well, first of all, there's going into an area where you have no expertise at all. can be challenging and it's going to be slow. And, you know, we wanted to grow and we wanted to grow quickly. And purely organic growth is important. Not— I mean, organic growth is important, but not as the only lever of growth. So we looked at, you know, what, what could we do in terms of, you know, acquisitions? Where are the areas that make sense to do acquisitions? So music, we, you know, it was really important to me and that we get into music. Music was exploding as a format. It was becoming a truly global business. Spotify had changed the entire dynamics of the music business, and we couldn't just say, oh, sorry, we don't do that. And so it was important to get into music. But the idea of, you know, we had tried hiring an agent or 2, and it was just very slow. And music also requires sort of a platform to book your artists. So we acquired a platform that was somewhat troubled at the time, um, and used that as the basis upon which we built a music department. And then because we had a platform, we were able to start hiring agents from other agencies who had clients and started filling it out and building it into what it is now.

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So Jeremy, you were one of the first people to make a bet at an agency level on social media and social media talent. And thanks to that, I have a job today. How did you decide to make that call?

Well, it was, uh, I mean, we sort of started and we were paying attention to, uh, YouTube and YouTube, you know, at the time YouTube influencers. And there, most people were just making fun of YouTube, like, who would wanna? But we, we signed this, this young man named Lucas Cruikshank who had this character named Fred. And Fred was, you know, a very unusual young man. And, well, first, actually, what happened— I'm sorry. First, what happened is in 2006, we said, oh, we should start a division. We called it 60 Frames to make YouTube videos with our clients.

Okay.

So take professional, you know, known actors and put them into YouTube videos and get them sponsored and put them on YouTube. That was our idea. We're going to start a company and do that. We actually came up with a business plan, raised money, and started doing it. And it was kind of moving along. It was very—it was moving very slowly. Advertisers were not excited, did not understand, didn't get it. We were way too, way too far ahead of our time. And ultimately, in 2008, market crash, blah blah blah blah blah. We couldn't raise any more money. We went out that we shut that down. But In the time, we learned a lot about YouTube and the influencers and who was there and what was interesting. And we kind of said, oh, let's— rather than just trying to take our talent to YouTube, let's take the endemic talent on YouTube and see if there's ways to do more things with them.

Okay.

And we were representing this Lucas Cruikshank, and he did this character called Fred, and he had a huge, huge audience at the time. And a friend of mine who had been very, very successful, uh, as a kids' content creator named Brian Robbins, he was a producer and a director and made movies and television, very successful in everything he did. And I said, hey, we have this kid, he's got this thing on YouTube, his name is Fred, you should check it out. I think what we should do is we should make a movie with Fred. And he was like, well, who's going to put the financing up? I said, no, we should put up our own money. And just make this movie? He was like, I don't know. And he went home and he said to his kids— he had a couple of kids who were like 8 and 6 or whatever it was— and he said, hey, you guys, would you want to see a movie with Fred? And they jumped up and were like, tonight? Can we see it tonight? And he was like, oh, okay. So I convinced him to put up his own money, which is something an agent should never try to get a client to do. And we made the first Fred movie.

Wow.

And I don't remember exactly what the budget is, but we then turned around and sold it to Nickelodeon for many, many more times than the budget of the movie. And that was the first success. We ended up making 2 more of them.

Wow.

And that, for him, Brian Robbins, that led him into the world of YouTube. And he, with us, with our help, started a company called Awesomeness. which was one of the first MCNs, which we then turned around and sold a couple years later to DreamWorks.

Wow.

So that immersion into the world really sort of, we put a stake in the ground in, you know, digital creators, which, you know, is a business we've built tremendously with great, great colleagues. Ali Berman, who you know well, is leader of that. We then acquired a, influencer management company called DBA to sort of give us a real toehold in the beauty and fashion influencer space. And we've built a great, great team there, really focused on that.

I mean, do you find that the craft of being a digital creator that it used to be has now just become a decision that all creative people take? Versus it being a specialization. It's now just part of everyone's strategy that is a client of UTA's.

I wouldn't say it's a part of everyone's strategy because there's so many different kinds of talent and so many different ways that people want to do it. And, you know, a lot of actors, they don't want to have to wake up every morning and think, what am I going to do? What am I going to write? Where am I going to go? How am I going to shoot it? They want to, they want to be a part of somebody of a larger company. You know, they're looking for the inspiration of a writer and the inspiration of a director, and they want to be transported into a character that they don't know and haven't met and aren't living with. And that's, you know, that's very real and very important, you know, and creates great, great product. And so, you know, every— there's so many different buckets of talent. Ultimately, Some actors are like, wow, I really want to develop my own personality, my own, you know, my own audience, and I want to own that audience in a way. And some of them do that, but a lot of them don't. And I think it's important to understand, you know, there's so many different ways that talent want to express themselves. But for creators, the business opportunity exists and the creative opportunity exists and the freedom that exists. Where you can wake up in the morning with your own idea and your own iPhone and start doing something and not be reliant on all those people and all this stuff is really, really remarkable and exciting for a lot of people.

When you look for new talent, I think there's some that are undeniably a home run. Like if a tier 1 athlete is looking for an agency, it's a no-brainer. But you do make early bets on creators and you sometimes that are unbacked by data because they're so early on in their careers, right? They may not have the metrics to support the belief they have in themselves. What do you look for in people aside from them being talented at their crafts when you bring them into the world of UTA?

Well, across the board, whether someone's written a one-act play that has a distinctive voice, or someone's directed a short film that clearly this guy has a vision and a way of presenting stories, or a creator who's developed a persona that is knowable and engaging, across the board. What we're doing is taking— is making bets on people. And we've always differentiated ourselves as the most willing. You know, we built our agency betting on new voices, original voices, creative voices, and we continue to do that. I think it's really, really important for the heartbeat of the agency to always have exciting new talent. I mean, this year we represent Mikey Madison. You know, she's the star of Nora, won the Academy Award, and she's just a brilliant new talent. No one knew who she was a year and a half ago. I mean, people in the acting community did, but she wasn't famous. She didn't have any followers.

Yep.

But she certainly had an incredible talent and charisma. Um, you know, several years ago, we made a bet on— you know, one of our colleagues bet on Timothée Chalamet. He was at Juilliard, but they saw something and believed in that. And so supporting that isn't, you know, that's in the heartbeat of our agency and the heartbeat of good agents. You know, I think that, you know, agents— people make a lot of fun of agents. Many people's first exposure to agents is, you know, the show Entourage, which shows this sort of, you know, empty vessel of a human being who's, you know, sort of a flesh-covered thermometer. And yet, in fairness, He is a passionate advocate for his clients.

Yeah.

I think it's really important. You know, what I try to say to our colleagues is, look, there is a nobility in representing artists that it takes— it takes so much courage to say, I'm going to be an artist, I'm going to be an— I'm going to be a creator, I'm going to be a musician, I'm going to be an actor, I'm going to be a director. I mean, you must be crazy. It's like saying you want to be an astronaut and Yet they do it over and over and over again. And that kind of courage, I think, demands a kind of respect. And I think as an agent taking on that responsibility, there's real nobility in that. And you have to honor that relationship. And I think we really do.

I think that a lot of creators today during times of struggle, and I mean, people in general blame third parties or externalities for their shortcomings, right? I get a lot of, I have a lot of friends who complain about the algorithms being against them and being shadow banned and all these things. And I usually don't believe it because I think good content in any medium will get the recognition it deserves and bad content will encourage you to rethink what you're doing.

Mm-hmm.

And you once said that the greatest business tool is a mirror. I would love for you to elaborate on that.

Yeah, I do say that a lot, and I heed my own suggestion not as frequently as I make it, perhaps. But yeah, most of the time, and this goes beyond just representation and professional life. This is life, in my opinion. And now that I'm old, I get to talk about life in general. Most of the time in relationships, we have a lot of thoughts and input for other people about what they can be doing better. You know, I find I have a— I always say I have a PhD in what my wife's doing wrong, but I have a very, very limited amount of input in what I could do better.

Yeah.

And until I sort of turn that around and really, really get honest and real with myself about my own shortcomings, I'm not going to really get very far. And so people with artists— and the other part of being an artist is it's hard to get real feedback because you go and you do what you do and you slave over it, you make it, and you show it to your friends and they go, oh my God, it's brilliant. Because no one wants to hurt your feelings.

That's true.

And your agent doesn't want to hurt your feelings because they don't want to get fired or they don't want you to feel that you don't believe in them. And so where are you going to get that real feedback? And it's really, really important to be able to get the real feedback. And it's really important to be able to look yourself in the eye and say, did I do my best work? Did I sort of throw it out there before it was ready? Did I edit it enough times? Did I think through what the theme of what I'm trying to say is? You know, have I worked hard enough? And I think that, you know, it's, it's a harder conversation because we do tend to beat ourselves up a lot. But do we do it constructively in a real context that allows us to grow, or do we just do it so we can feel sorry for ourselves?

So how do you do that constructively with yourself?

Well, this has been you know the mission for me for a long time because you know I didn't I didn't show up on a winning streak. You know at you know I flunked out of college or was thrown out of college, kind of a combination of things, and and then was working in a parking lot. And you know I was 19 years old and was like my life was I'd been flunked out of college. I was working in a parking lot. I had a you know unfortunate accident in a parking lot, and I find myself. With very few options, you know, and my grandfather was able to help me get a job in the mailroom of the William Morris Agency. But at no point was I like, wow, you know what? What am I? You know how am I going to build the life I really want? So it was. I was always struggling and always struggling with other people. Other people were my problem. You know my boss doesn't get it. This company doesn't move quick enough. The client doesn't listen. This one that and this the first marriage. My wife does. You know always bup bup bup. And, uh, first of all, it doesn't make you very happy. You're spending your time focusing on what other people are doing wrong makes you miserable.

Yeah.

It does not— they don't change at all, and you get miserable. So, you know, it's a journey of self, you know, it's a journey of getting to know yourself and working on the things that you need to really change. You know, that's, that's the key to this whole thing is, you know, progress breeds happiness. For sure. Then that's different than success breeds happiness, because the problem with success is it masks over a lot of problems, right? You could say, what's wrong with me? Look at this car I'm driving. What's wrong with me? Look at this job I have. What's wrong with me? Look at this house I live in. That's true. I'm killing it. Am I allowed to swear on this podcast?

Please do swear.

I swear like a lunatic. But you know, you— so many of the trappings of your life will tell you, I'm crushing it. You know, and anyone who doesn't see what I'm doing, who doesn't appreciate me, just doesn't get it. And it's only through an accumulation of misery that you go, wait a minute, is it possible that I'm the problem? Or that I'm 50% of the problem? Oh, maybe 20% of the problem. But whatever it is, is you gotta, you gotta focus on that thing.

Yeah. I mean, for you, have you always been driven by outcomes or the process?

I mean, you know, most of my— for a good portion of my life, it was outcome-related. It was like, you know, I, I, you know, my family, you know, parents were both divorced multiple times. You know, I moved back and forth between parents several times in my childhood. I went to 4 different schools in the 7th grade. I was, you know, really upside-down life. And so basically at the heart of it for me was, you know, I gotta, I gotta figure my life out. I gotta take care of myself.

Yep.

You know, so it was like, well, I gotta get stuff to make me feel good. So yeah, outcome, you know, outcome, uh, generated for sure. It's like, oh, I got a raise. Oh, I got a new job, a new title, a new car, a bigger this, a bigger that. Okay, great. But you realize after a while, you know, a new watch lasts for like 2 days. Car gives you about 10 days worth of happiness. You start realizing that all these things that you think are going to make you happy have very short shelf lives. Yeah.

When people say that you should, no matter what, be focused on process versus outcomes, it usually comes from a position of privilege because I think to be process-focused comes with privilege because people who are focused on outcomes are usually trying to solve for problems that mean more to them than their day-to-day happiness. Mm-hmm. Just like you said, you know, once you go past that point of I've solved these things, then the process can become enjoyable, right? So I think that's very well said.

Yeah. When you're sitting there trying to figure out how to pay the gas bill, you're not like trying to develop your, you know, that'd be nice. But I don't think, you know, this spiritual life is going to keep the lights on.

Exactly. I completely agree. I mean, I try to, through my day-to-day job of Stadguy and all the things I try to do adjacent to that, poke fun at people who don't assess their own privilege through my fictional characters who are as privileged as it gets. They have everything, but they're always complaining. Especially Constance, the Stadguy. perpetually frowning. And he's— there's such little gratitude with everything he has. And he visually— but he then projects this wisdom that he seems not to follow himself.

Right.

And that's something I see a lot in, in this world of, of ultra-high net worth people, very successful people, where they end up in these echo chambers of advice they can't even follow. and people around them just love hearing what they have to say because they're in their beautiful home or on their beautiful boat. So the advice seems so profound, but actually they haven't followed the advice themselves.

Yeah. Well, perfection is a very hard thing to achieve, right? And living that pure spiritual life is a really, really hard thing to do. And usually you only get there by being stripped of But, you know, by a lot of bad accumulation of difficulties that sort of drive you into, well, at least I've got gratitude, you know.

For sure.

So how do you— you know, for me, this is my— you know, this is the challenge of my life, right? Is how do I— how do I want what I have as opposed to getting what I want? You know, that's been the motto certainly for the last several years, and more so now than ever as I'm making my own changes. in life. It's like, wait a minute, I've worked my whole life to get what I want, but have I ever really wanted what I have?

Yeah.

You know, and how do I really appreciate, you know, how do I turn gratitude into a verb? And that's something I, you know, I, I talk about a lot with my kids and with people I work with in different ways. Like, how do I turn gratitude into a verb? How do I express my gratitude through the actions I take in my life, not just through the words I have at a dinner party?

Do you do that today?

On my good days, that's what I'm doing. Yeah. You know, on my good days, that's what I'm doing. On my bad days, I'm doomscrolling and thinking up, you know, revenge tactics and, you know, all that kind of shit.

I think this is a good segue to your next steps and stepping down from CEO of UTA. You worked your entire life literally from the mailroom of an agency.

William Morris.

Yeah, William Morris, to building up your own and bringing it to this level of tremendous success. And now you're taking the choice to, to step away but still be involved. How does that feel?

I mean, it's— there's no one— it, it's a cycle of feelings. Emotions, fears, excitement. You know, it just goes around and around. And, you know, I try to keep this North Star of, first of all, gratitude, which is I'm so grateful for the life that I have. You know, I just came back from a week-long vacation with, with my most of my family. My one daughter couldn't join us because she's in college. And it was— and this is a trip we've done year after year after year. And this trip was so much more relaxing and connected because I didn't have that same drumbeat of work-related anxiety. So I'm really focused on, okay, what's this part of my life going to look like? And it can't just be I'm back on the accumulation race, right?

Yeah.

Like when I first, you know, stepped away, my thought was I'm going to make more money in the next 5 years than I made in the last 50. Like, that literally, that's what my head told me would be the answer to my happiness. And obviously that's insane, right? I spent my whole life trying to make money. And, you know, it's like we tend— this is what I say this all the time— it's like we tend to focus on the things we need the least, right? So we tend to focus on, you know, for me in my world of people, we focus on money, we focus on power, we focus on recognition and acknowledgement. We focus on social status, the things we need the least. How much time do we really spend focusing on learning how to love or learning how to be quiet or really appreciating the things we have? You know, it's just, it's, it's a screwed up imbalance. And, uh, for me, I'm really gonna focus on wanting what I have, appreciating the life I've been given, and look for opportunities that'll be interesting and rewarding for me wherever they may come from.

As a creator in a very different stage of my career, how do you suggest that I implement those things as early as possible?

Well, I mean, look, I, I didn't start to unlock any element of a spiritual life until I absolutely was on the verge of collapse. Right. And so I had a, you know, substance abuse problem. I had— my marriage had fallen apart. People at my office were terrified of me.

And I was miserable. I can't imagine that.

Yeah, well, that was the truth. So at that point, I was just broken enough to take some advice and to look for help. And that was, you know, 28 years ago. So I still struggle with a lot of those. And, you know, I was able to recover from my substance abuse issue. I was able to start to figure out what would it be like to be in a real relationship with a woman and really treat her as a partner and a friend, not as someone that if I really worked hard, I could fix. You know, that was a big one for me. And I was able to, you know, after, you know, a while there, I was able to find some— meet someone 22 years ago who I married. And build this incredible family. And I've been able to accomplish a lot of things that I probably couldn't have accomplished in that head— in that mindset. But still, it was the introduction of thinking about, you know, spirituality, respecting the ideas of gratitude, giving back to others, those kind of things that got introduced into my life then that I worked on and worked on and worked on and have continued to work on. You know, and it's— there's an amazing book called Strength to Strength, which unfortunately is a book that you don't really start reading until you start thinking about, okay, you know, I'm 50 years old, how long am I going to do this? What's the next part of my life going to look like? Honestly, everybody should read it all the time because it really talks about, you know, how, you know, how do you transition in your life effectively and intelligently and build— start building the tools for a long, happy life as early as possible. So, but most people aren't going to read it until they are forced to in some way, shape, or form.

I often talk in my videos about things that are à la poubelle, which is things that we want to change that we don't like, and things that are fantastiques, which are things we love and we're grateful for. Would you happen to have a couple of things you could share that are à la poubelle in your life, in your industry, in the world that surrounds you?

I mean, there's a lot that's à la poubelle right now, so But I'd love in our industry for there to be a— for people to be a little bit more daring with the kind of content they make. And hopefully, you know, some of the movies that succeed or some of the TV shows that succeed and capture a global audience— I mean, there's a show called Adolescence on Netflix. It's only 4 episodes, but it's, it's, first of all, performing incredibly well, and it's so beautifully done.

Yeah.

And then, you know, you think about White Lotus. Now it's, you know, people try to grab one example and go, see, see, see. But I do believe that if you can really aim to do something incredibly great, even though it may not seem as commercial, but if you aim to make it great, you can capture a larger audience than you expect. And I hope we start aiming to make things great again. And then fantastique is, you know, everything that really, that really matters, you know, whether it's, you know, the simple nature, beautiful nature of sitting in a backyard with trees and grass and the sun shining to, you know, listening to my kids laugh or, you know, being able to enjoy walking my dog. I mean, there's so much simple, great beauty in the world. And we're so easily distracted away from it.

That's true.

And so for me, fantastique is going to be the ability to be less distracted and to work to, to, to allow— to try to train my mind to focus on the things that I can appreciate as opposed to the things that I feel like I need to change.

I love that. Well, thank you so much for being here. It's been a pleasure. Thanks so much. Thank you for everything. Thank you. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Start Guy podcast.

If you're keen to learn more, please follow along by engaging with our social channels on Instagram, TikTok, Spotify, YouTube, and Apple Podcasts. And we look forward to seeing you next week. Merci beaucoup. À la prochaine. And a big hug from the Start Guy.