Hartbeat’s Thai Randolph on Kevin Hart, Content Creation & the Future of Media

We are live in Las Vegas at CES for our next edition of the Speed of Culture podcast. I am thrilled to be joined today by our latest guest, Ty Randolph, who's the CEO of Heartbeat, a recent honoree of AdAge's 40 Under 40 list, and someone who I think is going to give us a great Speed of Culture episode. Thanks so much for joining, Ty.

Thanks for having me. Super excited to chat.

Absolutely. So before we get started, we dive into everything that you're working on today, and it's a lot, I'd love to hear a little bit about your career background that led you to where you are today.

So interesting. I was, it's funny, I just posted about this, I think last night. I always say my career has been much more of a river, less of a ladder. I've had a really interesting collection of diverse experiences, but I think they all really contributed to me figuring out the path that I'm on now. So I grew up on a farm in this little town called Holly Hill, South Carolina. It was so small, we had 2 stoplights instead of 1. But when we got our first fast food restaurant, we got a half day out of school and had a parade. So it was a really small town. Wow. And, you know, and I spent most of my career— I went to college on the East Coast at American University in D.C. I spent the earlier part of my career on the East Coast, Atlanta, D.C., New York, and ended up then in Atlanta leveraging what I did early earlier on in events and experiential to go work for a different type of event, the Atlanta Film Festival, in fundraising and business development, some of which was digital. And that parlayed into me going to work for digital marketing agencies, publicist agencies, WPP. I would leave a WPP agency, VML, to go to Sony, Sony to Facebook, and Facebook to, well, it was Facebook when I was there, Meta, to Kevin Hart's ecosystem.

So how did you make that jump from being in agencies and tech companies like Sony and Facebook to Lionsgate? Like, what made you decide to jump? 'Cause that's a little bit of a career shift. How did that occur?

So I always knew that I wanted to, early on I knew I wanted to tell stories in some capacity. And the agency world really allows you to do that but in service of brands. Right. And at some point it became, and I should mention that I was a visual media major performing arts minor in college. My intention was to go immediately to film school, but I'm the oldest of, you know, a blended family of 7, and there were 3 of us in college at the same time, so I needed to get a job. Right, right. I kind of kicked the can. So it was always sort of this passion, and to the point of it being a river, you know, I had this desire to get into entertainment, and I thought what that would look like was me marketing entertainment companies, right? I figured that would be the easy transition. Because there's so many transferable skills for career transitions, and I always tell people, start where you are with whatever you have and figure out how to connect the dots. Like, what are the series of choices that you can have using whatever's in your arsenal at the time to get to where you want to go? And you can always get here from there, here being wherever you are, there being to wherever you want to go. But sometimes that's a bit of a, you know, sort of a circular or sort of a serpentine path.

It's not always a straight line.

Exactly. And it's always, you know, I always say, whomever I'm working for today or with today, whomever I'm working with today, who's working for me, I could be working for tomorrow. I was at VML and there was a gentleman who was on my team who was leaving to go to a different company. He was moving across the country. And as he was leaving, he was saying to me, you know, you've been a great boss. Like, you know, I've been fortunate to have two good bosses back to back. In fact, you remind me of my former boss who was an EVP and GM at Sony at the time. And so he did the oddest introduction and put us on an email chain together with no context saying, You guys should know each other. And so we started to exchange banter about how bizarre it was that we were on this email. That turned into us talking about what we were doing at our respective places, me voicing this desire to like, hey, I'm marketing really amazing companies. What you're doing in the entertainment space is great. I thought I was pitching him to be a potential client of the companies. We would meet for lunch and I would find out that he was doing something really interesting on the direct-to-consumer side within Sony Music, had this very interesting entrepreneurial aspiration to take what was Sony Music's then direct-to-consumer platform that was managing all the artist stores and turned that into a real— less of a sort of service center and more of a profit center for the company. And it was just a mission that I was exhilarated by. I had a lot of relevant experience that wasn't necessarily in entertainment that I could bring to the table. And shortly thereafter, I went over to join the company. It's worth mentioning that Lionsgate was one of our clients once we spun that business out. I see. And I would end up going to Lionsgate.

You never know where these—

you literally never know.

Yeah, that's why we always say the importance of a network is so important, especially earlier in your career. Right? Meet as many people as you can. Go to that event, go to that networking. Don't just look at someone's badge, right?

Right.

Where they are today is not where they're going to be tomorrow.

No indication.

And that's what matters most.

That's so what matters most. And be kind to as many of those people as possible. Right? So Issa Rae gave some good advice in an interview a couple of years ago that really sort of resonated with me. And it was that so often, especially earlier on in our careers, we think about, you know, this sort of, sort of how do we network up the ladder? But this sort of horizontal networking is so important. Like, how do you build relationships within your peer group? Because you look up in a minute and then everyone who was where you are, the folks who are gonna be running the companies, making all the decisions. So those sort of peer-to-peer relationships are so important.

Yeah, so 100% agree. So you're at Lionsgate at 2017, around the time that you got connected with Kevin Hart, That's correct.

Yeah, so I actually came to Lionsgate to work with Kevin Hart. Okay. So they—

Being from Philly, I'm a huge fan of Kevin Hart, by the way. I must say that.

We've got a few Philly fans in the—

There you go.

In the back. So Kevin and Lionsgate had partnered to launch this joint venture called Laugh Out Loud, and it was a direct-to-consumer streaming platform. And the focus and the mission was to bring comedy and color to audiences sort of whenever, wherever they wanted to laugh so that they could kind of take this mobile you know, for a streaming proposition on the go with them. And Lionsgate at the time had a few of these sort of very focused direct-to-consumer offerings. And so, you know, when I joined, we were really, you know, focused on getting this app to market. I joined as, you know, head of marketing. I would later become head of marketing and monetization. So I took on, you know, the monetization of the platform that would parlay into a GM role later and eventually COO and then CEO of the other organizations in his ecosystem. Until we combined and merged the two entertainment companies, Laugh Out Loud and Heartbeat Productions, to form Heartbeat. But I think, I guess the year was around 2019 or 2020. You know, we started out with this app. It was really successful. It was downloaded a million times in the first 100 days. And what we saw though, with Kevin being the global force that he is and how much success we were having connecting with audiences in the sort of contained ecosystem, we really started to develop this on and beyond strategy, right? Because it wasn't enough for us based on where we were in the ecosystem to say, "If you build it, they will come." But it was, how do we take notes from the consumers and give them choice across our ecosystem and really fulfill this bigger mission that we would develop, which is to keep the world laughing together? How do we deliver that across platforms, across formats, across geographies? And we really started to diversify that distribution strategy. You know, we partnered with SiriusXM on an LOL radio channel. We started producing events. We were doing work with brands like Old Spice to bring serialized formats to market like Cold as Balls, which is now in its 8th season. Kevin and athletes and ice baths, it's genius. But, and so then around 2019, 2020, Kevin ended up buying out the majority of the company and we went independent. And at that point we continued to scale. So we took on NBCU as a partner, NBCU Peacock as a partner on the Laugh Out Loud side. And by this time I was COO.. And, and Kevin asked me to extend my role to his other company, Heartbeat Productions. So we set up the shared services and we all kind of looked at each other and realized, oh, this is a, we think this is a 1 plus 1 equals way more than 2 or 3 proposition. And so then at the beginning of 2022, we merged the company. In April, we completed a capital raise with, with Avery Partners. And, uh, and we had a fantastic year last year. It's amazing. Doubled revenue. We nearly doubled the team. Um, you know, 2022 was a good one for us.

Yeah, and it's a great story. We had Rich Kleiman, who is business partners with Kevin Durant, with Boardroom, which is Kevin Durant's media company. And this sort of trend has been emerging for a long time, which are people are brands, brands are people, right? And Kevin Hart is a brand, and in many ways has a bigger audience and more impact than the traditional brands of yesteryear, Fox, NBC, whatever it may be. And with social media such a powerful distribution channel, he can amass an audience like a Clear Channel has a decade ago.

Right, right, right.

So is that sort of the idea that given his growing fan base and his influence, you can kind of use that as a catalyst to create a true media company in the modern era?

That's exactly it, right? And, you know, I would say you're 100% right. People are brands, brands are people, and brands, right, even outside the media ecosystem are increasingly becoming, you know, sort of media platforms in and of themselves. Sure, they have to be. With their reach. And so, You see this convergence. You see this sort of like every player in that ecosystem has to become multi-hyphenate. And so, yes, we're absolutely harnessing the star power and the ingenuity of Kevin to build a bigger— to bake a bigger pie. But moreover, and, you know, I credit Kevin with a lot of this, in addition to just being a real breakout talent, he's just such a strong visionary on the business front. And everything that we do at Harpy isn't just, oh, how do we advance Kevin's brand, but The mission of the company is to keep the world laughing together. Kevin has this quote and he says, "If we can laugh together, we can live together, and if we can live together, we can love together." So yeah, we bring high-impact comedic entertainment to audiences across the world.

That's the mission that you raised your capital raising on?

Exactly, yeah. But at the heart of that, and this isn't to say that, you know, we do stuff with light and levity and it's edgy and it's fun. But at the end of the day, it's all about getting the most diverse cross-section of people consuming something together, right? Laughter is a vehicle for empathy and togetherness and inclusion. And that's really the guiding light of our company. And as such, yes, we are harnessing the, the power of Kevin, but it's in service of that mission. It's in service of empowering this next generation of comedic storytellers, right? And it's in service of really being a high-value player in the ecosystem, right? We, we look to create content and experiences that deliver subs, buzz, real conversion at a time when brands, streamers, platforms are having to make some really, really hard decisions about how you attract audiences and maintain share of mind in this attention economy. Exactly. Space.

Absolutely. So, I mean, is it fair to say that this is sort of a modern-day, like, Comedy Central? It's like, because like you look at Comedy Central, they were a network, right? They aggregated content together. They had an audience. It sounds like you're doing this under— with the power behind you of Kevin and his audience and influence, but you're creating sort of like an omnichannel approach to a mass audience around comedy.

Yeah. I mean, I would say, you know, and we've done a lot of business with Comedy Central and Viacom. They've been— they've been great partners to us. You know, we partner with so many different folks across the ecosystem, but I would not compare us to Comedy Central. Right.

And I compare the company to— if you had to.

This is not hubris, but I don't believe anyone has ever said, hey, we are going to really look to unite a global audience around this connective tissue of laughter. Right. Right. And, and the reason why I say not Comedy Central or no one else is because I don't want to be restrained by an individual distribution model or monetization stream. Right. Because what I always say to the team, one of the interesting things that's happened in the last couple of years isn't just the disruption, but it's the speed of disruption to our industry. So we have to stay mission-driven because consumers may be consuming, you know, you see how fast streaming now has sort of like overtaken cable. Those, that was much quicker than, you know, radio remained the most dominant form of communication for decades before that happened. Look at television and how long that was the dominant, you know, basic television and then how long cable sat at the throne. Consumers are unseating now and looking to other platforms much faster. Gen Z defaults to TikTok, is not just an entertainment platform, but a discovery and search engine. And so I'm not attached to any platform. Platform and immediate— platform agnostic, right? We're attached to the outcome, right? I don't, I don't know of another company who's taken on this mission and this mantle.

Yeah, certainly in comedy. I think companies in maybe other genres have went after it. Yeah, I think that that's why I think it's such a great opportunity. So obviously, no pun intended, the heartbeat of the company is content, right? Yes. So as you look towards 2023, you know, you guys have just raised a lot of capital. Is there some type of process where you go through, okay, here's the content that we're creating across all these channels for 2023. Yeah. And kind of like, what is the strategy behind what content you decide to invest in?

That's a good question. You know, so one, we are— the way that we structured the group, so we're structured into 3 different divisions. We have our studios team where all the making happens. It's led by our chief content officer, Brian Smiley. We have our media team led by— and that's where all the worldwide sales, licensing, and distribution, the exploitation of rights and formats happens. Led by our Chief Distribution Officer, Jeff Clannigan. And then we have our Pulse team, which is our branded entertainment and creative consultancy arm. I say that because within Brian's group, there is— we're doing film, we're doing television, we're doing audio, that's podcasts, audiobooks.

Is Kevin involved in everything?

No, he's not involved in everything. No, they can't scale.

So there is somebody to create that Kevin, right? I was about to ask you that question.

100%. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, so, and so for us, what that looks like. So one of those things are in terms of what we're investing in, we're investing a lot in non-Kevin content and other entertainers and artists. But we're also looking at, you know, IP that is scalable and that has global appeal. You know, one example of that, we did this series, initially a series, Die Hard with Quibi, if you recall. And so we created this short-form serialized piece of content, but not RIP to the storytelling that happened there, right? They, when Roku acquired that catalog, When our content re-debuted, it was one of, at the time, it was the number one performing original piece of IP on Roku, right? We also reconfigured that and shot it in mind to make it a film during that time. And now that film is being licensed globally and we're about to announce an international debut that has a multi-platform debut. We'll be announcing that next month. We're shooting, or we just wrapped production on the second installment.. And so we're creating this franchise now that has global appeal, multi-platform, multi-format, you know, promise. And so those are the types of things that we're looking to do because one, like we said, platform agnostic, global in nature, right? Connect— picking up audiences along the way. And it creates a more scalable kind of like economic proposition for us.

Yeah, absolutely. So comedy in general strikes me as something that is somewhat unpredictable in terms of like what's going to land, what is it—

Sure.

Whether it's a joke or a movie or anything in between.

Yeah.

How much in the realm of like testing analytics do you do on content before you decide to step on the gas and really push it out?

Yeah. You know what we're really fortunate in, so we laugh out loud when we merged the companies. Laugh Out Loud is a consumer-facing brand. So, it went away as a company, but it still exists as a consumer-facing brand. There's a Laugh Out Loud FAST channel that's distributed across all the major AVOD platforms. You know, we have a social and digital following of now over, you know, somewhere in the range of 6 million, but we reach tens of millions of folks through that social digital platform every month. We have access to, I believe it's something like over 100 million audiences across the fast and AVOD space. And so we get a lot of real-time feedback about around what's resonating with audience in real time, right? The other component of that is we have a very active live events business. There's no better feedback loop and visceral response than sitting in front of real people in an arena. And it's a huge indicator when someone's willing to pull out their, you know, when they have to pull out their pocketbook and not just sort of lean back and experience, but say, hey, I'm going to pull out my wallet and I'm going to go invest in a face-to-face live experience. So we try to harness all of those insights to figure out what does the audience want to do now? And so if you notice the types of things that we, we create and bring to market, whether it's Me Time that had a number one debut on Netflix or Heart to Heart on Peacock, which saw, you know, this huge viral response with that Jay-Z episode with Kevin and Jay-Z sitting down. And Jay-Z rarely does interviews. Pulled all types of audiences to the table. A lot of that feedback when we're casting, when we're greenlighting, comes from this feedback loop that we're getting kind of in the field all the time. So it's very, very critical. And comedy, unlike— there's a KPI that exists across all of it. Did you laugh? So you sort of know if it's a success or not.

Yeah. So are brands, like you mentioned how Kevin worked with Old Spice and various brands, are they part of your monetization strategy? And how are you working with these brands?

Absolutely, in a number of ways. I'll give a couple of examples. You know, we're gonna go to Sundance in 2 weeks, and one of the big activations there will be our Women Write Now program. Women Write Now is a screenwriting lab and fellowship that produces a slate of short films every year with emerging Black women writers. We pair them with known actresses, Black women who are getting their first helm at directing, and we partner with Sundance Institute. We're in our second cycle now of that program, and and Chase Sapphire presents the whole thing, right? So we've got brands we're working very closely with to cultivate this next generation of comedic storytellers. Cold as Balls is an example. We're in our 8th season. It's a digital-first multiplatform distribution. It lives as a 10- to 11-minute episodic on YouTube. It exists as 2- to 3-minute swipe-ups on Snapchat. It is streamed across our ecosystem. And we've been approached several times to have it licensed for cable. But we've had Old Spice on as our presenting partner from day one, and we get so much more reach and engagement and resonance going in that direction that they've become real storytellers and underwriters for us in that regard. We just shot a Super Bowl commercial for DraftKings. Oh, wow. Can't wait to see it. So we're really working with brands in a number of different ways to tell stories, to activate audiences, and they're a very important part of the ecosystem. In fact, you know, when I talked about studios, which does the making, the media ecosystem, and Pulse, Brands are critical to that entire thing. We've got brands that are underwriting full films, right? That we're— who are financing films with us. We've got that entire AVOD ecosystem where brands are deeply integrated and powering that fast channel ecosystem. And then we're creating things from scratch or deeply incorporating brands into our storytelling through Pulse. And for me, that's really gratifying because I come from an advertising agency background. And so being able to work with brands— Complete circle, right? Yeah, yeah. It feels very relevant now.

That's awesome. So let's shift gears a little bit to you and sort of your everyday as CEO of Heartbeat. Because like you said, you know, there's not really a path for a company like Heartbeat, right? So it's not like you really have a roadmap of where to follow in terms of where to spend your time, what decisions to make, etc. So first and foremost, what is the pie chart, I guess, of your mindshare in terms of the creative side, the business side, operations, and how do you prioritize? You know, where you focus?

That's a good question. One, I'll be totally transparent, I'm always optimizing.

Yeah.

Right? And it really shifts depending on the nature of what we're engaged in. When we were out raising capital, one, let me go back a step. I am so fortunate to be flanked with just amazing partners, right? And I say partners, Jeff Clannigan, who founded Laugh Out Loud with Kevin, Brian Smiley, who's running Heartbeat Productions, who are our chief content, chief distribution officers, skilled visionaries, operators. I've got an amazing leadership team of VVPs, SVPs across the company who really make, who really move the chains every day. And I say that because without that, it doesn't enable you. You're disabled as a CEO of a company without that type of partnership and without that type of support. So, you know, going back to when we were raising capital, I was deeply, that was, that was my life. That was what we were doing. And you just kind of relied on everyone else.

You raised $200 million, Suzy. It's not easy. Lots of rejections, lots of bingos.

Yes. Yes. And then once you get into it, once you—

crazy meeting, by the way? Like, how involved is he in the day-to-day operations? Very. Like, how many times are you texting him on an everyday basis?

All day, all day, all day, every day. And here's the thing, and it's not one of those vanity things. He is deeply— I always say to him, business is no laughing matter, right? We say this funny business, but he knows the numbers. He's deeply focused on creative, and above everything, he's deeply focused on relationships, right? Relationships with his team, relationships in the industry. We right now have 70 projects, and I'm just talking on the studio side. 70 projects in development with— I don't think there's a single major sort of buyer, content buyer in the market who we're not in business with right now domestically. And so much of that is because of the integrity of the relationships and how we say— and some folks say, well, how can you fracture it across so many different folks? It's because we really believe in we do together what we can't do apart. Right. And we try to provide maximum value out of every relationship. And he has built such great relationships around town that it's been our responsibility to kind of build, maintain, and grow those and then transfer that to our work with other creators. But back to, you know, the distribution and kind of share of time. So coming out of that, that capital raise, right? So it was heads down raising. Coming out of that, it was about really, you know, we had, like I said, last year we doubled revenue and significantly scaled EBITDA by, you know, over 5x. And so that operationally was a different type of— with the newly formed entity, a different type of rigor. And now this year, going into this next year with that kind of success, but also entering into, you know, what seems like a recessionary climate, you know, sort of a very embattled industry from a tech perspective, very tight decisioning from a creative perspective, brands retracting budget. You know, sure, we had a great growth year, but we have to be more sensitive than ever to our partners and I'm doubling down now on making sure that I understand what every person who we work with in our ecosystem is up against, right? Because their challenges are our challenges, their opportunities are our opportunities. And so I would say that we're very now focused on relation— I am very much now focused on relationship management and scale. But I spend a lot of my day with all of my lieutenants figuring out, you know, how we're moving the needle and trying to empower them to move forward. I spend a lot of time with creators from a business perspective, trying to figure out, because we don't just wanna do deals and individual transactional relationships with creators. There's so many people you could do business with in town. I want folks to say, hey, here's what Kevin built. How can we transfer some of that energy to you as a creator, to you as a director, a producer, an actor, so that you can fuel your own enterprise in the way that we're fueling ours?

Right, unbelievable. So you've obviously had incredibly impressive career and it seems like you're just getting started. You know, especially, you know, you grew up on a farm and here you are today at CES and, you know, sitting at the head of this exciting company. You know, as a woman of color, can you speak to some of the challenges and obstacles that you faced along the way in your career that maybe other people, our listeners who might be in the same position, can learn from?

Sure. I'll start at the end and say, well, I often say this about Black women. In particular, and this is true for women of color, I believe, in general for women, but any sort of— I don't even want to say underrepresented, but, you know, sort of under-acknowledged, under-activated audience or segment in business. But Black women in particular are some of the most over-mentored, under-sponsored people in the industry.

What do you mean by that?

So what I mean by that is, you know, there have been all of these initiatives, pipeline initiatives that say, oh, like, let me get you in the room. I'm going to tell you what worked for me. But what a lot of folks realize is— and those are good, those are necessary, right? I'm not knocking mentorship initiatives. And you see a lot of those merchandise. But we all know, especially in entertainment, a lot of times what it takes is someone to say your name in the room, right? It's like that Goodfellas quote. You need someone to say like, oh, they're one of us. They're—

it's a—

she's a good fella, he's a good fella. And my role at Heartbeat is, yes, the result of all my hard work. It is a result of tenacity and resilience through my career, but it's At some point someone had to say, "She's one of us." Right. I'm gonna put her in the seat. And so what frustrates me sometimes about the industry is that the onus is put back on the individual who's striving and urging. But there are a lot of hyper-qualified people who don't have the support internally where folks are not incentivized to give them opportunity. And when I stepped into the role, one of the things that Kevin said to me was, Could you make sure that your story here is the rule and not the exception? And what that meant was I was promoted 4 times in 5 years. That was a meritocracy in the sense that like the best idea has to win. Doesn't mean that it was always easy. And even for me to step into this role, we had to do a lot of compromising internally to figure out how it worked for everyone who was sort of at that leadership table. And so now I am committed to it as a KPI of my role as CEO of paying it forward. And I'm really happy. You know, with the results and the composition of our organization. We are 53% women and some folks say, oh, that sounds dramatic. Well, the world's 51% women. We're 72% people of color or, you know, right. Not impressive because the world is 80% people of color. And even then we're constantly looking for are there areas that we can improve, right? Like how do we embrace differently abled people? Like how do we make sure we're fostering cognitive diversity? And so, you know, I think that— to kind of go back to the initial question, I think there's a lot of merchandising of results where the needle really isn't moving at a macro level. If you look at how many women are still helming Fortune 500 companies, if you look at how many people of color are still helming those companies, you look at boardroom compositions, even if you look at representation on who's helming box office breakers and who's leading advertising agencies. The numbers don't look great still. Absolutely. And that's the— so it's like, so there's a lot of lip service, and it's time for us to put our money, you know, where the jobs are. My fear going into, you know, like I said, what could seem like a recessionary climate is often those things, those diversity initiatives can—

could be— Take a backseat.

Exactly. And that's why, you know, I try to whenever, even if it has nothing to do with diversity or inclusion, I always try to remind whomever I'm talking to that diversity is not a an initiative. It's not goodwill. You're not doing anyone any favors. It's a business imperative. Our mission is to keep the world laughing together. We are future-proofing our business and servicing our mission to have the most diverse and the most dynamic group of people at the table making decisions because that's our best chance at appealing to a global and diverse audience.

Yeah. What about earlier in your career or to our audience that are younger in their career that are trying to break through that might feel like that they're underrepresented and don't have— what should they do to make sure that their voice is heard?

Yeah.

And they can put themselves on the right path.

This may seem like an unpopular piece of feedback, but what I will say is, so one, I think that it starts with, yes, making your voice heard and always start from a place of pure, of deep competency, of deep understanding. Get to know your organization, understand what motivates and incentivizes the folks who are making the decisions. And by the way, and what I'm going to say second is that doesn't guarantee that you're going to be heard. Right. But you do the absolute best job that you can. You make sure that you understand how value is measured in the ecosystem of the organization that you're in. Because I often have had folks come to me and say, I feel like I need a raise. I feel like I should do this thing. And it's like, that's great. And I'm not saying you are not valuable, but it's what value are you creating in the ecosystem? Because all of those decisions, whether it's, you know, are you getting a promotion? Are you getting a bigger team? Whatever those are, Those are business decisions, right? Now, if you've done all of that homework and you are overperforming and you are providing value, objective value in the ecosystem, if you are moving the needle on whatever that KPI is, revenue, even the, you know, sort of if it's qualitative from a creative perspective and you can prove that and you are in an organization where it is not being acknowledged, leave. There are some places where I have been in my career and I won't name names where I realize, oh, this is not a place that I can thrive. And you leave those places, right? Because— but again, it's, it's after I'd done everything that I could do. You exhaust your efforts, right? And then you go where you're loved because the right place, the right people, the right sponsorship makes all the difference. And I'm proof of that.

Right. I love that. That's amazing advice. To wrap things up here, we're here at CES in Las Vegas. Obviously, you know, it's the beginning of the year. It's all about possibility. It's about innovation. What's next? Are there certain topics or things you might have seen here at CES that really interest you in terms of where you're looking to take Heartbeat into the future?

Yeah, you know, one of them, I'm literally leaving here to go to a panel to talk about cross-platform storytelling. And while, you know, we— I mentioned a couple of different times the pressure decisioning across the ecosystem, whether it's brands who are trying to figure out how to tell stories and reach audiences. Now the audiences are so fragmented and it's hard to amass sort of reach. Or if it's, you know, streamers who are trying to figure out, well, like, what do I acquire to— or, or the producers who are like, how do I extract all the value out of the IP? Those are the challenges. But what's working in our favor is there's so many different ways for stories to come to life now, right? If you just look at the Heartbeat ecosystem, we're telling stories via podcasts, via audiobooks, digitally, linearly. We're doing things on the theatrical side. We're still deeply involved in the streamers. And then we're doing things with brands where we're using our distribution ecosystems and theirs. And so it may take a little bit more work, but I think there's such a broader playing field that I'm really excited to hear about all the innovation and how we can get uplifting stories, can get positive stories, can get entertaining stories out in a more scalable and interactive way.

Absolutely. We're going to leave it at that. One last question I have for you is, is there one quote that you live by or a mantra that you believe sort of connects to you as a personal brand?

Oh, one quote is hard. This is deeply personal, and— but it's the thing that I remind myself of every morning. It's that I'm blessed to be a blessing. It's an excerpt from a quote in the Bible, and I just believe you have to pay it forward. And I always am trying to think about how do we leave— how do I leave a situation, a person, even incrementally better? And I don't get that right every day. And so then I try to actively go back and figure out like, How can I, you know, use whatever platform I have, whatever influence, whatever opportunity to provide some other opportunity?

Well, I definitely feel like you're leaving me better as a result of us having this interview today. So thank you for that. I've really enjoyed talking to you, and I know our audience is going to get a ton of value out of this.

This was so fun. I'm so glad. Absolutely. Yeah, we'll have to do it again soon.

Can't wait to see where you're going to take the company. So on behalf of Suzy and the Adweek team, special thanks to Ty Randolph, CEO of Heartbeat, for joining us. Today. Be sure to subscribe, rate, and review the Speed of Culture podcast on your favorite podcast platform. From here in Las Vegas, thanks for joining today, and we'll see you soon. Take care, everyone.

Bye-bye.