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Vinny, thanks for joining us today.
Yo, I'm happy to be here.
Thanks for having me.
Listen, as you can tell in my voice listeners, I'm pumped about this episode.
I'm so excited about this.
So Vinny, so how about you get us started by telling us a little bit about yourself and what you do?
Oh, I appreciate that.
Yeah. I am I am year to year at this conversation, for you all listening to it.
This will be at least 10 X your expectations.
I promise. And some of that will take your brand to the 10 X monetization to the 10 X.
But hi, I'm going to Emmy Award, which is nice to say, finally after 25 years of being in TV and Emmy Award winning media advisor, I got my start in talent development at MTV in the late 90s, working with artists to get into MTV films and then ultimately the exploitation of their stories known as reality television, Osborne's newlyweds, Punk'd, Pimp My Ride, TRL.
I have stories to share and intimate access and insights into the deals that all of those people had.
And by the way, if you're listening to this and you're a podcaster, I'ma tell you one thing.
You have one thing that none of those people had when I met them, which is you own your content.
So if you're a podcaster and you're creating content, Congratulations, God bless you.
And I am 100 % subscribed to the direction you're going in.
Now, I hang out on LinkedIn.
I try to help founder -led companies, people who identify as talent brands, I help them identify how to create content, leverage it on media platforms. I try to make that content something that they can own so I can show them how to leverage it into TV, film and other media platforms. And I'm really honored to be here.
And, but this is a result of two people who are passionate about making sure that people who put their name on the line, their voice out there, they're getting paid that they're covered, that they're protected.
And I'm really excited about where this conversation is gonna go.
So thanks for having me here, bud.
Yeah, me too. And listen, everybody check out Vinny's podcast as well.
We're gonna put links to all of his content in the description.
And he was even generous enough to have me on the show one time earlier this year.
So this is a long time coming, I'm excited for this.
And today what we're gonna focus on is the idea of creative cooperation.
Because in negotiation, we talk about the importance of creativity all the time.
And Vinny has such an interesting background when it comes to working with creatives to create something brand new, but then also monetizing that.
so we can go through the entire creative negotiation cycle to come up with the idea and then talk about the contractual side too.
And Vinnie, let's get this party started hot because my wife, Whitney, she is going to see Beyonce and Houston and you have a Beyonce story.
So let's just start off with that story before we get into the rest of it.
My Queen Bee story, by the way, it's a good concert.
I saw it here in Jersey.
It's worth every single minute.
And it's the concert I recorded.
I've never felt older, there's not as, I had my phone out the entire time like I didn't, cause when you see Beyonce, there's such a perfect version of who she is to remind yourself that she's human, that she breathes, that she looks off camera, that she fixes her hair, just that gentle reminder sometimes.
It's good for the heart and soul.
In this world of content where all we see is the final edit and she's someone who really, I know, has put the work in to not have to perfect the image, to perfect the image.
She is the image. That's what makes that image perfect.
She doesn't wait till the end for the photoshopping to add in the dancers or extra lighting or extra a whole lot of nada.
She brings that with her.
And I preface that by saying I was a casting associate at MTV in the late 90s.
And one of my jobs was to support MTV Films. MTV Films decided they were going to create Carmen, in a hip opera.
And I got a phone call one day that it was going to the director of karma in the hip opera was coming to the Times Square Studios.
And we were going to be interviewing and auditioning Beyonce for it.
So it was me, Beyonce, and the person I was most star struck about Robert Townsend, who, like literally formed my entire comedic career and, like introduced me to Eddie Murphy.
Eddie Murphy raw, by the way, I got me through college, so like meeting Robert Townsend.
This was like a, this was who I needed to impress.
And I have a story version of this.
I'll truncate it. I had a story version where Beyoncé reads her lines and I'm too fidgety in the room.
I'm trying to be a camera man.
All of a sudden, I'm like doing these weird MTV pans and Zooms. Robert takes my hand and he pulls me maybe six inches from Beyonce's face and he's like, Vin, I don't need to see that she can act.
I just need to see her eye contact.
He goes, all I want you to do is stay six inches from her face and just show her eye contact and Beyonce can take it from the top.
And then we did it again.
It was perfect. It was like unison.
Like I couldn't believe how in sync that was and I was torn because I was like, I can't believe I took away a moment from Beyonce's audition.
Like the auditions are not a time for a camera man, a casting assistant to get the note.
I felt devastated that I did something in the room that would have even, it's funny to think of, that I could have done anything that would detract from the energy that is Beyonce.
What I realize now is when you have clarity, when you have goals, you don't need to micromanage.
There's no constructive criticism.
There's no line reads.
When you're very crystal clear about what you want.
And what Robert did was tell the room, he needs a tight shot of Beyonce's eyes and Beyonce needs to be focusing on a single thing.
That's what he wanted in this framework.
And none of those notes were even meant for me.
I realized that, too.
He was literally talking to another 1 % creative who doesn't need to be told the minute details to accomplish the goals.
Instead, he reiterated his goal.
I land on that version of the story now, 20 years later, after telling it my entire life, saying, I took away energy from what I was trying to make a successful thing.
And it just, it's the power of cooperation.
It's the power of clarity.
And that room was magnetic that day.
And it was a moment, I mean, as you can imagine, many people will get to audition Beyonce in her lifetime, And certainly when you have the starr come in and out of a session like that, and your job creatively is to accomplish what we accomplished, it's life changing.
And what she did with that role is even more important to me.
Like I've read articles where she talks about the importance of character development.
Cause this is the first time she's ever had a lead in a film, it's Carmen the hip hopper, she's playing Carmen.
And it's in these rehearsals And it's in recording this film that she creates the identity of Sasha Fierce, the version of Beyonce that she steps into when she goes on stage in those moments where she might not believe she's capable of or needs to show up the way she knows she's capable of.
But it just might not have it in her.
She gave that power, she gave that power to another authority that she could step into.
And as an actor back then, I thought that was powerful.
Now. And now when I see how consistent she's been able to show up, it's like, of course, because there's that space between those two characters, let's call it grace.
And that's where she's living.
And I learned this from being a casting assistant at MTV, what a sick life experience.
That is amazing. I'm literally getting chills hearing this.
And I know for me as I encapsulate this and bring this to Whitney, because I always want her to think that I'm cool because she doesn't think I'm that cool.
When I say, listen, my friend may Beyonce, OK?
So if Beyonce made me, by the way, I'll have you know.
But I love bringing this back to the creativity, the cooperative creativity.
But also, you brought up a really important word, and that is clarity.
And I think that is one element of creativity that's often overlooked.
Because if we tell people go in a room and be creative, that can be an overwhelming type of experience.
Because the opportunities are endless, which makes us feel empowered initially.
But then when you realize the opportunities are endless, then it leads to decision fatigue, it leads to fear of missing out fear of a better option.
And it can be really debilitating at time.
And so when it comes to clarity, can you tell us the value of clarity when it comes to the creative process.
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From LinkedIn News, I'm Jessi Hempel, host of the Hello Monday podcast. In my 20s, I knew what career success looked like.
In midlife, it's not that simple.
Work is changing, we're changing, and there's no guide book for how to make sense of it.
So come figure it out with me on the Hello Monday podcast. I've been a journalist for two decades, writing cover stories for Businessweek, Fortune, and Wired.
And now every Monday I bring you conversations with people who are thinking deeply about work and where it fits into our lives.
like Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella on growth mindsets.
The learn it all does better than the know it all.
Or NYU professor Scott Galloway on choosing a career.
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Or MacArthur Genius winner Angela Duckworth on talent versus grit.
Your long -term effort and your long -term commitment are surprisingly important.
Each episode delivers pragmatic advice for right now.
Listen to Hello Monday with me, Jesse Hemple, on the LinkedIn Podcast Network or wherever you get your podcasts.
Oh, sure, right? So if creativity is the act of taking what is an internal thought and getting it into the real life, if that's what creativity is, if creativity is, I have an idea, I need this idea to exist outside of my head.
So I need to communicate this to someone who's going to support it, possibly create it, but definitely promote it.
The idea of cooperation, the idea of clarity exists for the sake of goals.
And if the goals are short, the wins are short.
If the goals are long term, the wins are long term.
I think of two franchises I was a part of at MTV in my time, The Challenge and While & Out.
And no part of The Challenge was ever about the cast, it was always about the emotional, physical challenge that the generation that's watching television, specifically MTV, goes through.
And now if you watch that show, there have been iterations and iterations of The Challenges, by the way.
I think arguably, we'd all say it's definitely got increasingly more challenging in a lot of unique ways.
While on Out was never about the end of the episode, it was never about who is the funniest, what's the funniest rhetoric, what's the best episode possible?
It was always about launching talent.
It was always about being a platform to give people an opportunity to get their jokes seen and heard that weren't being seen by the mainstream.
And I know that for a fact, I was there when Nick pitched the show.
In fact, in fact, just again, to take to focus on goals and to focus on clarity.
Nick, Nick Cannon pitched.
We hired MTV hired Nick Cannon from Nickelodeon to MTV.
If you remember back in the day, that was kind of the design of those networks.
Right? Nickelodeon, MTV, VH1, right?
That was the goal that they wanted us to kind of cycle people through.
so that the advertisers would grab the 20 plus, MTV would capture teenagers and Nickelodeon would sort of be there for the younger generation.
Nick came to MTV at a point in time where Carson was at a peak and Carson was looking to leave TRL, we almost had Nick Cannon hosting TRL, but Nick didn't want to get stuck as a host, hosting a daily show where someone else had already made a platform from it.
He knew that he was capable of creating a show that pro that brought people closer to what his goal was of getting on television, which to be honest was getting more representation, more conversation, more culture and community.
We might have had some representation on the network, maybe, but did not have culture and community the way that the way that comedy can usher into a network.
Nick pitched the show on paper, MTV past. He was dating Christina Milian back in the day.
It was Christmas break.
The two of them spent some money and time recording a pilot episode that they shot themselves and came back and then re -pitched it to us with the goal of it being a launch pad for comedians that were not on our channel.
And that's when the TV executives saw it.
They saw the energy, the camaraderie, the community, the culture and the comedy component of what it was.
So sometimes, you know, understanding the goal is half the battle.
I think the other half is getting people to see the goal.
And if there's one thing I've learned, and Nick is a great example of it, is like you surround yourself with people who want you to be successful.
Because as a creative, your success a lot of times is determined by the people who want to see you be successful.
If they want you to be successful, you will be successful if they do not.
They will find ways to make it turbulent, you know?
And if you want to acknowledge that or not, there's plenty of tools I can I can give you there.
But that's that's where goal setting happens.
And I think that's where where I can look back and say some of the TV franchise Housewives of New Jersey, also like some of the franchises I've been a part of that are so so deep into cycles are are about.
So story engines, I don't want to get all creative and use weird jargon.
Story engines are, is the thing that connects two people together.
So like Kim Kardashian has a story engine with her mom.
Kris, right? So that story engine is always going to produce some type of storyline, the relationship between daughter and mother.
That's always, that story engine will produce something.
That's from the way of looking at sustainability from a storytelling perspective on television, one of the devices that we looked in.
So, having that type of clarity, that those are the types of conversations we have in development, that would turn around to me and say, what are the story engines?
What are our four or five story engines?
Since we all know the Kardashians, you've got parent sibling, you've got sibling sibling, you've got all the siblings versus one of the parents.
You've got two unique parents.
You've got two unique sets of siblings, a lot of story.
And then the family versus the media, a lot of story engines to play with that help build the sustainability of these creative projects.
And when you're pulling from story engines, long -term goals, it's going to yield long -term results.
Man, my head is about to explode Vinnie, because like with every paragraph, there is just brand new information for me.
And I, I, I know this is the same thing that's happening for the audience.
And so I just wanted to synthesize this as everybody is having their own brain gasms right now.
Please remember you don't need to have a full understanding of the entertainment industry in order to appreciate the brilliance of this because in this, in this little session right now, let's just talk about the talking about Nick Cannon for example, pitching Wild 'n Out, which was incredibly successful franchise.
The first pitch failed because he pitched on paper in what I would consider to be the traditional way.
All right, this is the idea for this show, but persistence is part of the persuasive process.
And we're going to use a creative angle to persuade in this case.
You can't appreciate it on paper, you need to see it.
So I'm going to invest my own money to create a more persuasive pitch for you.
Now, you can see it.
That's one thing that we can keep in mind.
So when we're trying to convey a message to somebody else, sometimes they need to see in a different way for them to fully appreciate it.
Another gem that you dropped that I think is it can be easily overlooked is the fact that you said, if the people, the representatives within the company wants you to be successful, then you'll be successful.
Because I think a lot of times people would say, oh, this is all insider baseball, or you know, all of these things, but we have to remember this is just how humans work.
Relationships drive these things.
So how are people successful?
The relationships matter.
And so as much as there is importance behind being creative, there's also an equal amount of importance to having those relationships because you can be creative, you can have a great idea, but we all have seen people who have had great ideas but couldn't get it done for whatever reason.
And part of that is because they don't have the right relationships in place.
And so So what we're recognizing is that in the entertainment industry, there are multiple angles that you need to approach things from in order to be successful.
Yes, you need to have a great idea.
But in the world and in Hollywood in particular, everybody's got great ideas.
So what differentiates you and sometimes it's the relationships.
So we need to negotiate from multiple angles to create those strong relationships that are going to be willing to work with you in your creative endeavors.
Oh, yeah. Yeah, absolutely.
There's a great example.
In 2006, a fat man's scoop and his then wife Shonda created a podcast called Man and Wife.
And it was, for the first time ever, a married couple talking about sex. You're talking to a guy who watched MTV in the late 90s with Dr. Drew and Adam Carolla, I think.
Those are the informative voices of sex, and sex ed, to my life.
Two men, by the way, that I do look like, But I could not have anything less in common with.
And I found it to be polarizing, but a married couple talking about being open, being shot, having an opinion and the respect of each other.
I remember saying to scoop, because, by the way, in 2006, podcasts were gated by technology.
If you had access to a microphone, you were more prone to do something in the podcast space, a lot of actors and people who had access to radio networks and stations like that would use in the off time.
And I'll never forget he went into the studio and he recorded it with his wife.
I said, Scoop, this is like you and your wife talking about sex. Like I don't think the two of you should be in an audio booth talking about sex the way that you guys are talking about it.
Bring the microphone into your bed and I kind of want to like I want you to be a little bit more comfortable.
Take me to the take me to the place in your relationship where you have these honest conversations.
I don't want it necessarily.
I don't feel like it needs to be distilled for the sake of audio clarity, you know, to be done in a booth.
And we spent a day at the house.
He had the equipment because he was doing music video.
So he had the equipment.
We by the way, we we tried an episode in the sounds so honeymoonish.
We tried it in the kitchen.
We tried it in the bathroom.
We tried it in the bedroom.
The bedroom worked so well that they recorded every episode from the bedroom.
we took the bed, and put it on stage and the bed became, they toured by doing this.
I pitched the show to MTV.
MTV didn't see this as being a viable conversation for our audience, but I was passionate about these very specific two people having this conversation on at least one of our 15 networks, MTV, MTV2, MTVU, MTV3, like we were MTV .com, we were booming at that point.
So I went downstairs to New Business, and I said, there's a podcast. It's looking to get a website built.
If we can give them $100 ,000 to help build the podcast website, we can get in on the podcast and we can be part of this conversation.
What other artist is talking about sex?
Who's married to someone who is trained, who has a license to talk about sex ed in the way, all the pieces just felt so perfect.
We got $100 ,000, because the 17th floor saw, by the way, meaning a different department at MTV understood the value of it.
Which I knew was the first step I needed, because once you got that pocketbook open, it is so easy to get another $100 and another $100.
And a week later, I went back to production and I said, look, we bought the website, mtv .com is vested in it.
If we don't do the show, scare tactics, someone else is.
Yes. You want another network to take our show that we're gonna make...
There are already superstars on our network.
Gosh, what an unfortunate circumstance.
What are we going to do now?
I guess... And I knew it.
And that's how it took.
And again, that's because it's finding the right people and those gigantic companies that you wanna work for, Apple, Spotify, MTV, NBC, finding the right group of people who You want to see that success all the way through a champion, you finding those champions on the inside.
That's the, I know, I didn't think about this and maybe you meant for me to come on this on my own, but maybe I was definitely a champion of people at MTV.
I was the person who, who whispered into Nick Addo's here.
And I said, yo, Nick, you're asking for all the ways that people are getting paid and they're telling you, here's your executive producer fee, here's your actor fee, but they're not telling you like if your show does better than x per viewers, maybe you can get an incentive for increased viewership fee or you haven't asked for a location fee yet or you submitted a tape, that tape technically is a video and the video is something you can get paid for where the idea isn't.
So there could be a way to monetize the actual content, not the media idea but the actual content of the media.
That's something, ironically, regardless of your scope or taste for media that is more relevant now in the workspace than ever.
In the 90s, talent development was celebrities, actors, musicians, artists.
Talent development as we know it now, go to LinkedIn, it is us, CEOs, CMOs, we, the people, the employees, not even the employers.
We are the talent that are being developed.
so you want to know the importance of I look at those celebrities how they get paid for their name image likeness and those celebrity contracts that tend to fit only for celebrities and I realize how people who are creative or creators because of design of their jobs or the seats that they sit in their companies are now called to do that they have the rights to those protections as And I get excited about that, because that's where there's money to be made.
And that's where building the personal brand out of the gate is the most rewarding.
Absolutely, okay. So let me do this Vinny.
What I'm gonna do is do a quick synopsis of the last points that you made just highlighting some negotiation points.
And then I'd like to transition to talking about NIL, talking about creative deal options.
And then how is we, like you said, we the people can utilize some of these in our everyday lives.
So first when we were talking about the podcast with Fat Man Scoop, fantastic.
I had to get this joke in, in Hamilton where they say you wanna be in the room where it happens, that's what you wanted to do.
You wanted to be in the room where it happens.
And the bed was the magic.
So I think that's great.
One of the things that this highlights is the value of options.
When it comes to power, power comes from our optionality.
So in negotiation, we talk about our BATNA, our best alternative to a negotiated agreement.
So when you first pitched it, they weren't interested.
That specific department, that's fine.
I've got other options.
I'm going to go with somebody else who can see it.
And so by having those other options, you didn't feel the need to have any inappropriate compromises because you could just go with somebody else.
I think that's really important to make sure that as we are negotiating, we're always considering what our plan B, C, D, and so on will be if we can't get a deal here today.
The next thing is you use the foot in the door technique.
You didn't ask for millions of dollars upfront.
You said, hey, just a hundred K, let's just get this started.
We can do 100K, right?
And so it's like, all right, yeah, let's do that.
But you knew that once you've got the pocket book open, it'll be easier to get more.
So it starts with that little ask.
And so this is the foot in the door technique.
Hey, let's just have a conversation.
That's step one. Hey, just a little bit of money, step two, and then you keep coming back and then it busts open the opportunities.
And then the last one, persuasion -wise, let's just simply describe it, you use the carrot and the stick.
Hey, so if we do this, we could make a lot of money, that's the carrot, this is a positive thing, but on the other side, if we don't do this, somebody else will do it that triggers fear of missing out.
And listen, even if I don't want to have this, I don't want the other person to have it.
We're using the rules of the sandbox again, right?
I don't want the other person to have it.
So again, just the story that you provided on how you got this podcast into life is another masterclass in negotiation, so wanted to make sure that people didn't miss out on on those particular elements of it.
Yeah, thank you. I love the way that you're processing this because exactly as I intended to be as well.
If these insights are not as actionable, as you think they are reach out to me and ask me how, how to connect this on LinkedIn reach out, how to connect the story to what you're going through now, you know, what I learned from the celebrities that I worked with at MTV, because to your point, I wanted to be in that room.
Because everyone needed to go through MTV to get to the youth audience.
The youth audience is what I wanted to be connected to.
So Didi had to go through MTV, Ashton Kutcher had to go through MTV with Punk.
Ozzy Osbourne had to go again, and Sharron through MTV to yet again reintroduce themselves, So, I realized that if I could perch myself at that location, that if I wouldn't need to run around the world looking for the top one percenters, by the way, I talked earlier about how I found you, and you are part of the alchemy of my success.
When I go to LinkedIn, I look for your content, because I know I'm going to write something theoretically based on what you're talking about.
I want to be cooperative in our space while being innovative.
So I want to be cooperative.
I want to react because I love that because I'm an audience member want to know anything more than anything.
If there's like you could put me in any seat in the entire stage a moderator star cameraman a spotlight operator audience front row.
I love being in front of talent.
I love spotting it.
I love seeing it. It's the movies that make me cry when a kid taps into is their inner ability and they do something for their first time.
They didn't know they were a basketball hoop or something.
Oh man, that would bring me down to tears and a heartbeat, and I can do that now with us adults because we weren't taught to be creative in school because we had different disciplines or specialties, and for some reason or another that element of communicating was removed, and now because of tech, I can help.
And also with precaution, right?
So I'm all about being mindful, there's no part of my SEO strategy that waits till the end to put in the words that I want my life to be discovered by and led by.
From a personal brand perspective, again, what I learned from Beyonce, Diddy, Ashton, all of these people are solopreneurs at first. They don't have a big company, they have a big presence, right?
But they don't have a big company, and no one's working directly for them, they have managers in this, how to scale, you have to be cooperative, you have to understand the goals of a network, some of that can be in the data, some of that data is acceptable, sometimes it's not in the data and that's actually the best. I love when MTV would say, we're missing this data set, how do we get this audience to MTV?
And I would go out and find people that would bring stories, culture, and community, and content and opportunities and other types of celebrities and other types of personalities that weren't on that network yet.
But it was their name, their image, their likeness, that I was always leveraging.
I just started laughing.
I almost got in trouble.
I did get in trouble.
It's spring break. And I had a book of celebrity that would specifically attract what we were looking for was a large Latina crowd to come to MTV to really be able to celebrate and not just a one -off, but someone who would really have impact.
And I booked Sophia Vergara, I thought.
At a point in time in 2004 or 2005 where her English was not as good as it is now and was seen on the show, and I can understand why some of my executives reacted the way they did, but I didn't care, you asked me to create a moment that would send shockwaves to a culture and community.
And I am not going to pass up on the opportunity to put someone on television, just because you don't understand them doesn't mean that we don't understand them.
And part of I have to do is cooperate.
I have to make sure so we come up with the idea of subtitles or we accompanied her appearance with another artist who'd be able, you know, they'd be able to play off of each other and open it up so that it was something that didn't not get seen by the light of day, because It wasn't what people understood.
That's the fringe. That's to me where cooperation happens.
And I would only have known it was Sophia Gara, and she was the one.
I only knew it because of her publicist, because there was one publicist that I trusted to call on who always delivered talent to MTV specifically to that audience, where we were trying to get more representation on the on the network.
And that's where to be honest, diversity turns into inclusivity.
And then in the practice of casting, I realize how important the people who are referring talent to me.
Even to your point of, even to the point earlier, like when I know I go on LinkedIn and I know I'm looking forward to content.
I'm able to pull it and trust it.
You know, these are sources that I can say yes to in my life.
I don't have to question.
I can move on consciously.
That's, it's really powerful when you're able to tap in trust, and you're working with people who are protected, I think that's a really, for me, an ideal way to partner and collaborate in this turbulent, yet rewarding world of creativity.
Oh, again, this is great, because I love this, the story, where you're saying yes, we want to bring in Sofia for this.
Fantastic. And then people aren't comfortable.
And so they might say no. And so it appears as though this is a binary choice, yes or no. But really, we're utilizing the third option, which is creative and collaborative negotiation.
We're saying, okay, your interests and your concerns have legitimacy.
My interest and my concerns have legitimacy as well.
So let's work together to address all of these things while working toward that collective goal, too.
And so it wasn't that you just push through and said, no, they don't understand, we're doing it my way this exact same way.
No, we We cannot do that.
We have to take their concerns into consideration.
And then you make an event that is more inclusive and potentially more successful because you incorporate the ideas from other people who see the world differently from you.
I think this is really great.
Well, I had to, I made the mistake of not doing that on one or two bookings.
And I was asked to take that person off the show.
And I realized that I can make an impact and that impact has to be recorded now.
but that impact might come a couple of years from now.
And I became okay with that.
If I could get it on tape, if I can get it, if I can get my foot in the door and start the conversation, I know I can come back and continue it.
Right. Oh man. This is good.
I know we've been here for like an hour.
You and me, I know it's going to be shorter for the audience, but I could not stop talking to you, brother, we'll have you back on because it's so fascinating.
And besides the masterclass in negotiation that you've given us, the storytelling is amazing.
It's a good place to learn, I tell you.
I learned from the best. I really truly did.
They made my life possible.
They make our life possible.
They teach us the wins, the fails, the things that should happen and the things that could happen.
I learned from the best. Yeah, no, I appreciate this.
And listeners, of course, we're going to have all of Vinny's content, his socials.
Follow him on LinkedIn because the posts that he makes are really, really great.
So make sure you follow him there.
But again, before you go Vinny, I wanna give you an opportunity to shout out some of the work that you're doing and give them one little piece of encouragement before they hit the road.
Oh yeah, man, how about this?
Just get, guest, get guest, get out there and guest, get on someone's podcast. Podcasting isn't owned by a company.
There's no part of the publicly traded world of media that's even touching podcasting.
we, the people, own podcasts.
I trust us, the people who have control over the content, and I found myself in a whole new way through a whole new lens by allowing myself to show up as a guest. And I'm humbled to be here with you, Kwame.
My podcast is called, I have a Podcast. You can check it out at I have a podcast .com.
Join my LinkedIn newsletter at vpe .tv slash I have a podcast. And if you have a podcaster, know someone, or just have a podcast that you love and can use a little bit of a level up and amp up, reach out to me because I look for podcasters that I'm constantly identifying and amplifying, trying to get our voices out there.
So we have a sustainable impact.
It's all about sustainability with long -term win.
So thank you for this space, bud.
Yeah, my pleasure. And thank you again for sharing your expertise.
I really appreciate it.
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