Seek Out Creative Opportunities…with Mark Harper

Artwork for podcast Creative Innovators with Gigi Johnson

Episode 15 • 1st March 2023 • Creative Innovators with Gigi Johnson • Maremel Institute

Gigi Johnson: 00:00:08

And so I'm always excited when I can have somebody on this conversation, who I've, I've known for a bit. And so a recent episode with Mike Polis, I've known him back when he was in the Jim Henson days, when we would go to went to DragonCon at the same time and one of his films was watching. So we have this weird echo. For you, Mark, we have a different echo. And I remembering you from class at UCLA, Anderson, and also you from being at a TV Academy event when you were talking to this David Gale guy. And so we're kind of come back to that. But can you talk about what in the world you're doing now? Because you've had when we're recording this a fairly recent announcement?

Mark Harper: 00:00:54

Yes. So I am now the general manager of the military and defense portfolio at a company called Recurrent Ventures. So recurrent ventures have a bunch of different audience categories. Inside of mine military defense who've got we are the mighty task and purpose, the warzone. Those are three, three digital publishers. And then two events, the military influencer conference and mill spouse fest, and then a YouTube channel, also by the name of cask and purpose that's approaching a million subscribers at this point. So across all six of those brands, we cover down on everything from like breaking news in the military world all the way to lifestyle, and history, and entertainment. And it's a it's been a very cool journey to get here. The that announcement you're talking about was, we're the mighty getting acquired, and then me being installed, add recurrent as the GM for all of the military properties. But there's some other audience categories of recurrent, like science and tech, they have Popular Science, they've got Bob Vila over in their house and lifestyle. So that ages me, but oh, it's some pretty nostalgic brands covering a you know, it's different swaths of audience out there.

Gigi Johnson: 00:02:15

So, for some people, it's an obvious journey of how they've gotten to where they've gotten to for you, maybe it's a less obvious journey and going to a very interesting, big niche that you're in, can you maybe bring us back along ways? And tell us about who you were as a teenager? As to what what was cool? Were you interested in the military? Were you interested in video and photography? Were you a troublemaker? Were you a good kid? What were you when you were a high schooler?

Mark Harper: 00:02:50

I was very much interested in video had a friend who had you know, one of those VHS camcorders that had functionality to do things like split screen inside the actual device itself. So we would spend hours coming up with ways to do things like drive a tree, but into and behind a tree that disappeared, things like that. And we would spend just enormous amounts of time doing this because I thought it was like fun, special effects. And then I had the opportunity to kind of roll that into a couple of like high school projects, but didn't really think too much about it. I just love the creative nature of it. And, you know, I never owned any equipment on my own. But every chance I got, I would get into it. And so, military was a bit of a deviation. Almost. It was, it was a way to pay for, for school initially. Let's say you grew up though, in upstate New York. I grew up in upstate New York and a little city called Saratoga Springs. So when you were in high school, you wanted to go to college, and your parents wanted you to go to college. Correct. And my father was a hard charging army Greenbrae special forces, who did ROTC at Cornell, and I was born in Germany as a result of his army career.

Mark Harper: 00:04:17

But I didn't really have that same passion for the military world that he had. He had just made the recommendation at the age of 16 that I started applying to ROTC scholarships, and also the recommendation for me to cut my luxuriously long hair. And the effort that if I were to get accepted into one of these scholarships, I would need to present a little differently than I was back in high school, the guy . . .

Gigi Johnson: 00:04:45

Did you have siblings as well who were around college bound fulfilling family promises?

Mark Harper: 00:04:52

So I had a younger sister and a younger brother and while my father was really leaning into, you're going to school. You need to apply to these scholarships. And my mother had a much gentler approach that basically was look at your little sister, look at your little brother, they have better and bigger opportunities if you could do something like this and get a scholarship to go to college, and oh, really no, Heartstrings, right. But it worked. And I love her for it. Because it was such a, it was such a better way for me to get off my tush and actually start applying to all of those because now I had a purpose and a sense of like, I'm going to help the family at the same time. So I did, I got accepted into the Air Force ROTC program at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, RPI. What's interesting is once you get one of those scholarships, they tell you what school you're going to and what your major is.

Gigi Johnson: 00:05:51

I'm, I don't, that I have a kid sister who's still a lot older than you who did ROTC at Cornell, oh, and, and very much in the tech space and all of that. So that's my framing of that kind of era and opportunity that it, it was something that, that framed the structure of that, here's where you're going to school, here's what you're going to do, here's the time you're going to have to put in to pay it back. But the fact that it gave you the opportunity to step up to something that otherwise is an expensive college opportunity, and build your next future on the back of that, of that opportunity. So you started at . . . I can never pronounce it right. But

Mark Harper: 00:06:31

RPI. RPI works perfectly.

Gigi Johnson: 00:06:34

So you're at RPI. And they told you to do what you were what major?

Mark Harper: 00:06:38

You're a computer systems engineer. And I to this day, I have no idea what that means. But I know that it was front loaded with a ton of engineering courses, and I had full transparency. We've struggled, I was on the struggle bus from day one. There were so many different things I had zero interest in learning about which made it a lot more challenging being at one of the top tech schools in the United States. And at the same time being in a curriculum that I didn't necessarily have the right background in, but was for the purpose of the Air Force. So I petitioned at the end of the first very challenging year to convert from computer systems engineering to computer science. And at the same time, I threw on a dual major of this budding program called Electronic Media Arts and Communication, which is a fancy name for video production, animation and design. Very cool. The Air Force said we don't care about any other dual majors your diploma better say computer science on it says that's what we're paying for. And you're going to most likely be a communications officer unless you become a pilot. So they approve this. And it was during that timeframe that I was able to make it through my computer science courses. It did have interest in computer science and programming, but only because in my mind, it meant and I know it doesn't mean that anymore. It meant video game design. And it meant special effects. Not exactly what my computer science courses were thinking at the time, it was much along the lines of data structures and algorithms and solving complex equations or programming.

Mark Harper: 00:08:28

But I was able to really put, you know, a lot of focus on you know, the science components of it. And then I spent every waking moments in that video production.

Mark Harper: 00:08:40

Those those courses animation and web design, and that really kept me going I you would find me at all hours of the night in any of the computer labs, working on video productions learning editing systems is back when it was like tape to tape and then it was digital and linear or nonlinear rather, which is all fascinating to me at that time. It paid to be doing online, you know, online editing versus offline editing, expensive equipment, Silicon Graphics gear, and yeah. And what was very nuanced about RPI's curriculum is they were basically building the airplane while in flight. So no kidding. We show up on day one. And it was sign out a bunch of cameras and come back with something and that was it like, here's record, here's stop. We'll teach you about editing at some other point, can we figure it out ourselves? And so what we found is there are a bunch of like ragtag kids who are interested in learning this, and the teachers weren't really there just yet. Not that they weren't capable of it, but the curriculum is weren't like fully fledged out or designed at the time. But some of my favorite work that I've ever done is actually come out of that timeframe because it was a lot of like, figured out in real time without a lot of like structure behind it. So able to make a ton of mistakes, able to make a lot of inventions at the same time and had a lot of like creative underpinnings to it.

Mark Harper: 00:10:03

As the years went by at RPI, it dawned on me, oh, dear, I'm going to be an officer United States Air Force at some point coming up real soon. And then my passion lies in storytelling, video production animation design. And just as I was about to put my right hand up and do the commissioning ceremony, one of the cadre at the detachment pulled me aside and said, Harper, you're going to the Air Force, it's a big, massive organization. And I know you're dragging your feet right now. Because you think that all the creative things that you do don't have a home there. And I was creating at the time morale videos that we would show like ceremonies at school, I was doing recruiting videos and other things that were keeping me interested and made people laugh, for the most part, or entertained. And so you saw this in May. And he said, you just have to seek it out. It is in the military, you will find a place where your skills are, are are not only celebrated, but they're going to put you into a whole different career path. And I didn't know what he meant by any of this. But it through my right hand up I went in, I found myself at Travis Air Force Base in Northern California, a few short days before 911 hit.

Gigi Johnson: 00:11:23

I'm going to a backup before you get into that. So was your expectation different than your classmates' expectation? So when you were coming out the seek just to be hesitant, or needing to kind of step over the line into the work where your classmates who are in ROTC in a different headspace, where you're creative graphic arts people in a different headspace and what they expected the world to be? Or was this kind of, as someone else listening to this now might go? Well, how do you know what to do? Or what shifts to make? Is it that you thought you were for going this great, obvious career in making graphic animation and cartooning? Or that it's fragile, and all sorts of other characteristics? And you saw classmates doing that? Or that you didn't see other people going into the military who were doing the work that you would want to do? And what happened to that guy? The one who said that? I mean, have you ever gotten back to him and say, Hey, dude, this is what you this is what you did with me.

Mark Harper: 00:12:30

So interesting. You asked, I'll answer that question. First, I got a text message from a friend of mine from back home in Saratoga, who just sent me a photo of that guy, and said, Sarge, and Logan says hello. And I wrote back I like he has no idea how much he changed my life with that one moment. Ed, we've have, we have a visit scheduled for next time, I'm back in the Saratoga Region.

Mark Harper: 00:13:01

So for the most part, the 16 people that I graduated with were like mechanical engineers, electrical engineers, or a handful of them, joined the Air Force ROTC as an opportunity to get into the pilot program or a version of getting getting slotted into a pilot's spot. So for them, it was for my friend for most of them it was I have a very specific reason why I'm joining the Air Force I want to do exactly this, in my collegiate endeavors here are are paving the way for that. For me, I was again, a little forlorn and sad, because I felt like I had all this talent and no way to go from point A to point B with it. And I didn't really want to join the military to begin with at that time. And so for me, I was just kind of, I don't know, kind of, again, just dragging my feet across the country to to Northern California to Travis Air Force Base, where my duty assignment was that of a deployed communications officer.

Gigi Johnson: 00:14:05

Did I miss any of the other parts of the question you had asked the other than what did what did your graphics and computer animation folks think they were going to do? Because I mean, many ways. You can think that's what you want to do, and then not match it up with harder to get situation, right.

Mark Harper: 00:14:23

So one person from my class, the only person from my class that I'm aware of actually went on to go be an assistant director on things like Law and Order SVU and a handful of other shows. I think murder is only she's on right now. Which is incredible. I mean, she really went into the creative world. I think she interned at MTV, she did a lot of really cool things and she is now actively working in the in the creative world.

Mark Harper: 00:14:56

Most of the other people I know I don't think they ended up in the video side of things, I think many ended up in the on the design side of it. But it was such a broad program, it was video, it was animation, it was graphic design, which is a lot to just kind of scattershot out for, you know, a creative,

Gigi Johnson: 00:15:12

And a unique, malleable opportunity to that not everyone goes into a program that still be paid for. That's a great part of the journey. And then your journey was getting in getting to Travis Air Force Base, pretty soon ahead at 9/11. Can you talk about that?

Mark Harper: 00:15:28

Yes. So I had these words in my head from Sergeant Logan, who said, You, look, seek out creative opportunities, you'll find them there. And so this is there are a few short months that occurred before 9/11. But I showed up and I, the general was coming into town, who was going to talk to our group, so about 450 people, and he's very important. And they were circulating the PowerPoint that was going to show what the group was was there for and what we were doing and how we were contributing to the warfighting training mission. And I said, hey, could I make the opening slide for this general presentation? And the response was not only No, but absolutely not your What are you? What are you even going to wait? What makes you think you should make the opening slide for this? And who are you and I'm like, I'm the new tenant, I can make a really cool animation. For the beginning of the presentation where an eagle flies in, grabs a lightning bolt, the globe forms up underneath and then the shield is there, and it'll get his attention. I'll get everyone's attention. And they were like, I don't think you could do that in PowerPoint. And I did. So even though he said no, I went home that night, I work till three in the morning. And I created a flash animation that had to use programming elements inside of PowerPoint that do exist, to tell it when to start when to stop and when the loop and when to allow the cursor to bring it to the next page and everything. I look all this stuff up. But I made it and it was kind of cool. Probably not as cool as what people are envisioning right now. But it was very cool enough in a 2d space to have an animation. So it hits slide one eagle comes in, there's a there's a lightning bolt sound and eagles screeching and l forms. And the general says who did that all eyes are looking around the room. I'm in the back with my hand up and he says, Lieutenant come see me after this. This is like week one. So I end up going out there. And he's like, I don't know what you're doing. But I would like you to also be doing something in the training at the training department here. So I want you to go report to the training shop. They're doing video production, trying to get people ready for XY and Z. But also you need to do your regular job. So this is basically I want you to do two jobs. Are you up for it? I'm like, Absolutely, sir. So while I was a deployed communications officer, I was also able to start doing those creative things right off the bat in the Air Force, I was kind of shocked that that had happened.

Unknown: 00:18:03

It wasn't a very obvious thing to happen in the military. So 9/11 hits. Half my squadron the very next day goes to forward deploy and do what we're supposed to do. A deployed communications officer goes out into the world to create the infrastructure for a base to start bringing in all the other supplies. Start landing large and larger aircraft and to create the little cities that bases become down the line as they mature. And so I wasn't ready for this. I didn't have any of the training, but half the squadron left and they went to Saudi Arabia and some other places to start the footprint for what would ultimately end up in OIF and OEF -- Operation Iraqi Freedom; Operation Enduring Freedom. During that timeframe, I got to hunker down on a lot more of these video productions there and I mostly was doing morale videos and morale videos is a cutesy way of saying make a video that makes fun of everybody but do it tastefully so that you don't get in trouble and no one really ends up getting their feelings hurt. And so I would do this for like retirement ceremonies or big massive celebrations of change of command things of that. And at one point, I started getting like a notoriety as go to Lieutenant Harper for when you need something glitzy or funny done for one of these otherwise sometimes dull Pomp and Circumstance events. And it was there that a colonel pulled me aside and said you would be absolutely terrific for a thing called Combat Camera and I was like, sir, I would. I don't know what that is, but that sounds like everything I've ever wanted to do, please.

Mark Harper: 00:19:38

Combat Camera, as the name suggests, documents everything department offenses is doing so wars conflicts, humanitarian relief efforts, weapons, set weapons test and military exercises. It was a really cool way to see what the military was doing across all the branches. So now I'm stationed at Charleston Air Force Base in South Carolina.

Mark Harper: 00:20:00

And I had the opportunity to deploy a handful of times for some really big exercises in like Thailand, and South Korea, all the way to running a team of 80 combat photographers and videographers out of Baghdad. And then it for Operation Enduring Freedom in Djibouti Africa, of all places in charge of an area larger than United States. So all of the Horn of Africa region, Kenya, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Seychelles, all the stories that were taking place there on behalf of the military. And it was amazing. And it was the coolest thing I could have ever done in the military. It was the most creative thing I could have done in the military. And it is absolutely the reason why I left the military.

Unknown: 00:20:47

Because I got bit with the ability to continue storytelling. And the Air Force went through reduction forces in 2007. And I was looking for the sign to, to leave the military to pursue this something in entertainment, anything at all. And an email came in and said, we're looking for communications officers between four and seven years to leave the military. It will give you a separation is the first time that Air Force had ever done this. And they what were they were doing is clearing budget to create more aircraft and pay for more missiles and things way down the line. The reality is people like me got that little kick in the butt to go and start pursuing things. So I took that as my sign. And I had had a relationship while I was in Baghdad with a friend who lived in Los Angeles, who said, If you ever find yourself wanting to move out here, I have an extra bedroom, this could be your home base. And you could start from there. And I will walk you around and introduce you to people. So I had a little bit of an unfair advantage. I did blindly move out there regardless with nothing but his recommendations. He wasn't even there. When I showed up. It was just the keys underneath the doormat, I'll be back in nine months I might he went on another deployment. So I showed up with just a handful of phone numbers to call and my combat cameras story. And I set out to go try to network at a time where I didn't know what networking was in the Air Force. And the military in general didn't necessarily foster an environment of networking, there was no reason to do so you're told to go replace talk to these people and move on and go to the next. So I was now building a network out in Los Angeles and trying to figure out how to parlay this experience essentially as a producer of some flavor in the military, in the entertainment industry.

Gigi Johnson: 00:22:42

So what didn't work,

Mark Harper: 00:22:46

All of it to some degree. Many people were excited to or were willing to meet with someone who was from the military that had Combat Camera as their byline because because they want to know what is a combat documentarian in the military, and they wanted to see the stories and I would always lead off with Hi, you don't know me, my name is Mark, I'm an Air Force veteran, I did this in the military. And I would just fill it with these gorgeous images of things that were happening that they weren't seeing in the news, that were very, very much the storytelling to kind of underlines what were happening out in the chaos. That is where the DoD is operating. But there were very great. I mean, there were some of these images were a picture of a Chinook helicopter dumping pamphlets down as part of like psychological operations that were saying turn in the insurgents evacuate, we're gonna bomb here in 10 days, if you don't do that, that kind of stuff, all the way to the humanitarian humanitarian relief efforts that don't get their way into the news all the time where the military is out there doing these incredible things. And in some third world countries, a lot of photographers have had their work published all over the world, which is really amazing. And a testament to how well they're trained, and how their access and how good they actually are. So long way of saying, I would get meetings with people and I would meet with producers who would say, okay, kid, what do you want to do? And then I would say, Well, I don't know. I was hoping you could tell me what to do. And every single time they would come back with the same answer. That's not how this works. You tell me what you want to do. I, I rattle around that and I go to give you your next person to talk to to figure out how to get you one step closer to that. I didn't have any of that figured out because I didn't really have an understanding of any of the way the entertainment industry worked whatsoever. So I ended up going back onto the business side of the entertainment industry. I worked for a company called Technicolor. How did you end up at Technicolor? How did that door open? So that was a lot of networking, a lot of talking to people and finally somebody at Technicolor saw my resume and it said okay. You had to move images in Baghdad all the way back to the Pentagon. And you did this without Internet, you did this through a satellite constellation. We are doing this with digital cinema, we are now broadcasting Pirates of the Caribbean, to a centralized location to download. And every AMC.

Mark Harper: 00:25:20

I liked it, this guy's an officer means to me that we can probably teach him the ins and outs of the digital cinema industry. So I got my shot. And this guy's aspirations for where my job could go sounded phenomenal. The reality of what that job ended up being was, can you hear this as being this is being out in the real world, this is not the real world. Oh, you're finding documenting the reality of what the job ended up being was that I became a supervisor for digital cinema quality control. So before you get to the satellite part, you have to make sure that the ones and zeros look right on the hard drive before it gets ingested and moved. So this means I watched every single movie about four months before it actually hit the theaters, which was amazing. When you get to see Ironman for the first time, long before anyone will ever see it, or Wally, but a bummer when you're on your seventh viewing of national treasure to in Portuguese.

Unknown: 00:26:23

While my job was to watch movies all day, it became taxing after a while and one very specific day. And this is really funny. Because there are cameras, as you can imagine, in every one of these theaters, where we're doing quality control, I stand up in an empty theater and I scream, what am I doing here? What am I doing? How did this happen? And I think I was mostly yelling at Nicolas Cage on screen during National Treasure 2, as I was like, how did I go from there to here? And what's next? How do I get anywhere after this. And honestly, that's when I started applying to UCLA Anderson.

Mark Harper: 00:27:01

Anderson at the time was doing. I think I had more connective tissue with kind of entertainment and media as they were building out their relationships with the master's programs over on the film and TV side. And I figured as an officer in the military and someone who had now working on the business side of the entertainment industry, I was missing the business acumen that many of my peers had. And I thought I could maybe make that translation a lot easier than trying to re engineer go back into the creative side of things. And quite frankly, I didn't think I deserved to have the shot for whatever reason back on the creative side of anything, nor did I really know how to get from point A to B. And as I've shared with you already and made obvious, I had no idea what I was doing no idea what opportunities existed and no one no idea of how things are working. But I was getting there a little bit better.

Unknown: 00:27:56

And this was during the context, also during the original shift to digital cinema where people were rethinking their jobs anyway, and trying to figure out the processes and the industry is changing. So a decent time to go back to school in the fully employed MBA program.

Gigi Johnson: 00:28:12

So why UCLA, other than I'm assuming was cost effective? But I'm also assuming this was partially paid for by GI dollars.

Gigi Johnson: 00:28:21

It did get paid for by GI dollars and I put all my eggs into the UCLA basket. And it took me four attempts in the same year to get into Anderson, I actually got in the day before they started. I got a phone call from the dean. And he said, Congratulations, you're off the waitlist and you're in the enlist. And you got to show up tomorrow morning at leadership foundations, and very transformative loved every second of that. I took your course there I took so many courses from TV and film. I took as many I took more courses than the full time students did because I just got after it. I was so interested in the entertainment side of things. And so after accounting, I quickly run over and do you know entertainment marketing for movie studios which was it all of those courses just had me going heavy really excited.

Mark Harper: 00:29:13

You yours as well like those were all the all the courses that I was really excited to be at Anderson about.

Gigi Johnson: 00:29:22

You graduated. And?

Mark Harper: 00:29:25

A funny thing happened along the way to Anderson. And one of my classes was a business plan development class. And I found myself pitching this high end headphone company called Audeze to a panel of people who are just in the class asking the tough questions about what we're going to do and what we're runway was and what we're using funding to build into, et cetera, et cetera. And the thing was this this company actually existed does Audeze company

Unknown: 00:29:59

This was a friend of mine from Technicolor, who had started it with a couple other founders. And they were building these really expensive headphones and could not make them fast enough. And when I say expensive headphones, I mean $1,000 And up. And I got a call from these guys at Audeze a couple months after I graduated, and I was working in Technicolor at the time. And they said, Hey, we have an opportunity for you to Well, for us to fly to New York City and pitch to the CEO of Atlantic Records, and one of the heads of Warner Music Group for funding for the company. Can you do this? And I said, Oh, absolutely, I can do this. This is exactly what business school bred me to do. I hung the phone up, I had a massive panic attack called everyone I could to say I can't believe I did sign up to go actually pitch something to someone and ask them for money. I don't even know what I'm asking for. But over the course of the seven days, I had to prepare for this came up with a number came up with a very solid business plan that was kind of based off of the one that we had built in class months earlier, went out pitched, got four and a half million dollars from Warner Music Group to officially launch the company. And is it gonna sound weird, but that timeframe, those next couple of years are actually something I lecture about at UCLA Anderson to this day through Professor Derek Alderton. But ended up being a tiny bit of a detour for the kind of my creative endeavors.

Mark Harper: 00:31:27

I'd like to get to do things like design the whole marketing campaign for this this company.

Mark Harper: 00:31:32

I knew at the end of the day, my passion wasn't in consumer electronics, my passion was in the storytelling components of, of what I had been kind of growing into. So this is me leaving Odyssey in 2014. And having a super hard reset in life.

Mark Harper: 00:31:54

My identity was kind of wrapped up into that all my business school friends were like, Hey, this is the Business School dream, start a company in business school, get it funded, and go live. The entrepreneurial dream just wasn't my dream. And I remember calling you and saying, I just left that headphone company. I don't know what to do with myself at all. I do not have a good plan. I don't know what to do at all. And you invited me to go to an academy events for interactive television. And I was in Long Beach and you're like in chop chop, because it starts in an hour and a half. And it's gonna take you that long to get there. So I went as your guest. And you introduced me to a couple of people and they love the Combat Camera story. And I got invited to be an Academy member for the interactive. For the interactive. What are they called? Pure interactive. Right, right. Right.

Mark Harper: 00:32:53

And that opened up some connections to talk to some people. And it was that same time, where was it a digital LA or digital Hollywood events that that I saw you at? And I went and met a guy who who was starting a company called We Are The Mighty. This guy's name is David Gale. He's the former head of MTV Films. He's the guy that brought to us such treasured classics as Beavis and Butthead, do America, the Jackass franchise, just important?

Mark Harper: 00:33:24

And intriguing stuff. Yeah, but also varsity blues election, Napoleon Dynamite kings of comedy.

Unknown: 00:33:32

There were a whole lot of great films that were inside of the 27, I believe that he produced and he saw there was a lack of a platform for the military community to share its stories. His father was a World War Two veteran, he was getting a ton of pitches at, shockingly at MTV for military related opportunities. And so he struck out and set and founded this company. And I was one of the very first employees when we flipped the switch on Veterans Day, November 11, 2014, to kind of create of MTV for the military community by way of the website and our social media channels being the MTV TV channel. And then you realizing the success and the metrics from the stories of resonating inside the community as we're building that audience to ladder them up into TV and film pitches. Now easier said than done, even when the guy at the in charge of all of it was the former head of MTV Films. We did over those years create some incredible content that we still, we still focus on today. But over the course of those years, while David was there, we really were building out a digital publisher that became sort of an agency that would help brands connect to the military community to keep the lights on right. So display advertising, and branded video content is what was is paying the bills while we were trying to go out and sell TV series and sell film opportunities of which we were assuming it's more than brand than necessarily the ad money.

Gigi Johnson: 00:35:12

Because still the CPM though I'm assuming the CPM got better as time went on.

Mark Harper: 00:35:17

It depends people got used to limit the communication was and all of that stuff that as it grew up, it kind of grew up into its business model. So CPMs for display advertising have been under steady track down as more technology gets out there to help with targeting and enter your dollars are spread over many more platforms.

Unknown: 00:35:37

Yes, from the video side, CPMs found their stride. And now with different technologies and different ways to view things, they're getting better about targeting, they're getting better about placement, etc. And those are rich and healthy. But video is so expensive to create just for the sake of creating it, that there has to be a very direct correlation between what you're making and who's paying for it the end of the day. So we had to stop a lot of our kind of create for the sake of creating and for building audience around 2018 and get more sharp with, okay, how do we sell each and everything that we create against this. So it was an interesting journey, it were the mighty and it was kind of what I was, if you look back on it looks perfectly like I was built to do all this right? It was at its core creative endeavors inside the military community with video production attached to it, and a very entrepreneurial focused in those very early days of it. So it was everything I had like grown up to kind of all forged into this one opportunity. And it was absolutely phenomenal to be a part of.

Gigi Johnson: 00:36:50

So it grew from a few people to how many people before it was bought?

Mark Harper: 00:36:56

So it grew to about 24 people before we came to the very tough realization that we had built something too big to sustain itself. And at the same time, the digital publishing world was in always kind of is mutating and under a version of duress, depending on how big or small you are. And so we got to a point where we were hitting the revenue we needed to hit we had a ton of overhead, a lot of conflicting ideas of the way the company needs to be run. And quite frankly, David Gale at that point, wanted to return back to TV and film they've been creating, and he got an incredible offer at a time where the board was looking to change the way we were operating. So in mid 2019, David came to me and said, we have an opportunity here for you to take over for me to go work back in TV and film a little more effectively. And I will bring some of the We are the Mightly IP to see if we can get that off the ground. But you know, my time here has has come to an end. Will you be the CEO of the company? And he's because he felt like I'm kind of abandoning the ship. And I said, Well, none of us look at it. That's quite a few years to be on the ship though, right? Yeah, it was a lot he was gonna ship and and quite frankly, we were down to I had just a couple of weeks left in barrel. So I didn't know if this was even going to work. But it was basically handed 300 grand to right size the company to recalibrate what we were doing and why we were doing it. And start that march from almost bankruptcy right to where we got acquired in 2022. And so we did have call it a phoenix rising from the ashes. But we were able to do it capture some pretty cool jobs at the very end of 2019, COVID hits and 2020. And I thought that was going to be a nail in the coffin because marketing dollars retracted. And brands just quite frankly didn't know what they were going to do. But what we found out was we were still able to get out the door with a camera in hand to go produce content for brands whose agencies weren't able to do it due to insurance restrictions. So we were getting handed opportunities to go can you go and shoot this commercial? Can you go and shoot this branded segments. And we were on the next flight out there following strict strict protocol for for COVID. But we were able to do these things because we're able to move so quickly. And so it started to rebuild the business. The pandemic also helped fuel more eyeballs on websites like we have a mighty and with that came more advertising dollars. But we were able to get a point of profitability about halfway through 2020 For the first time in the seven years of existence. So were the money at that point in time which is exciting milestone into its own and the that continue to grow through 2021. So by the time we got to 2022, we were in a place where we were, we're a good target for acquisition for a company like recurrent who is building a portfolio of, of military publishers. And we were sick of doing it by ourselves. I was the IT department, I was the legal department, I was HR. And I wasn't going to not to be those things, unless someone else stepped in and was able to offer them on a platter. So we, we took the deal, and it instantly bolted on three more times the audience, it bolted on a whole set of shared services that we never had before. And it's allowing us to grow all of these military properties in such a different way, that's been a really unique experience so far.

Gigi Johnson: 00:40:54

And it's based where?

Gigi Johnson: 00:40:56

It is largely based out of New York City, Miami, and San Francisco. But for all the brands that are a part of the umbrella, which I think is 18. At this point, it's all worked from home for the most part, and these brands live in these, and these writers live all over the US. So those

Mark Harper: 00:41:17

it's good in that respect, as well. So it allows us to have access to people at all kinds of time zones at this point as well, and to have expertise across all these different audience categories that help feed into ours. So do you create any more, I mean, here's the guy who is shooting whatever he could, and then with shooting all over the place for beers, are you at all creating and is that still in the loop is still in the loop. So I am more on the executive producing side of things and more on the post production side of things. So I will, I will help everything that we do, obviously comes through the lens of the military. So making sure that authenticity, the language, we use the uniform where everything makes sense, right? Not that there was a lot of uniforms, and it were mostly catering to the military, veteran world and to the to the military community, at large families, etc.

Mark Harper: 00:42:17

But all of those require a fundamentally nuanced storytelling approach to really appeal to our community at large.

Unknown: 00:42:27

We've had some really cool things that we've done now. So when we're in the midst of the pandemic, the US Army fuel band, so this is the band that actually travels the world and is sort of like half recruiting and set half like display of the military in the history of itself, came to us and said, our budget for traveling, the world is still here, and we can't use it. So we want you to make us a video. That was like what kind of a video and they said a TV special that airs on a broadcast network. And like, wow, that request just got specific and into a world that I don't know that anyone could just seemingly snap their fingers and do. But we did it you're able to shoot what something like 11 locations across the US package package it together for this thing called Songs of service. We got it to air on CBS affiliates right after the Army Navy game in December 2021. And that led to us getting a New York City. So regional Emmy last year, which was so cool. Jon Stewart was up on stage 10 minutes before we went up on stage to accept an Emmy for this production. And it was a testament to, you know, the type of storytelling you can do inside of the military, of which there are you know, millions of stories that go untold. And we're there to kind of bridge a little bit of that gap by sharing all the stories from our nonprofits from our Medal of Honor recipients to every day heroes that do X y&z in their communities, right. So we've done a lot of work for the VA as well telling a lot of their stories.

Unknown: 00:44:19

And then, you know, tons of branded content over the years with brands and who's trying to authentically connect to our audience.

Gigi Johnson: 00:44:26

So we're near the end of our conversation we've covered the gamut have a very interesting, intertwined and kind of opening up life. What have we not talked about? You'd want to mention?

Mark Harper: 00:44:42

Well, I think for your listeners, specifically, my path like you said, it was an unreal linear path to get to where I am and I think that what is exciting to me is when you're a creator, or a storyteller, have, you can often find ways to tell yourself that you maybe shouldn't be doing that, or you're not good enough, or you're not focused on this. And I'm thrilled to look back on my journey and say, I can't believe I found a path that allowed me to tell stories. Do it in a voice that I'm intimately familiar with, through a lens that I have very unique access through, to get to a point today, where I'm still able to tell and share stories of these things that are so important to me to a community that I love so much. And I think that there's a lot more storytelling capability out there for people in their everyday jobs, even if they're not on a path or they're working in this to be able to do that. And they will get noticed if the passion is there behind the project. So I think that was just a little plug for, if you want to make something go make it and if it's good people will see it. And you'll you'll get recognized and you'll potentially move into a direction that requires more of that the muck how can people reach out to you and what are you seeking right now.

Unknown: 00:46:09

They can see kind of all the we're doing with this portfolio of military publishers that I have. But I'm specifically I am looking for brands who want to connect with the military community, it's not always obvious that it is a massive community, about 133 million people in the US are directly connected in some way shape or form to the military. And there's billions of dollars 1.2 trillion actually in spending power that the military community has dissected across active duty to veterans, to families, to spouses, et cetera, et makes up a significant amount of money for brands. And there's a lot of benefits for activating the military community for your brand. They're very loyal when they think that a brand authentically cares about them. And so I encourage anyone to reach out to me if they're curious about how to approach the military community, we can, through our agency, basically have everyone covered on whatever they need to do however they need to reach their intended audience.

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Guest: Mark Harper, CEO, We Are the Mighty; General Manager, Military & Defense, Recurrent Ventures

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