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It's just chronological really.

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So I'm just going to start by saying, could you introduce yourself please and tell me a
little bit about who you are?

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Sure.

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Hi, Barnaby.

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I'm Greg Moyer, CEO of Blue Chalk Media.

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And happy to be chatting with you today.

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This is fun.

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So obviously you and I know each other quite well at this point, but I have a feeling that
I am still going to find out something that I don't know about you during today's

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conversation.

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So we'd love to just hear a bit about your career before you started Blue Chalk.

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Absolutely.

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Well, I've always wanted to work in the media.

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think my first job was working on a local newspaper in the printing shop with the printing
presses as sort of an apprentice back in high school.

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I think I was in junior high school when I started working summers there.

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And it was always been a fascination of mine to be able to work in the media one way or
another.

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And the fastest way in for me was actually to be

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learning something about the printing trades.

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And I enjoyed that work.

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I worked in newspapers throughout the rest of my high school career, my college career.

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I graduated from college where they went as a full-time journalist, had an opportunity to
be both an editor and a reporter and a photographer at a local daily in the Philadelphia

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suburbs in the United States.

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And it was just an amazing experience because it was an opportunity to explore your
curiosity and also to learn some craft, which I was really thankful for in the end.

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But what really drove me was my fascination with television.

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And at the time when I was in college, I had a professor, I said, I want to work in TV.

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And he said, you know, given what you do, you're not really into the entertainment side.

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You want to do more journalism or you want to do more nonfiction.

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That's hard.

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Maybe the only place to do it is PBS.

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And he said, but I know this guy who is starting this thing called HBO and maybe there's
something there with this satellite stuff.

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And I mean, I look back at it now and it was Jerry Levine's brother who was my psychology
professor at Bucknell University.

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And of course, Jerry Levin went on to start HBO and run Time Warner and had an amazing
career until it imploded with the AOL purchase.

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But be that as it may, that launched me, not that I worked for HBO, but I did start
hanging out with people who knew something about cable television.

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And I landed a job on the founding team of the Discovery Channel back in 1985.

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And that's really when my career took off.

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mean, the journalism stuff had been fun, but it was small potatoes.

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This was an opportunity to like get on a rocket ship.

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And so I was, think employee number 18.

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I was literally interviewed for my job the day the network went on the air, June 17th,
1985.

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We had to watch the first transmission of the Discovery Channel on a big TVRO satellite
dish because no cable company in the area carried it on day one.

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So we had to pull it out of the sky ourselves to confirm that we were actually on the air.

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But I joined six weeks later and for the next 13 years had a succession of jobs which
included running the Discovery and what was then called the Learning Channel, now it's

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called TLC and has a very different programming mandate.

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But I ran the Discovery Channel, the Learning Channel and for a while helped launch the
Animal Planet Channel.

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I was president of the domestic networks.

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helped launch the international networks.

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ran programming for five years.

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I was head of marketing and communications when that didn't mean much, but it was at least
a way to, you know, be useful.

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And it was like tree house TV for a while.

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It was so much fun.

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And all these young people who had kind of just graduated from college had not a ton of
experience, but it all gone to radio and television curricula.

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you know, we just had a blast and we launched what was really a remarkable business that,
you know, we can talk more about where it is today if that's useful, but, you know, for

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the part I was in, which was 1985 to 1999, it was in the ascendancy and it was a hell of a
place to be.

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Yeah, sounds like an incredible time to be starting out your career and a kind of
interesting arc, I guess, from being there on day one to the news recently that came out

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about Warner Brothers' discovery and the write down of their cable channels.

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So yeah, I guess that's kind of fascinating.

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It's been, I've seen the entire arc, I've seen the entire business cycle with that one
company.

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you know, in one way or another, I'm still contributing to that company through their
acquisition of our content that we make at Blue Chalk.

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But, you know, it's just, it's just been a fascinating, a fascinating journey over the
last 35, 40 years.

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So what did you do after you left Discovery?

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Yeah, I left Discovery.

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I wanted to leave Washington, D.C.

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We were headquartered down in Washington, or actually Bethesda, Maryland.

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But I went to New York.

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I wanted to get to New York, and I joined the programming arm of the big cable provider up
here, which at the time was called Cablevision.

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And I ran a number of their regional sports and news channels.

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And it's actually a very difficult time because we had

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regional news services in the New York area, which were really hyperlocal.

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mean, the whole idea wasn't to do a broadcast version where the entire DMA was covered,
but you did news for New Jersey or you did news for Connecticut or you did news for Long

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Island outside of New York.

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And during our stay or my run there, you know, we had 9-11 and it just turned everybody
inside out.

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I mean, the amount of work that went into those weeks and ultimately years of recovery
were just remarkable on so many levels.

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But that included the people in the news business who really had to take quite a number of
risks immediately after the attack to survive and to keep working and to face, frankly,

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the horror of it all.

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So it was a tough time to be in news, but I had always wanted to have that experience I
wanted to sort of electronic version of what I had seen in my early newspaper days.

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I got it and I got enough of it and so I ultimately left to join yet another really great
company scripts networks, which ran lifestyle channels Probably most famously known for

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its channel called the Food Network

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or Home and Garden TV, HGTV.

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And they had never done international.

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They had never taken their channel outside of North America.

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They had Canadian versions.

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But it was US and Canada, that was it.

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So they hired me as their first president of international and I helped over, I had a
three year contract to kind of get them started, because I was getting older at that point

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and I kind of didn't want an endless opportunity there.

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So I did a three year deal and we launched the Food Network in I think 60, 65 countries in
that three year period and laid the groundwork for relationships with the BBC, UK TV, and

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also did some of the initial research into the purchase of a terrestrial broadcasting
system in Poland.

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So it was a really fun time.

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It let me do a lot of travel, which had always been part of my career, but this was...

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travel and steroids.

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And that was kind of why I only wanted to do it three years because I knew living in
airport lounges was not going to be great for me or my health when I turned 60.

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Yeah.

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So then what is it that prompted you to start Blue Chalk?

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Well, gosh, yeah, well, I'm a horrible golfer.

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And, you know, I kind of love this work.

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I love this business.

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And there was a creative itch that I needed to scratch.

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And that was that particularly in the, later years as I was going up to, you know, I was
in sort of presidential or C-suite type.

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roles or least divisional president roles for the last 20 years of my life as an employee.

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And I thought, yeah, this is great.

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There's a lot of financial upside to that, but I'm not doing exactly what I loved when I
first was at Discovery, which was frankly commissioning or bringing content into

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existence.

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And so I wanted to be in the creative space for my last act.

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And it took a little while to figure that out, but

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ultimately started Blue Chalk with a business partner I met when we both worked at
Discovery, a woman named Pam Hewling, who is extremely instrumental in helping build the

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core values and personnel of the business.

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It was good partnership.

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And we've been doing it continuously for 11 years, so it's survived.

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But what I really wanted to accomplish was a place where I could experiment with maybe
somewhat more soulful content than what I saw a lot of television content being made.

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I wanted to experiment with new formats that might allow us to find business models that
would permit us to do the kind of sort of documentary style television or at least short

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films that

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we had always wanted to make, but for whatever reason, someone said no.

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So it was a little bit of a chance to just do my own thing and sort of without having to
ask permission, without having to research it endlessly before we said yes.

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And I thought that was a terrific freedom.

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And I really did enjoy it and I needed to kind of get that out of my system.

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But maybe to jump to your next question, which is,

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Well, why aren't you just continuing to do that?

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the point is I do want to stop at some point and I don't want to work until I'm dead.

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I do need to take some time off and I need a succession strategy.

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And I also need to realize that I often was my own angel investor.

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So I had nobody to answer to.

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I could say yes to anything I wanted to that I could afford to spend money on.

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And I don't think that's good for the business.

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I actually think the business needs to be more disciplined.

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And I want the people, my two dozen employees, to have a business that is strong and
sustaining.

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And for that to happen, we need to get a little more business-like.

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So was pretty clear I wanted to go into the market and figure out who to partner with,
that I could turn the company over to, ease my way out, train the next generation to run

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this thing, or at least train them on what I know.

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because there's many things I don't know that they need to learn.

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But that was my motivation for wanting to ultimately look for a sale, look for an exit.

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Okay, so just picking up on something you said earlier about Bluechalk giving you the
creative freedom to kind of go out and do what you wanted.

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There's still a commissioner though, right?

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So in practice, how did that turn out?

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Because I think that's a dream for so many people, isn't it?

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To sort of do something with unfettered creativity, but in practice, how does it work?

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How did it work for you?

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Well, clearly your creativity is never completely unfettered.

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fact, creativity without boundary never happens.

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In other words, creativity only happens when you know you have to operate within a box.

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And so when you get creative, as you figure out what kind of story can I tell, what kind
of technique can I bring, what kind of structure can I suggest that works within a

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particular budget,

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or within a particular need from a story point of view.

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So we always had a box to work in.

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And it's not as if we were running grad school for 10 years at Blue Chalk where everybody
could make the film that they wanted to use for their graduation ceremony.

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We had customers, we had clients, but what we tried to bring to them was assume that they
meant

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that they gave us the assignment with their best angels, meaning we're going to give them
the best film, maybe even a little bit bigger film than they're paying for, which was

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maybe not a great business strategy, but what it did mean was that we stretched our
creative muscle because we would always over-deliver on the quality or the...

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Usually it was the time it took to make the film better.

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and we were willing to donate that.

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And for a while I did it because I thought, well, I've got to build my portfolio.

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And, you know, thankfully we made well over 1,500 films in our decade.

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And, you know, there's, we've had to select, think, 50 to be on our portfolio page.

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But honestly, there are two or 300 that I could be just as happy to have on that page
because we really did some beautiful, beautiful work.

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And I think that learning how to build a creative muscle that respects the constraints of
the box you're given, and that box can be editorial, can be budget, it can be time, it can

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be travel or the lack of travel.

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That's the fun of it is you need to learn how to do those things.

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And then putting a really good strong

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business framework around those boxes is the part that we never spend as much time on.

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But we're going to get better at it, I'm sure.

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Yes, I hope so.

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But talk to me a bit about the growth and where did your first commission come from and
how quickly did you of scale up to the team that you've got today?

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Yeah, yeah.

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Well, our first commission, we opened the company literally on my 60th birthday.

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We signed the incorporation papers.

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And then we took six months and I had four employees at that time who we built a website.

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We actually self-commissioned a few stories that we could do so that we had films that
were at least available on our website to show what we were capable of.

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We pulled together just a couple of quick assignments from friends so that we had some
clients that we could list.

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So we started small, but honestly, one of our first films we ever made has now been seen
40 million times on YouTube.

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I mean, it's our most viral film.

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And so we started doing really good work right out of the gate, and that helped.

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Our first paying client...

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of any size came the day after we announced the formation of the agency and some old cable
colleagues of mine at the Weather Channel said, hey, why don't we get Greg and his new

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company to help us make a film, one a month for a year, about people who absolutely need
the weather forecast to be accurate to make their job or their application work.

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talk about another dream assignment, we didn't have a ton of money, but we had enough.

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Even in that first job to do some beautiful films, we profiled winemakers and how much the
weather affects each vintage of wine.

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made a film about, farming was an easy one because people absolutely needed the weather to
be right.

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But we also profiled a surfer in Hawaii who

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was a student of meteorology because he wanted to understand wave structure and when the
waves would be the most favorable for surfing.

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you know, that was a case where we're given a remit and said, go find and cast stories,
come back, we'll approve the story and then you can make the movie.

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And we did these three minute films for the Weather Channel.

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I think they stopped after nine months, but we had a...

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that we were off and running because that was the perfect type of assignment that we
needed to kind of float the business.

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And then, yeah, then talk to me about the growth of the team and how you built that and
how you ended up with an office in Portland.

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Yeah, well, right from the get-go, we wanted to hire our first employee was our creative
director, Rob Finch.

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And he had been employed by The Oregonian, which is a newspaper out there, big statewide
newspaper.

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And he had kind of taught himself how to do video remarkably well, spent a good bit of
time training and training and we decided we needed him as our creative lead.

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His condition was he needed to stay in Portland if he was going to be part of our company.

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Had little kids in school, the whole thing.

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And we said, well, OK, you've got a garage, so we have a Portland office.

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And so from the garage, we've been in four different venues since then.

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At our peak, think we had about 45 people employed in Portland in a big warehouse.

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Subsequently, we've shrunk that down to probably

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15 people or so.

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We had a big client.

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We've gone through a couple of waves of thinking we had the next great idea for how we
were going to keep Blue Chalk afloat.

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First was branded content, and we're kind of back to branded content.

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But branded was the way we began.

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Next big idea was we were going to do a lot of educational videos, and we actually had one
of the world's largest textbook publishers commissioning hundreds of videos from us.

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and that became a bit of a factory and that's when we had the maximum number of staff
people.

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But they then decided they had new management and killed the whole program and within six
months a multi-million dollar contract was being renegotiated and just shelved.

199
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Then the last big phase was we started working in television and doing a lot of work in
lifestyle programming for the Magnolia Channel which was

200
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a joint venture with Warner Brothers Discovery.

201
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You'll recognize the name.

202
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And that went swimmingly for two and a half to three years.

203
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And then Warner Brothers Discovery and so many other streamers kind of suddenly got judged
not so much on the size of their potential streaming audience, but the profitability of

204
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their companies.

205
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And when Netflix had one down quarter, it literally changed the momentum in the entire
industry.

206
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in 2021 or 2022 and that has forced a reconsideration and what will ultimately be a major
consolidation of the legacy media brands that are out in the world.

207
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I also didn't realize I was talking to someone at the Ibiza conference last week how well
known Chip and Joanna Gaines are and how much of a big deal that is.

208
00:21:10,908 --> 00:21:24,730
Yeah, yeah, they I mean these are people who really made a name for themselves by being
the hosts very charming hosts of Reality or I should say how to television, know They were

209
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big stars on the HDTV channel with their home renovation show, but they've had like ten
covers of People magazine, you know They're treated like they're treated like they're

210
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movie stars and but they're very

211
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very clever people and they ended up getting a joint venture with Warner Brothers
Discovery to take over one of the secondary channels that Discovery Group was operating

212
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called DIY Do It Yourself and they rebranded it as the Magnolia Network and they
commissioned seven series from us.

213
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So we were making lots of television for a better part of two and a half years.

214
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Yeah.

215
00:22:08,826 --> 00:22:09,906
Great.

216
00:22:10,447 --> 00:22:14,169
you've, there's a lot to cover.

217
00:22:14,169 --> 00:22:27,836
So you've kind of talked a little bit about why you're that you're sort of plans for
succession, but tell me, tell me a bit about how, you approached.

218
00:22:27,836 --> 00:22:34,416
So you had the idea that you kind of thought, okay, I'm, I'm willing to work and now I've,
but I need

219
00:22:34,416 --> 00:22:38,740
this company to go into the hands of the next person?

220
00:22:38,740 --> 00:22:43,364
How did you go about looking for potential buyers?

221
00:22:44,114 --> 00:22:51,348
Well, I did an initial search just to begin to understand this whole world, which I didn't
know anything about.

222
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I never owned a business, so I never sold a business.

223
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I did talk to a couple of brokers.

224
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It was pretty clear that we were subscale in terms of really going out in some sort of
more formal auction.

225
00:23:07,687 --> 00:23:13,816
mean, we really needed to have $10 million in revenue, and we had at that point maybe
five.

226
00:23:13,816 --> 00:23:22,892
So we were roughly halfway to being a big guy or big enough that somebody might just buy
it out of a business interest, pure business interest.

227
00:23:24,194 --> 00:23:39,725
So once I understood where we fell in the hierarchy of how businesses get sold, I realized
I had to find people who really were closer to an endemic buyer, meaning they were closer

228
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to the type of work that

229
00:23:41,648 --> 00:23:49,142
we do and that we valued and that would find value in the quality of the work we were
putting out.

230
00:23:50,223 --> 00:23:52,054
And then it was just personal networks.

231
00:23:52,054 --> 00:23:59,528
I approached a couple production companies that I had respected along the way who were
doing good things.

232
00:23:59,628 --> 00:24:10,512
I found, and maybe we want to just explain to people right now if you haven't done so in
the introduction, that I found you through our mutual membership in.

233
00:24:10,512 --> 00:24:17,065
an organization called the IQ, the International Quorum of Independent Film Producers.

234
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And I found people in that organization, first it was a curated group of people, so it
kinda came pre-approved, like these are good folks.

235
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Secondly, the values of that organization mirror the kind of values and reasons I was in
the business, in terms of wanting to do great work for people and do kind of...

236
00:24:38,872 --> 00:24:45,686
as often as possible films that mattered or at least films that were going to move people
in the right direction.

237
00:24:47,102 --> 00:24:53,612
And so I thought, here's this guy, Barnaby, he's got a podcast called The Exist Strategy.

238
00:24:55,014 --> 00:25:03,109
So maybe if there was no other listener, maybe the most important one was me to those
early podcasts.

239
00:25:03,109 --> 00:25:06,685
And I thought, gosh, this could this could be interesting.

240
00:25:06,685 --> 00:25:08,251
who knows about it.

241
00:25:10,554 --> 00:25:24,839
So I think, you know, we met once in New York or at least once in New York before we met
for lunch in Budapest at our last conference of IQ, which was in the fall of last year,

242
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fall of 23.

243
00:25:26,639 --> 00:25:36,772
And I think at that point you offered to, you know, I was curious as to whether, you know,
this is something you were interested in and you, thought were.

244
00:25:37,104 --> 00:25:44,517
very different from most of the others because you said, you know, if you'll, do an NDA,
show me your economics.

245
00:25:44,517 --> 00:25:48,399
I'll give you a quick view of what I can do.

246
00:25:48,399 --> 00:25:51,680
It may not be what you need, but this is what I can do.

247
00:25:51,801 --> 00:25:54,802
And so it didn't take more than a couple of weeks.

248
00:25:54,822 --> 00:26:02,824
And you had a document in front of me that established a baseline for what I thought I
could ultimately negotiate with you.

249
00:26:02,824 --> 00:26:04,266
That was

250
00:26:05,422 --> 00:26:16,558
I didn't know enough to know whether that was the right answer, but it was a start and it
proved to be the concluding deal or a version of it proved to be fairly prescient in terms

251
00:26:16,558 --> 00:26:19,049
of what we ultimately agreed on.

252
00:26:19,554 --> 00:26:20,804
Well, it's kind of interesting, isn't it?

253
00:26:20,804 --> 00:26:35,129
Because I think the kind of offer and the structure that I put in was limited by kind of
what I had available and, you know, what I, and I was, I felt like I was very sort of

254
00:26:35,229 --> 00:26:36,849
upfront about that.

255
00:26:36,909 --> 00:26:43,171
And then there was a period where you kind of said, okay, you know, it's not brilliant.

256
00:26:45,464 --> 00:26:52,485
I'll go and talk to some other people and you did that and that's absolutely to be
expected.

257
00:26:52,485 --> 00:26:58,048
But then you kind of sort of came back to it almost which, yeah.

258
00:26:58,048 --> 00:27:07,790
think and if, and you know, maybe I should, I'm willing to characterize the deal in broad
brush and say, well, ultimately proved attractive.

259
00:27:07,790 --> 00:27:16,762
The most attractive aspect of it was that it believed in our potential to grow the
business and it was going to reward us for growing the business.

260
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Everybody else gave me a deal which was looking more backward than forward, or at least
the best was half and half.

261
00:27:25,827 --> 00:27:34,244
everybody had some grow with, but mainly you were getting graded on where you had been as
opposed to where you were going to go.

262
00:27:34,444 --> 00:27:47,655
And I felt pretty strongly that I was holding the business back because I was doing what I
wanted to do with it and not necessarily running it as if it were, if there were other

263
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shareholders.

264
00:27:49,076 --> 00:27:55,069
And so I think the business has the potential to be kind of redirected and

265
00:27:55,069 --> 00:28:06,674
grow much more aggressively than I ever pushed it to do simply because that'll be the new
mandate as opposed to, well, Greg wanted to try his hand at this and he did.

266
00:28:06,674 --> 00:28:07,454
Hey, it worked.

267
00:28:07,454 --> 00:28:08,455
It was fun.

268
00:28:08,455 --> 00:28:10,085
But was it a business decision?

269
00:28:10,085 --> 00:28:12,026
Not necessarily.

270
00:28:12,026 --> 00:28:18,519
It wasn't without consideration of business, but it wasn't done for the business per se.

271
00:28:18,519 --> 00:28:24,321
So I wanted to have an opportunity to work with somebody who was going to

272
00:28:24,681 --> 00:28:40,481
kind of put Blue Chalk on a more comfortably sustainable footing or more reliably
sustainable footing than it had been and begin to reward me for having gotten us to this

273
00:28:40,481 --> 00:28:49,301
place, but also my willingness to turn it into an even aggressively more profitable
company over the next several years.

274
00:28:49,301 --> 00:28:52,077
And that's what your deal ultimately did.

275
00:28:52,077 --> 00:29:01,993
yeah, and I think in some ways, it was a bit of an unusual deal, or certainly some of the
professionals that I then, you know, the lawyers that you then show it to kind of, you

276
00:29:01,993 --> 00:29:05,494
know, I'm sure they've seen stuff like that before, but it isn't particularly the norm.

277
00:29:05,494 --> 00:29:12,187
But yeah, I guess just, if, you know, if you don't mind me just sort of talking about the
structure a bit, there was a

278
00:29:13,388 --> 00:29:18,720
a consideration that was paid for the business upfront, but ultimately we haven't agreed
the price, right?

279
00:29:18,720 --> 00:29:22,151
So it's what happens over the next three years.

280
00:29:22,852 --> 00:29:32,475
And then we do a calculation, a multiple of the EBITDA of the average from September, 1st
of September or 2nd.

281
00:29:33,616 --> 00:29:37,458
And then that kind of calculates the total amount that's going to be paid out.

282
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And I really like that deal as well, because it just puts you and I

283
00:29:43,646 --> 00:29:53,740
you know, we're completely or almost completely aligned on where we want to take this and
what needs to happen over the next three years.

284
00:29:55,682 --> 00:30:07,027
And then of course, at the sort of at the last hour, there was because you and I were
negotiating for, well, negotiating is perhaps a bit of a strong word, but you know,

285
00:30:07,027 --> 00:30:08,427
talking to each other.

286
00:30:10,872 --> 00:30:23,451
Yeah, for nearly nearly a year and then at the last hour we had the introduction of the
Auspicious group and Rachel and Mark coming in to join.

287
00:30:23,451 --> 00:30:31,186
Yeah, do you maybe want to talk a little bit?

288
00:30:31,927 --> 00:30:32,360
Yes.

289
00:30:32,360 --> 00:30:33,140
answering.

290
00:30:33,140 --> 00:30:42,605
But to me, I would just say, you know, I was satisfied to sell BlueChop to Barnaby.

291
00:30:42,946 --> 00:30:56,579
But in fact, I'm getting kind of a three in one deal because in the last month and a half
before we signed off, Barnaby pulled together

292
00:30:56,579 --> 00:31:09,083
consortium of other founders of other companies that had been markedly successful and
they're putting this holding company together called the auspicious group and then within

293
00:31:09,083 --> 00:31:24,617
which Blue Chalk will now be one of multiple businesses and getting the partnership of
Rachel and Mark along with you is just like this is bonus.

294
00:31:25,299 --> 00:31:29,171
We're just pinching ourselves and thinking, my God, this is incredible.

295
00:31:29,171 --> 00:31:39,455
And the ambition of it is even bigger than what I was going to be prepared to be satisfied
with, with what you and I had talked about when it was just the two of us.

296
00:31:40,075 --> 00:31:42,976
And that isn't to say you've already owned an agency.

297
00:31:42,976 --> 00:31:48,238
So it would have been two agencies, and I'm sure you would have gone out and found more.

298
00:31:48,238 --> 00:31:55,121
But it's happening faster and it's happening more powerfully because of the partnership
you've built.

299
00:31:55,343 --> 00:32:09,597
it with for auspicious and now with Blue Chalk keeping its brand, keeping its management,
keeping its basic business intact, but with the expectation of growing it dramatically and

300
00:32:09,597 --> 00:32:23,981
being part of what three or four agency holding company, very exciting for me, given that
I'm betting on the future, the next three years being fantastic years of growth.

301
00:32:25,225 --> 00:32:33,729
And I guess normally my next question would be about the integration, but I'm quite
involved with that.

302
00:32:33,870 --> 00:32:41,574
So, yes, I mean, we had a trip over at the beginning of September to meet the team.

303
00:32:42,254 --> 00:32:48,798
We had a day up at Greg's house in, I'm not going to say it right, Mamaronek.

304
00:32:48,798 --> 00:32:50,379
Mamaronek, I did, I got it right.

305
00:32:50,379 --> 00:32:51,038
Yeah.

306
00:32:51,038 --> 00:32:53,285
Just outside New York City, yeah.

307
00:32:53,588 --> 00:32:56,039
to meet the team there and then a couple of days in Portland.

308
00:32:56,039 --> 00:33:09,065
I have to say I was just, you know, I was expecting, I was expecting it to be a, you know,
a fun trip and a nice bunch of people, but I was really sort of blown away with the

309
00:33:09,065 --> 00:33:15,508
passion of the employees, the sort of dedication to their craft.

310
00:33:15,508 --> 00:33:20,452
But also I think what's amazing about the team is a

311
00:33:20,452 --> 00:33:27,192
a total sort of openness and willingness to kind of learn from this new chapter.

312
00:33:27,192 --> 00:33:30,852
And that's kind of the perfect combination.

313
00:33:30,852 --> 00:33:43,432
Because I guess there's a risk there isn't there that when you get kind of super dedicated
filmmakers that they won't like it if anything changes or any kind of restrictions are

314
00:33:43,432 --> 00:33:46,942
placed or any change, know, if anything changes from the way they used to do things.

315
00:33:46,942 --> 00:33:49,838
But I think they've got a wonderful

316
00:33:49,838 --> 00:33:51,039
combination of both those things.

317
00:33:51,039 --> 00:33:57,244
So yeah, was just so impressed.

318
00:33:57,385 --> 00:33:59,856
Well, as were we.

319
00:34:01,178 --> 00:34:14,226
yeah, I mean, one thing that we have done well, and I won't be shy about taking credit for
it, we've, and this is a big part of my business partner, Pam's contribution too.

320
00:34:14,226 --> 00:34:19,930
She and I, I think have curated a great group of people.

321
00:34:19,930 --> 00:34:27,375
And you know, one thing, you're gonna support your own business and be your own angel
investor, you don't wanna have.

322
00:34:27,411 --> 00:34:28,612
a lot of hassle with it.

323
00:34:28,612 --> 00:34:30,994
You don't want to be fighting your team.

324
00:34:30,994 --> 00:34:36,167
You don't, you you just want it to be, I want to come to work today kind of experience for
everybody.

325
00:34:36,167 --> 00:34:38,899
And I think we've done a pretty good job of that.

326
00:34:39,420 --> 00:34:41,581
So I, they're ready, but they're ready to grow.

327
00:34:41,581 --> 00:34:42,251
They're hungry.

328
00:34:42,251 --> 00:34:43,312
They're ready to grow.

329
00:34:43,312 --> 00:34:48,606
They're ready to, you know, be offered a bigger stage to play on.

330
00:34:48,946 --> 00:34:52,088
They all want to advance in their careers.

331
00:34:52,088 --> 00:34:56,255
So there's also a responsibility that I took

332
00:34:56,255 --> 00:35:08,695
We took most of our employees directly out of college, oftentimes grad school, so they may
have had one job or some job experiences, but we pretty much trained them in the way we've

333
00:35:08,695 --> 00:35:10,887
been doing things.

334
00:35:11,288 --> 00:35:16,532
that's been, for them, I think, a pretty exciting experience.

335
00:35:16,532 --> 00:35:22,957
But they're ready to play on a bigger stage, and they're completely open, as you said.

336
00:35:22,957 --> 00:35:25,178
That's what's so great about them.

337
00:35:26,119 --> 00:35:34,261
they'll absorb new opportunity and relish it and see it as a way to advance their careers.

338
00:35:34,763 --> 00:35:35,804
enjoy.

339
00:35:36,204 --> 00:35:41,564
next question is, how does it feel?

340
00:35:41,564 --> 00:35:48,762
you've owned this company for 11 years and you've sold it.

341
00:35:48,762 --> 00:35:59,085
Yeah, you know, it may be one of those things where I haven't really processed it fully
yet because it's, I mean, first off, there's no regret.

342
00:35:59,085 --> 00:36:08,808
I'm thrilled with you and with Rachel and with Mark and so far the team has just been
anything, nothing but excited.

343
00:36:08,808 --> 00:36:11,958
So, I mean, there's been no angst here.

344
00:36:13,259 --> 00:36:17,560
I think it'll be much harder for me in three years if I'm actually walking away.

345
00:36:18,465 --> 00:36:22,886
And that'll be the moment that I need to prepare for.

346
00:36:22,886 --> 00:36:31,430
But right now, it's almost like I'm more engaged than I've been because I want to
integrate with you and I also want to keep the business going and I want to get new

347
00:36:31,430 --> 00:36:34,771
clients and we're making big films.

348
00:36:35,271 --> 00:36:40,453
So it hasn't been any sort of a let up as yet.

349
00:36:42,254 --> 00:36:46,496
But let me give myself a little bit of grace here.

350
00:36:47,568 --> 00:36:49,929
I think I'm willing to share credit with people.

351
00:36:49,929 --> 00:37:04,314
And so if I want everybody to succeed in this thing, if they succeed and we do it in a way
that produces some great award-winning work and we make some clients happy, I'm going to

352
00:37:04,314 --> 00:37:05,514
be thrilled.

353
00:37:05,554 --> 00:37:07,975
So, you know, that's the goal here.

354
00:37:07,975 --> 00:37:10,626
I want everybody to win in this thing.

355
00:37:12,704 --> 00:37:24,386
And then the question that I ask everyone, and so I have to ask you is, know, if you're
having been through it now, is there anything that you would do differently and, know,

356
00:37:24,386 --> 00:37:28,004
pretend I'm not here.

357
00:37:28,004 --> 00:37:29,467
Yeah, no.

358
00:37:30,151 --> 00:37:31,001
Well.

359
00:37:33,356 --> 00:37:40,061
I'm trying to think, I mean, the quick answer is I'm kind of satisfied with the way things
turned out.

360
00:37:40,762 --> 00:37:45,735
It took about, I really started to think about selling the business.

361
00:37:45,735 --> 00:38:00,220
We had an approach from another production company in the summer of 23 that kind of said,
okay, I got it.

362
00:38:00,220 --> 00:38:04,920
really take this seriously because they want to sign an NDA and they want to do stuff.

363
00:38:04,960 --> 00:38:13,020
And I had been toying with the idea for six months prior to that, thinking, you know, got
to do this.

364
00:38:13,660 --> 00:38:16,540
I can't ignore this forever.

365
00:38:17,220 --> 00:38:20,082
So I guess...

366
00:38:24,024 --> 00:38:26,046
I don't know what I would do differently.

367
00:38:26,046 --> 00:38:27,467
I really don't.

368
00:38:27,808 --> 00:38:30,750
I don't think we were big enough to go too many other routes.

369
00:38:30,750 --> 00:38:31,907
I don't think I had too many.

370
00:38:31,907 --> 00:38:46,903
I needed to use my own network to figure out who would find value in what we've built
because we didn't hit enough of the classic business metrics of scale to suggest that I

371
00:38:46,903 --> 00:38:52,047
could turn it over to the experts and they would figure out how to sell it and do the
right thing with it.

372
00:38:52,988 --> 00:38:56,948
somebody would have bought it, but they wouldn't have necessarily cared.

373
00:38:56,948 --> 00:39:04,848
And I did have, I had three other term sheets along with yours to consider.

374
00:39:04,848 --> 00:39:08,488
So we did get offers from everybody that we approached.

375
00:39:09,568 --> 00:39:18,036
And that was, I took pride in that because that said, okay, they see the value, but you
had this kind of...

376
00:39:18,104 --> 00:39:23,785
Again, the thing that distinguished the deal was it was all about what can we grow
together?

377
00:39:23,946 --> 00:39:31,208
Not here, I'm going to buy what you've done or buy your past and decide what goes forward.

378
00:39:31,208 --> 00:39:33,768
And they weren't all, it wasn't black and white.

379
00:39:33,768 --> 00:39:39,300
Everybody had some version of a hybrid future past view.

380
00:39:39,300 --> 00:39:47,812
But, but I really appreciated the fact that, okay, if you, if I let, I give you the keys,
you know, we're going to kind of

381
00:39:48,326 --> 00:39:56,701
grow this together for at least a period of time and that will determine the value that we
build at the end of the day.

382
00:39:57,202 --> 00:40:00,985
So anyway, I'm sorry, I paused a long time.

383
00:40:00,985 --> 00:40:03,836
Hopefully you'll edit some of the delay out.

384
00:40:03,836 --> 00:40:06,057
automatically edits it out now.

385
00:40:09,278 --> 00:40:10,778
So don't worry about that.

386
00:40:11,538 --> 00:40:26,723
No, and guess just to say, I think the rich history and the legacy of Blue Chalk is sort
of holding the keys to that now is genuinely an honor.

387
00:40:26,723 --> 00:40:31,608
So thanks very much for deciding to go with.

388
00:40:31,608 --> 00:40:33,729
me and the auspicious team.

389
00:40:34,831 --> 00:40:43,458
So at the risk of this becoming too much of a sort of love-in, we'll probably just like
wrap it up.

390
00:40:44,998 --> 00:40:45,680
very good.

391
00:40:45,680 --> 00:40:48,910
It's been fun to chat about this with you.

392
00:40:48,910 --> 00:40:53,060
anyway, you can tell we're ready to roll.

393
00:40:53,486 --> 00:40:54,756
Great stuff.

394
00:40:54,857 --> 00:40:57,959
I will press stop.

395
00:40:59,140 --> 00:40:59,803
Is that stop?

396
00:40:59,803 --> 00:41:00,543
Have I pressed stop?

397
00:41:00,543 --> 00:41:01,142
No, there we go.

398
00:41:01,142 --> 00:41:02,042
Stop.

399
00:41:02,743 --> 00:41:03,783
Great.

400
00:41:05,345 --> 00:41:07,526
Yeah, there's a couple of little bits.

401
00:41:07,526 --> 00:41:08,567
think.