Audience, Agency, and the Rewiring of Media with Kyle Hjelmeseth

Orlando Wood (05:21.877)
All right, Kyle Yelmseth. I'm so excited to have you on. Thanks for coming on the podcast.

Kyle Hjelmeseth (05:33.985)
Hey, thank you Orlando. We've already had a great, I mean, the people aren't getting all the fun that we've already had, so.

Orlando Wood (05:38.858)
Yeah. It's very true, actually. I wonder if we should do more pre-rolls, because it's been really fun talking to you so far.

Kyle Hjelmeseth (05:47.457)
I know that Fruit by the Foot would really hit in today's audience.

Orlando Wood (05:49.921)
I thought I didn't, I didn't realize it would hit that young, but, well, you are the CEO of, GMB digital management. And I came to know you through Jagger Waters. And as I've been interviewing people on this podcast, it's become clear to me how huge the creator economy is becoming. And it's sort of a blind spot to so many entertainment companies, advertising agencies. and it's.

Kyle Hjelmeseth (05:54.605)
You

Kyle Hjelmeseth (06:17.623)
there.

Orlando Wood (06:18.536)
It's come such a long way since you've, you know, since you were in it. You know, for most of the 20th century, if you wanted an audience, you had to go through a studio and network or an agency. Today, creators build audiences first and the industry is sort of scrambling to catch up. Tell me about your 10 years in this industry and watching it mature.

Kyle Hjelmeseth (06:32.342)
Mm-hmm.

Kyle Hjelmeseth (06:38.349)
Watching a mature is a great way to start the combo because I was actually at a conference last year and as I was sitting in on somebody's panel they were talking about what a wild west the critter economy is and I chuckled probably too loudly, distracted them because I'm like you know I've been in this game for over a decade now and I remember referring to it as the wild west

But right now I feel like we're really hitting an interesting

Orlando Wood (07:07.264)
Mm.

Kyle Hjelmeseth (07:08.653)
point of maturity. It's no longer the wild west. We know what rates are. We know who the players are, generally speaking. There's a lot of mature players. When it comes to the ad agencies, you mentioned ad agencies, PR agencies, a lot of these companies had to kind of adopt new practices over the last 10 years or so to figure out what is this influencer, what is blogger, and what is influencer, now what is the creator economy. But they've really done a great job of figuring out, or we've all done a...

Orlando Wood (07:10.272)
Mm-hmm.

Orlando Wood (07:29.895)
Mm. Mm.

Kyle Hjelmeseth (07:37.612)
job of figuring out and building it together. Ten years ago it was a soup of, you know, was like how I described the Big Bang. know, just like everybody kind of out doing their own things and their own little vacuum of space and rarely colliding. But now it's become this behemoth that's supposed to be worth half a trillion dollars by

Orlando Wood (07:46.068)
Hmm.

Orlando Wood (07:52.895)
Yeah.

Kyle Hjelmeseth (07:58.482)
year. And so it's exciting to have been a part of it. don't take, you know, I'm not somebody who's gonna take a lot of credit for having noticed this 10 years ago. I didn't. My wife, you know, kind of wrangled me into helping her in her business. Then we just happened to find success and then other people wanted me to help them. And now we've been here for over a decade and we actually just last week we surpassed a hundred million in contracts that we've done.

Orlando Wood (07:59.734)
Yeah.

Orlando Wood (08:26.944)
Wow, great.

Kyle Hjelmeseth (08:27.213)
between brands and agencies and the talent that we represent. And so those are very like salient milestone of not only our place in the space, but how just important the space is in general. Because I know that I'm not the only one.

Orlando Wood (08:30.656)
Mm-hmm.

Orlando Wood (08:40.319)
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think that's the thing is like just even hearing the way it's term, mean, influencer was a term that seemed to signal a unicorn. You know, you had, you know, people who had figured out a way to get followings online and now even just referring to it as the creator economy, it is its own industry. I think we're going to start calling it the creator industry soon. But it is, you know, fundamentally on some level kneecapping old systems.

Kyle Hjelmeseth (08:54.231)
Mm-hmm.

Kyle Hjelmeseth (09:00.162)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Orlando Wood (09:09.822)
And I think it's really developed into something very mature.

Kyle Hjelmeseth (09:10.208)
It is. It is.

Yeah, well, I mean, I'm sure we'll really dig into the kneecapping idea. What's interesting, I was just watching a producer friend of mine, she had posted an Instagram reel kind of coincidentally yesterday about she was visiting the Universal Backlot. She was talking about how much has changed in her experience in visiting the lot, how little activity was there. And one of the ways that she pointed out this like start change in activity was the fact that, you know, I guess there's a place where there's usually water trucks that are open

always on standby, different scenes that you're gonna need. And there was none there and they'd actually parked other things there where the water trucks used to be. And when I was listening to her, it really occurred to me that over 100 years ago, everything was in, money was in making film, right? Because everything was in the movie theater. And then we've had the dominance of TV. The dominance of TV and the format really, I don't think people think about enough, actually started to slip away, not...

Orlando Wood (09:43.85)
Yeah. Yeah.

Kyle Hjelmeseth (10:13.011)
the advent of social media at all but with really just with personal computers because it's all about where our tension has been split off and so once personal computing really started to come up then you'd have a TV in a room with somebody on their computer doing those two things and you started to lose attention that way. Then of course with your smartphones and you really started to lose attention and so when I was considering this I was like how has the entertainment industry just decided or why

Orlando Wood (10:16.128)
Mm. Mm.

Yeah.

Kyle Hjelmeseth (10:39.565)
to ignore the fact that the phone is the format for so long. And now it's at that crushing point where we've known that this has been the format for however many years, but they've decided to ignore it, you know, to try to save the format on the TV instead of coming over here. And now we're at the point where it can't be ignored. And the creator economy is just one,

Orlando Wood (10:56.64)
Yeah.

Kyle Hjelmeseth (11:05.521)
outgrowth of the attention shifting to your phone, one of many. But now we're at the point where it can't be ignored. I think entertainment, kind of what you and I talked about maybe in last week setting up for this is entertainment's like, oh, what is this creator economy thing and how do we get into that and be a piece or a part of it? So all of those conversations are happening in a really interesting way.

Orlando Wood (11:06.698)
Hmm.

Orlando Wood (11:22.708)
Mm-hmm.

Orlando Wood (11:32.671)
Yeah, it's interesting to me because, you know, we talked before about, I've brought up on this, Doug Shapiro came onto this podcast and he talked about the difference between creatives and creatores. And creatives are artists and artisans and people who work within a system. usually hyper specialize in one thing. They are a screenwriter, they are a production designer, they're a DP. But they require the infrastructure of both the distribution system and the investment of

Kyle Hjelmeseth (11:44.972)
Yes.

Kyle Hjelmeseth (11:53.751)
Mm-hmm.

Orlando Wood (12:01.094)
usually a studio, a brand to an ad agency. It requires that infrastructure for them to be able to do their job.

Kyle Hjelmeseth (12:08.205)
Bring the creative to life and like, yeah.

Orlando Wood (12:10.632)
A hundred percent. And I think that, you know, what we're seeing is that obviously creators a have a much broader skillset, across, know, and it's getting broader with the advent of AI or post-production tools that they now have access to that they didn't before. But I think that what's interesting to me is that so much of the naysaying about content creators as creatives and as, as, as artists is.

Kyle Hjelmeseth (12:26.007)
Right.

Orlando Wood (12:38.378)
coming from the creatives and the previous distribution systems. And they're going, this is bad for artists. And it's like, well, actually, en masse, more people are, A, earning a living from being creative than there has ever been before. And B, they take their audiences with them from one project to another. I mean, and that is a huge flaw in the studio and entertainment systems where...

Kyle Hjelmeseth (12:42.923)
Yeah.

Kyle Hjelmeseth (12:55.275)
God bless.

Kyle Hjelmeseth (13:00.237)
Mm-hmm.

Orlando Wood (13:05.724)
One bad project, if you were a star, I mean, we're talking about it with Glenn Powell right now. He's had a few stinkers at the box office and people are going, maybe Top Gun and Twister was a flash in the pan. Maybe his rate should go down. Maybe there isn't an audience for him, I mean, creators take their audience with them. They are sort of protected from perceived single financial failures.

Kyle Hjelmeseth (13:09.921)
Mm-hmm.

Kyle Hjelmeseth (13:20.109)
Mmm.

Orlando Wood (13:35.61)
I think it allows for broader amounts of art and creativity to be in the world from more people, and it allows them a certain degree of protection from the fickle senses of, you know, the monetization of old project, you of old films.

Kyle Hjelmeseth (13:46.604)
Yeah.

Kyle Hjelmeseth (13:54.028)
Yeah, it's not even so much like there's a couple things I want to address and what you were saying like It's about the democratization of choice, you know, and it's not really in the hands of those creators you were referring to anymore It's in everybody's hands and you know, we're are the creators we represent are benefiting from this democratization It's not that we looked at traditional entertainment said we don't like that. We're gonna go

over here and let's all forget about that. And I feel like I understand why a lot of feelings and everything get wrapped up. There was actually a creator of a very big show, a few very big shows that I was in a meeting with last year who was talking about casting one of the influencers that we represent into a new show that they were behind. And I used the word creators. I have always not liked...

Orlando Wood (14:22.164)
Hmm.

Orlando Wood (14:44.298)
Mm-hmm.

Kyle Hjelmeseth (14:50.517)
because I feel like not everybody who's on the platform.

Orlando Wood (14:51.05)
Mm-hmm.

Kyle Hjelmeseth (14:54.285)
doing this thing, creating a community, getting followers. They're all showing up with the intention to influence. So I really prefer creator. And when I said the word creator, this person took such great offense because they come from old world traditional entertainment that it completely changed the whole dynamic of the conversation. There were producers on the horn and they were calling me afterwards to apologize and try to save the fact that we want to do something together because it really bent this person out of shape and they had to go to

Orlando Wood (15:00.104)
Hmm. Yeah.

Orlando Wood (15:06.474)
Yeah.

Orlando Wood (15:13.332)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Orlando Wood (15:22.346)
Mm.

Kyle Hjelmeseth (15:22.825)
explains to explain to me what a creator really meant, which is exactly how you described it. This person, you know, like who is the writer in the room and it's a team, a group of creatives together making some bigger effort. But, but that's just, it's not the world that we live in. And I think the faster that people realize the second part of, what I wanted to, what you said that I wanted to respond to, the faster that people realize that the power is in their own hand.

Orlando Wood (15:26.773)
Yeah.

Orlando Wood (15:31.444)
Mmm.

Hmm.

Hmm.

Orlando Wood (15:41.866)
Yeah.

Kyle Hjelmeseth (15:52.173)
and they can make a good amount.

Orlando Wood (15:52.736)
Hmm. Yeah.

Kyle Hjelmeseth (15:56.846)
the faster that everybody's gonna get to the other side of whatever moment we're in and truly benefiting from these systems that are now mature, you know, not the Wild West anymore. And so, you know, the phrase that we came up with this last year really in thinking about how do we help our friends in the entertainment community is green light yourself. Like we're in this new paradigm where you absolutely can green light yourself.

Orlando Wood (15:57.568)
Hmm.

Orlando Wood (16:01.696)
Hmm. Hmm.

Mmm.

Kyle Hjelmeseth (16:25.567)
If you're willing, you know, you're courageous enough, if you're willing to put yourself out there and show people how your mind works and where your ideas come from. You know, I think one of the things that I've really learned about the entertainment side of things that those who are from entertainment and those kind of chops love to only or really only like to show the finished product. They want to show how it really, they don't want to show the behind the scenes of curtain, the editing room stuff. They want to show, you know,

Orlando Wood (16:29.941)
Hmm.

Orlando Wood (16:50.133)
Hmm.

Kyle Hjelmeseth (16:53.261)
to find the product was and there has been this you know cognitive dissonance between how my influencers or creators work and showing everything in an authentic way versus I really need to show you just the finished thing I might show up grimy gritty dirty pull all of your just vomit what you're thinking about on the internet the internet

Orlando Wood (17:03.861)
Yeah.

Orlando Wood (17:11.604)
Yeah.

Kyle Hjelmeseth (17:16.919)
people will decide what's good. You can learn from the data that's right in front of you, the likes, the comments. It'll help you push your most creative and best ideas forward. But yeah, let's fighting against this tide and leaning in.

Orlando Wood (17:20.51)
Hmm.

Orlando Wood (17:28.158)
Yeah.

Orlando Wood (17:36.191)
Yeah, I'm constantly shocked by the absolute refusal. Every, every, every content creator that I speak to keeps kind of looking at the old structures and being like, I wish they would just learn to build in public. I wish they would learn to fail more openly. I wish they would learn. And, and what's amazing to me is that they feel that the content creators that I've met feel that they actually have a lot to give, in terms of strategy and understanding to the old guard.

Kyle Hjelmeseth (17:52.417)
Yeah.

Kyle Hjelmeseth (18:03.447)
Yeah! Yes!

Orlando Wood (18:04.99)
And they're trying to, and the old guard is going, no, you don't know what you're talking about. And they're like, look at my audience. I clearly know something you don't know.

Kyle Hjelmeseth (18:12.525)
100%. I would say that has been my direct experience over the last couple of years because in the summer of 2024, you know, we've been based in Los Angeles this entire time and now, you know, here for over a decade. We got our first office about three years ago.

you know, coming out of pandemic, we really started to establish ourselves, think, more in one of these ways of like presenting as a company, as a not a digital first company, but hey, we're here, you can come meet me in the flesh. In the summer of 2024, I think, you know, after the strikes and whatnot, I started to get a lot of random phone calls, and I still get these random phone calls to my number today, who's like, it's somebody who's representing an actor and is asking, can we co-work on rep-

representing an actor. I've had agents and partners at management companies call me, know, cold call and say, hey, we'd to talk about how to like do something together because we need to create more opportunity for the people we're representing and whatnot. And then I've been in a few of these meetings that we've set up where the rudeness of the eye roll

Orlando Wood (19:00.48)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Orlando Wood (19:12.638)
Yeah.

Orlando Wood (19:16.021)
Yeah.

Kyle Hjelmeseth (19:25.773)
As I'm openly talking about how would I do works and how to be a part of it, it's been like, yeah, it's hard for me to even put into words. It's been flabbergasting, like just incredible how incredulous some people are when to your point, I'm like, yeah, come on over, man. Like this is, it's for everybody.

Orlando Wood (19:25.973)
Yeah.

Orlando Wood (19:30.826)
Yeah. Yeah.

Orlando Wood (19:41.984)
Mmm.

Orlando Wood (19:46.196)
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Kyle Hjelmeseth (19:48.237)
I'll help you understand how it works. I'll give you my inside baseball and you can do it too, you know, but yeah. I think that, I do feel like that tone and temperature is shifting, but I don't think it's out of, know, just because people are feeling, you know, like really excited about the creator economy to some degree as much as it is like being forced up against the wall.

Orlando Wood (19:54.548)
Mmm.

Orlando Wood (20:02.432)
Yeah.

Orlando Wood (20:13.664)
Well, it's become undeniable, hasn't it? I I think that that's the, you know, at a certain point you can hate on LeBron all you want, but he, you know, he, his points scoring at a certain point becomes undeniable. mean, you know, I mean, I see a sort of beautiful idea that, you know, that I see so many people who are creators who do everything from cleaning really dirty rugs to, you know, to making, yeah.

Kyle Hjelmeseth (20:21.344)
Yeah.

Kyle Hjelmeseth (20:26.38)
100%.

Kyle Hjelmeseth (20:40.303)
Oh my gosh. The amount of time I watch somebody sweeping a rug, sweeping that dirty water off.

Orlando Wood (20:47.572)
Yeah. Yeah. It's been 15 minutes at a time doing it. And you're like, well, this person is a craftsman at what they do. I see, you know, I would love to be following some production designer and see them put online. my God. I can't believe I got Superman. I I'm so thrilled. I'm a comic nut. This is the biggest job of my career. You know, even if they were to do that, they then have to go silent until the movie is is released. And I think that if

Kyle Hjelmeseth (20:55.318)
Yeah.

Orlando Wood (21:17.524)
distribution companies just learned from creators and went, you know what, if we just approved for them to be able to go, my God, I've got this deadline and it's coming up and whatever else. I think that actually what they would see is a broader interest in people showing up at movies because I think people would be going, you know, I'm not really that into Superman, but there's this production designer I love and she, is the biggest job of her career and I'm into it. The thought to me of

Kyle Hjelmeseth (21:40.519)
Orlando Wood (21:46.41)
People going to a movie theater not because of Glenn Powell or Sidney Sweeney, but going because of the production designer? I can't think of anything cooler.

Kyle Hjelmeseth (21:55.821)
You, my friend, I mean, if anybody from any major studio or platform is listening to us ramble right now and talk about what's going on, I hope that they just really listen in to what you said because you absolutely just gave the keys to the future of the space away. You're 100 % right. It is about how it all comes together and there is...

Orlando Wood (22:03.571)
Yeah.

Orlando Wood (22:15.647)
Yeah.

Kyle Hjelmeseth (22:21.44)
there while there may be a fear of like giving too much away and like losing seats because we're like showing that know that behind the scenes look or feel or whatever there's actually we live in the where the power dynamic has shifted the power paradigm has shifted and that is what the people want so they can believe they need to believe in what is created that is how you build authenticity even around

Orlando Wood (22:24.596)
Hmm. Yeah.

Orlando Wood (22:40.968)
Yeah. Yeah.

Kyle Hjelmeseth (22:45.374)
character like Superman, you're building the authenticity of everybody who's a part of telling the story, showing how their brains work, and that's gonna put people in seats. And while I understand that, this is something that just needs to be trumpeted to, you know, from the highest mountaintop over here in Los Angeles, to all these studio heads as far as how to really save the industry. It's really about bringing belief back. Crap.

Orlando Wood (22:49.472)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Orlando Wood (23:11.614)
Yeah.

Kyle Hjelmeseth (23:13.61)
And there's so many things, you were talking about the rug maker. It's not just entertainment. It's like the ability where I can see and watch the craftsman who's cleaning those rugs. That craftsman, not only it has the ability now to monetize just watching them do what they do, but they're also creating a pipeline of people interested in going to them for their services. So they monetize in like five or six different ways that didn't occur before.

Orlando Wood (23:23.36)
Mm.

Orlando Wood (23:35.646)
Yeah.

Kyle Hjelmeseth (23:40.141)
I think about that person the same way I think about a plumber, an electrician, anybody out here who's doing any facet of like what's necessary to keep society moving, this is how you see their ideas and then you believe in what they do and then you hire them in for the jobs and then you take that and you apply it to entertainment, you apply it to the gaffer, you apply it to the AD, the lighting designer, whatever it is and then you believe in what they're doing.

Orlando Wood (23:40.607)
Yeah.

Orlando Wood (24:02.272)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Orlando Wood (24:09.248)
Yeah. Yeah.

Kyle Hjelmeseth (24:11.372)
And I think we have to move into this new era of needing to see how the soup is made.

Orlando Wood (24:19.796)
Yeah, I mean, I think that there's a huge kind of skills gap there, isn't there? know, entertainment people know how to make things, albeit very expensively and slowly. you know, creators know how to build an audience. You know, is there who who do you think is going to close the gap first?

Kyle Hjelmeseth (24:38.444)
well, mean creators have already closed at first because now entertainment is looking to find creators. Entertainment is maybe they're not getting the lesson that you just put out there, what they're doing. What I see most happening right now is that they're now...

the platforms for casting, know, instead of like showing up at the mall to find the next person, know, next hot face or whatever, or through agents and whatnot. It's like you can see what somebody's doing, you can cast them immediately into shows and now you have Mr. Beast with his huge, you know, properties, Dar Man with, you know, a growing set of properties, and I'm sure they're lining up several others that they're casting out of the creator economy.

Orlando Wood (25:07.221)
Yeah.

Kyle Hjelmeseth (25:24.524)
So in my mind, entertainment isn't necessarily doing something different at this time. They're doing a little bit of the same, but through spending more time looking at this as a casting mechanism. Creator economy, creators are still doing all the innovative work that are putting them there, like with the audiences. I feel like they're creating more opportunities, they're creating more need for conversation to happen than the other way.

Orlando Wood (25:35.328)
Mm-hmm.

Orlando Wood (25:41.056)
Yeah.

Orlando Wood (25:50.783)
Yeah.

Kyle Hjelmeseth (25:52.33)
Yeah, I don't know, Ian, it's... Go ahead.

Orlando Wood (25:55.379)
No, I was just saying like, you know, I'd love to get into more like what you do. I mean, you brought up before, you know, you and I had spoken before and you talked about something called monetizing the wake, you know, this idea that creators are sailing through their lives, sharing them on Instagram. Gmb's job is to capture the energy that trails behind them, not necessarily to steer the ship. I love that. Can you break that down? What does the wake actually consist of?

Kyle Hjelmeseth (26:06.527)
Okay.

Kyle Hjelmeseth (26:20.01)
Yeah, so what you're talking about, especially for the audience who's listening right now, is that there is a very big difference between the creators that we manage at GMB and...

entertainment-ready personalities. If I were to say, we manage over 100 creators here, but if we just say 100, maybe seven to 10 of the creators that we manage today are really somebody that you could see putting into an unscripted or even scripted show. We do have some people that would be great if you drop them into a variety show type of program.

Orlando Wood (26:45.856)
Mm. Mm-hmm.

Kyle Hjelmeseth (26:55.148)
fantastic. She creates all these different characters. She's great in sort of a variety concept, but you can do a lot with her. We have actually a couple people who

Like, yeah, you could cast them from their Instagram or TikTok profiles into a movie or show. But that is really, by and large, maybe 10 people that translate into more traditional entertainment formats. The other 90 or so, you know, which really, I think, is a representation of the entire creator economy that we're talking about. The largest percentage of this creator economy are everyday type people.

Orlando Wood (27:11.701)
Yeah.

Kyle Hjelmeseth (27:33.643)
people that you're doing life with. And so when we were speaking before, I was just, you know, kind of equating this to a person who's living their life. They're like a boat sailing through the water. If you tried to put them into a format, put a show around them,

take them out of their real life so it steer them off in a different direction. And so most of the people we represent, we're not trying to do that. We're letting them live their lives. We'll find a brand or a product that fits into their life in some way, fits into their content, and then we do that brand deal. Whether it's Walmart, Christian Dior,

Orlando Wood (27:49.376)
Mm hmm. Right.

Orlando Wood (28:09.312)
Right here. Yeah. Yeah.

Kyle Hjelmeseth (28:09.34)
It's liquid death, whatever it may be. I mean, it could even be the microphone, right? But you find out how that fits. It works best if we figure out how does this fit into their actual life so that there's an authentic story to be told about them integrating it into their everyday in some way, What we are now really looking at as a top management firm in our space and one of

Orlando Wood (28:18.56)
Mm-hmm.

Orlando Wood (28:27.476)
Yeah.

Kyle Hjelmeseth (28:35.212)
management firms is, okay, how do we monetize by creating things that are not brand deals? And there has been really great, we've spent a good amount of time over the last few years looking at, can we do long form content series? There's some people, yes, we can do that with. So that's one option and opportunity that we

at and we have a team that's working on those greater pitches of long-form series content, entertainment-adjacent content. Entertainment-adjacent formats, how I should say it. So we have a slate of things that are in development that are long-form series.

Orlando Wood (29:06.805)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Kyle Hjelmeseth (29:17.94)
And then we have other ways of, as you were getting to monetizing the wake, the wake is all that content that they've left behind them. My wife is a really good example. She's a content creator that primarily focuses on beauty and more luxury fashion. She's been in this space for about 15 years now. So you think about the 15 years of content that she's been creating and sharing from, you know, what really started as a lot of photography, which is limited, but then got into, you know, she's been sharing reels.

Orlando Wood (29:43.904)
Mm-mm.

Kyle Hjelmeseth (29:47.867)
and stories for years and years and years. There is a lot of content there that we can cut down and remonetize, know, potentially through fast check licensing and collaborations like that. There is a audience who's, you know, really attuned to, you know, following her for her tips and tricks and what she's using or wearing or whatever. So there is definitely a lot more that

Orlando Wood (29:55.68)
Right.

Kyle Hjelmeseth (30:14.22)
we can do to support her in sending out maybe a newsletter on her behalf that's got route of all the links to all the things that she cares about so that her baked in, you know, this audience that really does want to see that can then go purchase, you know, whatever it is she's been talking about or just even get a roundup of her latest content in one easy place. So we're looking at all these different ways to monetize that wake so that the creator continue to create and move forward on that life path.

Orlando Wood (30:18.816)
Mm-mm.

Orlando Wood (30:32.02)
Mm-hmm.

Orlando Wood (30:42.73)
Mm-hmm.

Kyle Hjelmeseth (30:42.881)
with this little resistance in the water that's popping.

Orlando Wood (30:45.726)
Mm-hmm. Right. And so, like, brand deals are the obvious, most obvious part of the wake. What are the less obvious parts, the revenue streams that people outside this industry don't see and that are valuable to you guys?

Kyle Hjelmeseth (30:58.924)
I think the biggest and least obvious is really the affiliate marketing play. know, it's like, affiliate marketing has been around for, since the dawn of...

is kind of the ones to affiliate marketing into prominence probably 20, 25 years ago in terms of creating a system where links could be distributed. There's a number of players that have been around in the space where it's about links and attribution and then getting commissions from that attribution. Now we're looking at creators have been savvy about this forever.

It's not something new. It's just really how can we support creators because somebody like my wife and all the other hundred plus talent we have, they are very busy living their lives, thinking about their content calendars and then creating from their life and their content calendar. Very rare when you have a successful creator today that earns like the ones that we represent who would have time to like step back.

Go create a newsletter, fill it full of links to their content, go find all the products that they wore in all the different videos, and then put those links together of where to buy it into some different format that their audience can now consume and buy from.

Orlando Wood (32:01.216)
Mm.

Orlando Wood (32:08.768)
Mm-hmm.

Orlando Wood (32:13.236)
Yeah.

Kyle Hjelmeseth (32:14.346)
That's, when people buy from those links, as I'm sure everybody is aware, then the creators would get a commission off those sales. So I think that's one of the lowest hanging fruits of the space is, know, if we can support our creators in getting that out there, their audience is already waiting for it. It's just they typically don't have time to monetize in that way.

Orlando Wood (32:30.388)
Mm-hmm.

Kyle Hjelmeseth (32:35.148)
But I will also say that if you're familiar with the creator economy, there is a whole giant section of the creator economy that's been out there for years that's just built around affiliate marketing. And I know plenty of creators in that side who make millions of dollars just from sharing link around to what they do and have, you know, for eons now. So I think, you know, there's great opportunity for creators and creatives in that way.

Orlando Wood (32:45.066)
Mm-hmm.

Orlando Wood (32:50.856)
Right. Right.

Mm-hmm.

Kyle Hjelmeseth (33:01.9)
I think more of the innovative opportunities that we're really kind scratching out right now are things like recutting a lot of the older content into something that's usable by, again, fast channels. We've got your, I'm trying to think of, this is me learning about the...

Orlando Wood (33:17.408)
Mm-hmm.

Kyle Hjelmeseth (33:26.956)
from the entertainment side, I'm like A-VOD, S-VOD linear, right? But we've been in talks with companies that insert the advertising in between these different shows that are on my Samsung Smart TV, So there's ways to cut things where somebody's gonna purchase that, license it, and then throw it in between, probably after some sort of bidding.

Orlando Wood (33:27.956)
Mm-hmm. You're right. Yeah. Yeah.

Orlando Wood (33:41.685)
Yeah.

Orlando Wood (33:49.13)
Mm. Mm-hmm.

Kyle Hjelmeseth (33:50.602)
to those slots between the shows. So it's like I feel really silly talking about this, but it's where I'm trying and where our company's really spent a lot of effort over the last year, two years, seeing what we can borrow from places like entertainment that have proven that they've worked and can monetize. How does that really apply to one of these creators that you're doing life with? And then what's the innovative way that we can bring that to the...

Orlando Wood (34:06.718)
Yeah.

Orlando Wood (34:18.612)
Yeah. And I think that that's where you kind of go. An individualized creator isn't going to be able to have access to that sort of deal making unless they're working with somebody like you. Right. I mean, and that's where the creator economy system starts to look a little bit like the traditional, you know, entertainment system, you know, a management or agent team that has the ability to make broader deals that you wouldn't have access to as somebody who's just demonstrated, you know, their their audience and monetize it on TikTok, for example.

Kyle Hjelmeseth (34:47.254)
Maybe. You know what's interesting I think about me as a personality is that I wouldn't defend my own space in that way that I think that, you and the reason behind that is because I didn't come from talent management before I started working with my wife.

and her friends. just, you know, was helping somebody that I cared about out and I created processes that benefited her and then her friends and people around her that are the processes we use today. I am very aware of the fact there are millions and millions of creators out there and there are plenty that do not need somebody like me.

Orlando Wood (35:12.799)
Yeah.

Kyle Hjelmeseth (35:22.22)
comfortable, you know, it's like I know people like that. They've figured out their different monetization channels, they build their day and they monetize in the way that they want to. I think there is a certain level of expertise that we bring to really helping the creators focus on their creative where we take care of all the other, the management component, the deal making and whatnot. So there is an advantage for certain personalities to be aligned with somebody like us. I think there also is something to be said about the fact that like,

Orlando Wood (35:25.119)
Yeah.

Orlando Wood (35:46.272)
Hmm.

Kyle Hjelmeseth (35:51.048)
at this point of more than a decade in, I don't need to guess at who to contact at Dior or Walmart or Teva or any of these brands anymore. So in a lot of our value proposition is the fact that we're so connected in. I remember when I first started many years ago, I would talk to creators about signing with us and one of the biggest concerns they had is like, I don't want anybody taking my deals and giving my deal that

Orlando Wood (35:59.211)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Kyle Hjelmeseth (36:19.916)
to somebody else. Like how are you going to put my contacts? And I understood that, know, like wanting to keep the food for themselves. But now it's like it doesn't, to us it just doesn't even matter.

Orlando Wood (36:21.568)
Right.

Yeah.

Orlando Wood (36:31.839)
Yeah.

Kyle Hjelmeseth (36:32.389)
sign a creator I don't see it as a huge get for us in terms of like they're gonna open up a whole new you know

Orlando Wood (36:41.962)
Mm-hmm.

Kyle Hjelmeseth (36:42.645)
So there is that advantage of relationship and proximity that we bring. And then there's the guidance that we bring, know, having been in this space for so long. We do spend a lot of money and time and effort within GMB and another property we own called College of Influence to make sure that our talent are at like the cutting edge of where changes are happening. And we really want to keep people educated and informed about what is going on.

Orlando Wood (36:48.724)
Yeah.

Orlando Wood (37:05.12)
Right.

Kyle Hjelmeseth (37:11.467)
so that they continue to be marketable over a year's stretch of time.

Orlando Wood (37:14.846)
Yeah.

That's great. And what a great, confident answer that also speaks to so much of the creator confidence of this is just working, you know, like I don't have to defend it. I don't have to argue for my place in the world. I just have this place in the world and it's, it demonstrates value. think that's, that's tremendous. It's not the like, yeah. Yeah.

Kyle Hjelmeseth (37:35.756)
I love that everybody has a place. I really respect. And I think this actually goes back to the very beginning of our conversation and part of what we were talking about where you were saying that in your experience when it comes to talking to people from the critter economy, you generally have had an experience where most people on my side are like, come on over, let me tell you how it works, you know, and whatever. Because we're giving the milk of what we're used to giving the milk.

Orlando Wood (37:56.255)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Kyle Hjelmeseth (38:00.98)
for free and I don't feel the need to be protectionist about it that much because if somebody if I say something to you and you go off and you're successful because of something I said God bless you know and I'm not gonna go and try to know rip it

Orlando Wood (38:01.823)
Yeah.

Orlando Wood (38:11.102)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Kyle Hjelmeseth (38:16.053)
said whatever, right?

Orlando Wood (38:17.952)
That was always my experience in entertainment. I came from advertising before I did my first film. And what amazed me was in advertising, there's this real sense of everybody's working as hard as possible for a credit they've already got. For a paycheck, they're already being paid. And everybody's working so hard to justify that credit they've already got. In entertainment, when I finally produced my first film, the amount of people who came out of the woodwork when we were announced at being in competition at Tribeca Film Festival,

Kyle Hjelmeseth (38:30.891)
Yeah.

Orlando Wood (38:46.592)
the amount of people who came out of the woodwork and said, Hey, do remember when I put you in touch with that person? You know, I think an associate producer credit would be appropriate or how about a percentage on the back end? The, the, entertainment industry worked do as little as possible, just enough to get your name tacked onto the film and then call to collect later on. And I was shocked by that disparity between those two industries. And, uh, you know, but you're right. It's, it's a very similar thing in,

you know, the creator economy. It's like, you know, we're, used to giving things away for free and demonstrating so much value that the value just sort of naturally comes back to us to a degree.

Kyle Hjelmeseth (39:24.649)
Yeah, it's interesting. It's very interesting for me because I know I have hired people out of the entertainment industry to help me build this new studio concept that we're working on and to learn about the paradigm that you've experienced and have existed in and for these people where I can just like stand back and say, that's not what we're doing here. That's not what I want to

That's not how I want this to look in the future. And I find that that's one of the most exciting things for me about where we're at and where we're taking our creators is that I can stand back and say that's not what we want for our creators, it's not what we want for

Orlando Wood (39:56.861)
Hmm.

Kyle Hjelmeseth (40:07.261)
staff. It's not the type of dynamic relationship we're looking for, but we're at a point where we can redefine that relationship. And not because of like, it's like partially, I guess, because of like the power that creators wield. Yes, but also because I, you know, I'm just like, we don't need that. If you've got your own way of making money.

Orlando Wood (40:14.108)
Mm. Yeah.

Orlando Wood (40:24.81)
Mm-hmm.

Kyle Hjelmeseth (40:29.419)
Let's go do that. If we can make one together and we're going to find success here, there's enough creators to go around. There's enough ideas to go around. I'm not, we always say, we always joke, we're not curing cancer. I'm not that precious about it. I know that I've done, like I was kind of mentioning earlier, we've done 100 million in contracts. feel really...

Orlando Wood (40:29.984)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Orlando Wood (40:37.824)
Hmm.

Orlando Wood (40:42.688)
Mm-mm. Yeah.

Kyle Hjelmeseth (40:52.011)
I feel very grateful to hit that milestone. Not because of all of the money that I've made, but more because of all the impact on the lives that I've seen over this decade. And to be able to say, we've defined the space that we're in. It's really just how I see it. And that's just me.

Orlando Wood (41:00.734)
Yeah. Yeah.

Orlando Wood (41:07.2)
Yeah.

Orlando Wood (41:14.324)
Yeah. Well, I mean, listen, it's incredible. listen, I think that the purpose of every business is to have some sort of impact on the world and to help some person somewhere out on some level. And I think that you're undeniably doing that. One of the good things that obviously you talked about how a lot of people don't need you. Who does need you? What's the ideal growth trajectory with you? What has someone demonstrated by the time they first come to you?

Where are you ideally taking them? What's the goal? Like if you had your absolute ideal, somebody comes to me at this level, here's where I want to shepherd them to. What does that look like?

Kyle Hjelmeseth (41:58.068)
That's a great question. you know, it really has changed over the years it's evolved. I think that everybody used to be so hyper fixated on follower counts and that's less important these days. It's more about the engagement from your audience that you're bringing to any sort of conversation and negotiation. We generally are going to represent talent that have, you know, I would say most of our talent, the far majority have more than a hundred.

Orlando Wood (42:09.856)
Yeah.

Orlando Wood (42:23.284)
Yeah.

Kyle Hjelmeseth (42:25.909)
We have a few people who are considered micro-influencers, but find that their power is in their niche, you know, kind tone of voice or storyline. And then we have a good amount of people that are more macro.

Orlando Wood (42:32.522)
Mm-mm.

Kyle Hjelmeseth (42:37.579)
I think maybe I mentioned we have a cat we represent who has 18 million followers plus and so What we're looking for is the uniqueness of the character and their story and they're like consistency You know, it's like you've got to be somebody who's showing up consistently Who has created a measure of influence within the community that they've started to come together or pull together and then we think about okay Like it's very easy for us to see there. They're always this way

Orlando Wood (42:42.964)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Kyle Hjelmeseth (43:07.603)
that we could help them develop and develop their storylines but you can always see out the gate our brands interested. Generally speaking, they'll come to us because they're already getting deals that know where brands are showing up. So I say okay not only can I bring more deals to this individual because we have that immense Rolodex and we have the tenure.

Orlando Wood (43:14.293)
Yeah.

Kyle Hjelmeseth (43:29.471)
We can bring more deals, we can help increase how much they're getting per deal because of the way that we negotiate or our strength in relationship. And then we also are going to just really hone in on do they have the same shared set of values that we have. We really value transparency.

Orlando Wood (43:33.66)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Orlando Wood (43:47.456)
Yeah.

Kyle Hjelmeseth (43:50.076)
We like to, you know, one of the things that I find everybody thinks is so shocking that we keep all of our talent on every email in exchange with the brands through the negotiation, through putting the concepts together and really making the campaign happen. We value that transparency because it makes the conversation easier, makes getting the work done easier. And then at the end of the day, everybody has just a better...

Orlando Wood (44:00.266)
Wow, great.

Kyle Hjelmeseth (44:15.667)
talent feel like they knew what was going on, they know what they're getting paid, there's a fraudulent activity happening in the background where an agent's like stealing this little bit for themselves, you know, it's like, just like, here's how it's happening, here's when you need to post your post and show up and so we, I think it's like a value alignment as

Orlando Wood (44:26.836)
Yeah.

Orlando Wood (44:35.614)
Right. And I mean, you know, when you are engaging with somebody who's like just getting to that stage, you know, or do you like to see maximum penetration on one platform? Do you like to see them that when they come to you, they're already showing up and have defined audience in multiple places again? What's your kind of ideal entry point or profile as a, as a person who's coming in?

Kyle Hjelmeseth (44:56.715)
Let's see this.

Kyle Hjelmeseth (45:00.967)
It's two thoughts because one, I would say that most creators don't really have the bandwidth to be everywhere all at once. And they really should, especially for growth mechanics, like focus in on the platform where they're

the Instagram. I mean, where we're really monetizing and seeing the most brand deals happen, like in quantity, is Instagram primarily. Then of course you have TikTok and then YouTube and YouTube shorts. And then of course there's everybody else out there. There are people earning on Snapchat. There are people earning on...

LinkedIn, so on and so forth. But that's really where we see it is like Instagram and TikTok because that's what's getting asked for most by brands. Now, once they start with us and we're really like, you know, we've helped them establish, you know, a bit of a flow on wherever they're dominant. It is to the benefit of everybody to syndicate out their content and show up in more than one place so that they can get more audience penetration. But also if something happens to TikTok.

which every year for the past six years there's been a conversation about banning and then now we have American TikTok. So we're like, you should be pushing people over here to Instagram. You should be developing this line. You should also not even know there's nothing that guarantees that Instagram will be here tomorrow for whatever reason. So we always talk about like, know.

Orlando Wood (46:16.404)
Right. Yeah.

Kyle Hjelmeseth (46:20.779)
as old school as it may sound, a blog, a platform that you've developed for yourself where you can start the content there and then drip it out to all these other places. It's not always easy or, you know, it is kind of a time suck to then, you know, film something, put it up on my blog and then cut it down to it's gonna show up on Instagram or show up on TikTok or show up, you know, whatever. But the power in your own platform, there's nothing that beats that at the end of the day.

Orlando Wood (46:28.096)
Mm. Mm.

Orlando Wood (46:46.368)
Yeah.

Kyle Hjelmeseth (46:49.415)
So that's what we caution, but we understand that usually it's starting in this one spot, and then we should build beyond that.

Orlando Wood (46:52.426)
Yeah.

Orlando Wood (46:55.912)
Right. Yeah. Yeah. So you, you had mentioned in there that you were working on like the beginning of it's kind of a studio. You're, you're, building something that you call a studio, but that you've said that that word can be a little bit misleading. What is, what does studio actually mean to you and what are you building?

Kyle Hjelmeseth (47:15.551)
Yeah, it's something that we're going to be talking more and more about as we get this further and further defined on what it is and what we offer. It's like we know these things internally, but we're working through several new deals and concepts that we can't yet talk about outside.

But what studio means to me is kind of like an incubator. I'm looking, I'm not thinking about, you know, I've said studio in meetings over the last few months, people are like, oh, you're building a physical space. And I'm like, no, no, Or, hey, you're going to be, you know, you're going to be doing things with reality television. I'm like, no, no, no, that's not it. So that's where I was like, I don't even know that this is the right term. We've talked about incubator, studio. Really, we think it's like all of our services and beyond.

Orlando Wood (47:40.81)
Mmm.

Orlando Wood (47:50.72)
creating reality television and you know, yeah.

Orlando Wood (47:58.069)
Yeah. Yeah.

Kyle Hjelmeseth (48:04.797)
How do we categorize this and beyond thing? What else is out there? And so I just think it's a soup of new ways that we can help creators monetize the wake and also new ideas that they may have. It's gotta be all of the things at once versus just focusing in on long form series content. As I already talked about, that doesn't work for most of the talent that we represent, but it does for some, so we wanna have that available.

Orlando Wood (48:08.144)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Orlando Wood (48:13.566)
Yeah.

Orlando Wood (48:27.1)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Kyle Hjelmeseth (48:34.047)
book deals available, want to merch available, capsule collections, affiliate marketing, fast channel, know, retargeting and licensing. So it's, we're not trying to do everything, but we want to have a great suite of things that we believe will help somebody get to that next phase of their career.

Orlando Wood (48:47.892)
Hmm. Hmm.

Orlando Wood (48:55.552)
Yeah, it's fine. Cause you're sort of defining things in real time. You, you do, I've noticed use terms like syndication, which is, you know, a great way to sort of, you know, call monetizing things out on various platforms. It's an, it's an old school term, but that works very well here. But as you're defining things in real time, you're using old school terms like studio. And then you're like, that's actually not what it is. It's sort of, you know, eventually you're going to come up with some other name for it, but you know, there's,

Kyle Hjelmeseth (49:08.203)
Mm-hmm.

Kyle Hjelmeseth (49:20.725)
Yeah.

Orlando Wood (49:25.64)
You're using the, you know, the, the, terms of the past to identify something that is entirely new actually. yeah.

Kyle Hjelmeseth (49:32.907)
And we've laughed about this, especially over the last year, because I've got a chief of staff who has a long list of credits from the entertainment industry, and she's been fantastic to work with in building, you know, this new...

Orlando Wood (49:44.64)
Yeah, and she was a former Unscripted TV executive producer, is that right? Yeah, yeah.

Kyle Hjelmeseth (49:48.755)
Yeah, exactly. And so, you know, we have to use terms that each other can understand. It's like earlier, you know, we were laughing about me saying something like, have things in development. I have a slate, you know, which is all foreign to me. But yeah, we are, we're borrowing. We're seeing how does this really fit? You know, will some new term be coined? I don't know, but it is this great like way to maybe.

Orlando Wood (49:54.282)
Yeah, right. Yeah.

Orlando Wood (49:59.425)
Yeah.

Orlando Wood (50:13.248)
Mmm.

Orlando Wood (50:16.794)
Hmm. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

Kyle Hjelmeseth (50:17.707)
not the right term but maybe that's what we call this division. Yeah there's just so much innovation I think that's one of the biggest points I've made over the last year is that a lot of people what I've heard from especially in the trades they are acting like oh we're here we've made innovation happen you know entertainment looking at creator economy innovation is happening and I'm like I don't even I don't think we're there at all yet innovation is somewhere way out ahead and I'm

Orlando Wood (50:34.175)
Mmm.

Orlando Wood (50:43.104)
Hmm.

Orlando Wood (50:46.848)
Mmm.

Kyle Hjelmeseth (50:48.123)
fully here showing up admitting that, innovation, have innovated anything yet. We're taking, we're borrowing, talking about it. I'm excited about all this. It's out there still. And I'm just excited to have new partners in a way. New people coming into these ideas to figure it out together.

Orlando Wood (50:57.45)
Mm-mm.

Orlando Wood (51:01.386)
Yeah.

Yeah, we had Jeff Jenkins on the podcast a while ago who produced A Simple Life, Keeping Up with the Kardashians, now Secret Lives and Mormon Wines. I think that it's only just... mean, reality TV has been a thing for a very long time, and it's only just becoming apparent to everybody that storylines are figured out. I heard you use the term, talk to them about their storylines. What does that mean in this space?

Kyle Hjelmeseth (51:29.765)
Well in this space it's yeah it's a lot more like literally what are you doing tomorrow? What are your like three month plans? You have a vacation with your family plan you know and that's so different than okay what's your storyline of like having to spin something up? I'm literally like where are we going to lunch? Should we shoot something on the way because we know this picturesque place is there right?

Orlando Wood (51:38.144)
Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah.

Yeah, right, right.

Kyle Hjelmeseth (51:53.771)
Or I happen to be going with a group of people to the south of France to Cannes. What are we going to shoot there? What are we going talk about? Because it's coming up in my life. And that's how a lot of our creators, that's exactly how they plan out their content calendars, their storylines. like, is going on in my life? And does anything make sense to kind of build into that? My wedding. A lot of creators, they share their weddings. My wedding was in Vaux.

Orlando Wood (51:54.334)
Yeah.

Orlando Wood (52:03.988)
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Orlando Wood (52:14.57)
Yeah.

Orlando Wood (52:18.366)
Yeah.

Kyle Hjelmeseth (52:24.65)
because my wife is an influencer. And so we shared different aspects and elements of the wedding in that way. But hey, we were gonna get married anyway. So that's the storyline, right? So.

Orlando Wood (52:26.761)
Yeah.

Orlando Wood (52:31.433)
Yeah.

Yeah. Well, I don't want to keep you too much. I just have one more question because, it comes right back around because, you started managing one person you cared about and that turned into a company representing over a hundred creators. When you step back, what surprises you most about that journey?

Kyle Hjelmeseth (52:58.516)
What surprises me the most about that journey is that it worked. And somebody actually said that to me. They were like, you should be really proud of what you've done because, like I said, I wanted to lead with this integrity and transparency and things. And it's like getting outside of professional bounds in a

Orlando Wood (53:03.018)
Yeah.

Orlando Wood (53:13.482)
Yeah.

Kyle Hjelmeseth (53:20.746)
Being able to create something for people you care about and processes that benefit them. Making the idea that if you serve others, your needs will be served. Actually work and look good from a financial perspective. I feel like 10 years ago sounded crazy. Sounds crazier than my experience, my everyday lived experience right now. So yeah, the fact that I could build something with my girlfriend, who's my wife, and then her friends and then like we are...

Orlando Wood (53:30.176)
Mmm.

Mm. Mm-hmm.

Orlando Wood (53:39.392)
Mm.

Orlando Wood (53:43.124)
Yeah.

Kyle Hjelmeseth (53:50.155)
referral rate is 75 or 80 percent because people see what we're doing and they want in on that and they're like oh we can have fun with this we have a sales team that actually supports each other and isn't trying to audit.

Orlando Wood (53:56.895)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Orlando Wood (54:03.817)
Yeah.

Kyle Hjelmeseth (54:04.778)
every day were not like, you know, the scenes and entourage with, with, I always, that's how I always used to equate things like piles of cocaine and you know, like all the like rampant drug use and like wild, you know, and there's an alert to that, I'm sure, but to like make it in this way and to say that it worked and to make so much money out of it, you know, to cross a hundred million deals that we've done is pretty surprising.

Orlando Wood (54:14.526)
Yeah.

Orlando Wood (54:22.271)
Yeah.

Orlando Wood (54:26.292)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Orlando Wood (54:34.89)
That yeah, that's amazing. And I mean, it really does sound like the secret sauce was your love and care for your first client and then realizing how valuable and that is and just extending that to everybody else. Yeah, that's that's a really lovely. Yeah. Yeah.

Kyle Hjelmeseth (54:44.404)
that we're doing life together. Like, what is that? Yeah, I see. You have to apply that to people you're doing life with, and that is the group of people.

Orlando Wood (54:55.976)
Yeah. Well, Kyle, thank you so much. mean, is there anything, you know, I'd love to know, you know, obviously not to prognosticate too much about the future, but is there anything other than your studio? Is there anything you're really excited about initiatives that you're doing that are coming up that you're really kind of excited about and want to talk about at all?

Kyle Hjelmeseth (55:12.906)
I would say, you know, the biggest thing that I'm really always excited about is seeing where the positive benefit is. actually, I'm like, I'm sure you probably feel that from me already. We created this thing called College of Influence a few years ago because we wanted to like, back into the creators that we were managing and also create ways for like, people who want to...

to kind of figure it out, help them figure it out themselves. Where I see that really going in that effort that we've made is we have all these really interesting relationships with educators today that didn't exist before. I just spoke at USC last weekend, we speak at Woodbury and the local colleges here in LA. there are so many interesting programs springing up across the country. Syracuse announced they have a Center for the Creator Economy.

Orlando Wood (55:46.89)
Mm-hmm.

Orlando Wood (55:52.096)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Kyle Hjelmeseth (56:03.39)
Where I see that this is like an exciting endeavor.

positive benefits of society is that I know that you know students are being looked at today because there is the studies have been done that show that most of our youth want to be influencers, want to be streamers, want to be youtubers and I feel like people of our generation, older generation, they look down on that they're like that's somebody who wants to like just show up and dance you know talk and what you're really seeing

Orlando Wood (56:19.968)
Yeah. Yeah.

Orlando Wood (56:30.996)
Yeah. Yeah. What a terrible way to spend one's life showing up and dancing every day. Like, how dare, how dare they?

Kyle Hjelmeseth (56:36.102)
Right? How dare you? Yeah, my God. And I've been in rooms where that's come up that way. had a high school teacher ask me, how do we stop them from wanting to do that? And I'm like, well, you don't. You lean into it because we need to realize that they just want to tell their stories. They want to show up and share what they know with other people. And that's a beautiful thing. And so I think that what we're really working on with GMB is like,

Orlando Wood (56:50.144)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Orlando Wood (56:57.824)
Yeah.

Kyle Hjelmeseth (57:05.308)
tribute that if you show up in these different ways and you build community you can monetize that you can make money for yourself and I think that that's kind of one of the most filling things that I think I'm gonna work on in my lifetime is relating this back to a positive benefit for society. We hear a lot about the negative benefit or non-benefits the mental health issues from social media and whatnot and there's the truth in all of those as far as like them existing and needing

Orlando Wood (57:19.978)
Yeah. Yeah.

Kyle Hjelmeseth (57:32.937)
things but then I think about how are we informing and inspiring the next generation of pilots, plumbers, electricians, grips.

Orlando Wood (57:39.218)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Kyle Hjelmeseth (57:43.323)
ADs, production designers, right? It's because we can see how their mind works. We can see how they do what they love. So it's like going again back to the beginning of our conversation. I'm imploring everybody from the entertainment community to show up on digital platforms to sow into the next generation, to inspire the next generation and also fill the seat at that next Superman, right?

Orlando Wood (58:03.018)
Yeah. Yeah.

Orlando Wood (58:09.78)
Well, I think it's so great, especially because, we focus a lot on the entertainment aspect of it. But to be honest, you're right. Like so much of these people are showing up as plumbers, as rug cleaners, as you know, like it's a it's a much broader thing than just monoculture entertainment as we think about it. And it it impacts far more diverse lives than just the influences we all know across, you know, entertainment.

Kyle Hjelmeseth (58:34.548)
Yeah.

Orlando Wood (58:36.266)
Kyle, thank you so much. That was terrific. I really have enjoyed talking to you and I hope we get to do this again offline, off camera, because you're just fascinating to talk to and I just so appreciate it.

Kyle Hjelmeseth (58:39.326)
Great conversation. Thank you, Orlando.

Kyle Hjelmeseth (58:51.995)
thank you. mean, yeah, of course. I love these conversations. You've made me think about I'm going to probably just spend the rest of the day.

Orlando Wood (58:59.456)
Well, good. Well, thank you so much. I'm just before I say my final thank you, just don't close the tab when we when we do stop the recording. But, Kyle, thank you so much for giving us your time. And I know we went over, but I so appreciate it. So generous of you. Thank you for for being on the podcast.