Welcome to Strictly Business, Variety's weekly podcasts featuring conversations with industry leaders about the business of media and entertainment. I'm Cynthia Lyttleton, co editor in chief of Variety Today. My guest is Sergio Alfaro, founder and CEO of invent TV. Alfaro grew up in the Pasadena area in an apartment that didn't even have a television. Now he produces dozens of hours of TV every year. Invent TV is a busy unscripted production banner that has handled production for a
range of shows. Invent TV is a busy banner that has handled production for a range of shows from Doctor Pimple Popper, The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City to numerous Oprah Winfrey TV specials over the years. He launched the company about ten years ago in partnership with investor and philanthropist Jeffrey Soros. Alfaro is truly a modern day Horatio Alger. He started out in entertainment stocking dressing rooms
and cleaning up debauchery after live performances. Today he's a business owner who was courted for prestigious board seats and in the twenty five years in between, he had a rise and a fall with the previous company. Alfaro explains how he built it back up and what he learned from the hard process of failure, and he gives us
a producer's i view on the unscripted TV marketplace. Right now, that's all coming up after this break, and we're back with a conversation with Invent TV founder and CEO Sergio Alfaro.
Sergio Alfaro, CEO of Invent TV, thank you for joining me today.
Thank you for having.
Me, and dear listeners. Sergio is from Pasadena, which is my hometown, and he brought me a gorgeous pie from Pie and Burger. That is a very sweet gesture and a very Pasadena gesture. Thank you. You have a fantastic backstory and inspiring You are a born entrepreneur backstory, and I want to talk about that, but I want to start by you are also right now in the trench's selling shows. Right now, we are five months in to the macroeconomic roller coaster ride that has been the second
Trump administration. What is your sense out there right now? Are people still finding their way through the fog?
I think there's a lot of fear in general job security. What's the next hit, and I think it goes globally. It's not just the production company's feeling it. I think the networks are feeling it as well. Their next bet may be the wrong bet, and then that costs them their jobs and everybody else's jobs. So I think people are playing it safe right now. I think that eventually somebody's going to take some swings again and get a huge hit on the air, and that might rejigger things
again and put it back to normal. I think this is cyclical.
In the business of pitching and getting show commissions from outlets, we've seen a lot of consolidation. Now. We have in many cases, not every single case, but of the major platforms, you have single execs or single teams overseeing for broadcasts, for streaming, for a cable. How has that been for you? As a seller, we try and be a lot.
More focused on who we're pitching and selling to. I think it's like buying a home these days. You can name a network and know exactly what kind of programming they have. So if you go in kind of open ended, here's a general idea, it only works if you have some major talent and a lot of buyers that are going to go into it. You know, if you're going to the NBCs of the world and CBS, then yeah, you better come with big talent, big format, big big big,
and you can get a bidding war. In the unscripted world, it's pretty tailored, you know, it's pretty well focused, like here's something that suits you, the buyer, and then they decide if they're going to put it on their linear channel or their streaming channel if they have one. But we try and be very focused and thankfully because of the relationships we have, whether it's a Lane one of my favorite executives in Angelo over Elane's at A and
E and Angelo's at we TV. We text them, you know, we say, hey, here's an idea, and they're so wonderful with us to just say not for us, or that's interesting, tell us more. Then we focus in on that and develop it further and further, and it's it's like anything else. It's like a relationship. I feel like we are we are trying to sell something like a real estate agent. Let me show you a couple of homes. It's not
always going to be the first home you see. Let me show you another one, and that kind of words but put a pool in it. Okay, sure, but we can't afford the pool.
That's an interesting analogy, and all my years of talking to producers, nobody else has ever made that analogy. But that's a great one. Thank you.
Well, that's what we do. We got to show options, and we can be precious either. I think a lot of people get precious about their idea, especially newcomers, you know, people coming into the industry and here's my idea, and it's so great. We've heard it before. We call it a mop most often pitched. If I hear one more person say this is the Anthony Bourdain of like, oh my god, that is like a weekly thing. Still and we all smile when they say it, you know.
Rest in peace, Rest in peace, Love Kitchen Confidential, one of the great books of the nineteen.
Ninety Yeah, these, I mean, but nobody's Anthony boardaining.
So but let me ask you, is the process with the consolidation and the fact that there's fewer people overseeing credit, over seeing more platforms, is that appreciably better? Yeah? For a pitcher, is it appreciably worse?
I think it's much better because you know, you don't have to pitch to a bunch of different teams, and it doesn't have to go through so many more layers. There's still plenty of layers, don't get me wrong, but it's you're going to one person that could actually think about multiple options. Oh, this doesn't work for this linear channel, but this could work for our streamers. So I think you're pitching into one person that has several options, you know,
So I think it actually works better quite frankly. But the workload for them, I really that's tough. I mean, the amount of hats that they're wearing now and the things that they're juggling. I have a lot of respect for the network executives that are just wearing too many hats. In my opinion, it's tough. I have a really hard.
Job that the scarcity of executive jobs is definitely is definitely notable. Let me ask you, is it still fair to say that, you know, basically the kind of the hierarchy of budget is broadcast, you'll have a pretty solid budget because it's kind of got to be big streaming obviously, because in some cases to print their own money it's a little old school. But and then cable obviously is very you know, very much the you know, stretch stretcher dollars and make them work, but we'll give you a
sixty episode order. Is that kind of basically.
Yeah, yeah, it all works the same and at the end of the day, it's everything is manageable. It really is. And I feel that again going to people being precious. I think right now there's a lot of production companies I don't understand why they do it, or they'll literally pass on a network because it's not enough money. Like roll up your sleeves, figure it out. You know, there's you've got to change with the times, and the networks are very accommodating to what those needs are and those
financial changes. You know, it's across the board, so the showrunners know what's going on, the camera operators know what's going on, the vendors know what's going on. So if you want the business, you've got to change with us. And thankfully we haven't had struggles working within you know, tighter confines with some of the buyers and some of the networks. We call our people and thankfully, I mean I've been in the business a long time. We have
a lot of loyalty. We're good to our people. If we have the money, we use the same people and we take care of them and what we don't. It's not even an ask, you know, I'm not asking for a favor. I just say, hey, this is what we have. We're incredibly transparent with our partners, our vendors, everybody, and I think being kind, being honest, being consistent really works long term. It does.
Do you are there sort of advantages Do you enjoy working in the kind of three major mediums, whether it's for streamer, broadcast, k but you flex different muscles for sure.
My favorite is still live. You know, I started with Ken Rlick that way back in the day. But whenever I'm on a live set, that's family. It's different because unscripted projects and scripted projects are very contingent to the genre, the network, and there are certain people that I would consider family within those groups. Live events it's the same people. The only person changing is on top the production company and the executive producer Serjo.
This is a great segue. Tell us what it was about live events that that was your path into the industry.
So I got offered a job in the mid nineties on a show called Motown Live. So when I grew up we didn't have a television. We had a radio on top of a refrigerator and we played radio. It's a Spanish station that was just always on. And I was raised by a single mom, me and my brother, and she was always working. She was an auditor and travel a lot. My brother and I just kind of raised ourselves. We play out on the streets and listen
to the Spanish radio. So when I got it, when I got a job in television, I didn't know what that really meant. I was dating somebody at the time and the father offered me a job to do dressing rooms. I didn't know what that meant. So I went to this show a Motel live at Renmar Studios, and I
would work after college. I would work from i'd say about four pm till about three in the morning, sometimes two in the morning, and my job was to put drinks and sodas and waters and towels in dressing rooms of celebrities and motown Live if you know that was like Snoop Dog and Bust the Rhymes and just all kinds of rowdy groups in the mid nineties.
These were live TV special live TV.
Specials, correct, and my job was to fill them with supplies when they're there, and then hang out and at the end of the night, which was the crazy part. It was like the scene of sixteen Candles at the end with the pizza on the record player and things thrown everywhere, and I would walk in and scratch my head and clean up. And this was my job, Like I didn't like it, and I was making I think it was like seventy five dollars a day. It was bad then it's bad now twenty five cents a mile.
My car only started half the time. By the way, I had a seventy one Volkswagen that to this day I back in everywhere I go, not because I'm cool, but because I'm just you know, I'm scarred. My car never started, so I'd have to open the door, put it in neutral. If you know how to jump a car, push it down the hill, jump in, put it in second, pop the clutch, and then I get to go.
So it facing front.
Are conduc always so at the end of the season, you know, people liked my work ethic. I never complained. I just did the job, kept my head down, and they offered me another job to go work on another project. So at the end of the season. I got offered a job to do the Grammys. I didn't know what that was. And I would be doing more dressing rooms for more celebrities. And I was like, oh, I don't know if I want to do that. That doesn't sound appealing.
But I would be now the coordinator, which is that's the guy that was telling me what to do that did nothing. Wow, that sounds interesting, and am I going to make a little bit more money? And yes, it was like twelve hundred dollars. Now I'm nineteen, maybe twenty at the time, and I got offered twelve hundred dollars a week. That was just out of my mind. I
mean I still remember to this day. I walked into a bank called Washington Mutual at the time it's now I don't even know what has transitioned into and after taxes like eight hundred and seventy something dollars. I don't know what my problem was, but I thought I was busted, Like this check is not going to clear, this is some sort of this is so much money. There's no way that a bank that I don't even have a bank account is going to cash this eight hundred and
seventy something dollars check. So I was paranoid walking into the bank. They asked for my ID. I swear I was robbing the place. I just felt so much anxiety and stress. And then they counted out the money and then I'm freaking out that I have eight hundred dollars in my pocket and somebody's going to rob me as if the world knows and I have eight hundred dollars in my pocket. So then I opened to bank account so I wouldn't have to carry around that kind of large though.
And that was it.
I actually there are three moments in my life where I feel I have had like this feeling of the world changing. That was one of those moments. When I was cashing that check and opening an account, I stopped for a moment to think, this is a career, Like I could actually do this for a living, and if I'm making this now, And this is where that epiphany came.
I had this like flash of Kennerlick's house and his cars and the people that I was around from Ricky Minor, who now does all these major shows at the time, was,
you know, starting as a musical director. I don't know about starting, but he was definitely on the come up in the nineties to Paul Sandwise, who was a music like I went to all these people's homes as a as a runner, and I just saw everything and how beautiful it was and the things that they had, and I'm like, oh my god, if I'm this young working here, And that was the epiphany, where will I be in ten years? That's it? What does the next person do? And what does the next person do? And just went
through that. The other two are pretty basic, not basic, but equally as beautiful.
Don't go anywhere. We'll be back with more from Invent TV CEO Sergio Alfaro after this break, and we're back with more from Invent TV CEO Sergio alfarow.
The other one was when I got on my knee to propose to my wife, and I knew I was doing it. I bought the ring. She was out of town. When she left town, I realized we had been together two years. I can't live without her. That's what my determining factor was. So when I bought a ring, and I had this whole plan of when she comes back, I'm going to take her to where we had our
first date. I'm going to propose to her, and when I put my knee down on the ground, it was like in the movies where like a sonic wave went through my body went through the earth earth of responsibility. This is it, this is my person for life. And it was a great decision. We've been together twenty years. Name Tiffany, Tiffany Alfaro, She's a love. And the third one was when my first son was born. Not that I don't love all my children, but I didn't know
what it was like to have a child. And I think until you do, you really don't know the meaning of life at all. You don't know true love. Not that I don't love my mom and my grandmother. There's something instinctual about having your own child that just changes absolutely everything. And the moment my son was born, that changed everything for me. And again that same wave of responsibility, and it was instant. The moment I held that kid in the emergency room, that was it. I knew love
in a different way. I knew responsibility in a different way. And yeah, those are those are the big the big three.
I guess for me based on what she said, the work that you grew up with, what would you say then, in like the next five to ten years. What were the steps that you took that led you to now being the head of your own company and having juggling this portfolio of multiple ventures.
So I was with Kenny for literally, I think it was thirteen years. And in Kenny's house there was really four people. You know, there was kennerlick Ron Vacilly, Lisa Gears, and Paige Hapley.
All names that you know from credits of a gazillion.
Show of a gazillion shows. And it didn't matter which whether it was the Emmy's or and Grammy's was a little different because I was always tied with Cosette. So we we would build the shows, just a small group of us and knock them down, and it was over and over and over, and we would.
Do and you're talking about physical sets, every rigging cameras.
Every single thing. So, you know, a show would come in and say here's the idea, and then you know, Kenny would come up with, you know, some of the ideas of the talent and who we're going to use for staging and lighting and all these different things, and then we would find those people, we would hire those people. But again, like I said earlier, it's all the same people. Right, It's literally family, and I grew up with all of
them like literally my entire career. So the transition really came for me now running the companies is there was a writer strike at the same time there was a market crash. This was how many years ago.
Two thousand and seven, two thousand and eight.
So at that time I had two kids. I now had three at a house. I bought a second house that I was going to try and flip because I thought it was the right thing to do. Everything came to a crashing halt at the same time. There was no work for me anywhere. And it's not something I'm proud of, but I you know, I'm the breadwinner of my household. I don't have a family with wealth that I could turn to. I lost my house and I had a transition into this new smut business called reality television.
What the hell is that? I literally had no clue.
There was this wonderful guy and in your mind it had kind of used to call the smut business. It had a kind of a negative connotation.
I mean, you're doing the Emmys and the Oscars, and you're doing these huge shows with the biggest stars in red carpet. You just think you're so cool. So there's this wonderful human being, one of my favorite in the industry named Jay Peterson. He brought me into do a development tape for a company that he was going to called Original Media, not Original Pictures of Original Media. People always confuse that. And I came in and I did this project. What was crazy is it was a development project.
And now, having gone through everything I went through, you know, losing my home, you know, having losing both homes actually because it was I couldn't make the payments, and I got offered a job from Jay to be I forgot what it was. It was some like development tape, like just overseeing eight projects, a tiny little thing. And I think I got paid twelve hundred dollars that many years later to oversee this project. But it had hope for this other job that he was looking at to bring
me in over to Original Media. So I did it. I didn't care, like, look, I need I don't care what the job is. I need a job I wasn't proud to take less. I get this job and I do it, and I'm asking Jay a lot of questions that he's so polite and so kind that I'm sure I irritated him because it was a development. Now I understand, like it was just a sizzle like relax. I'm like, well, who's doing the books? He's like the books?
You do?
The books? You know?
And who's getting the insurance?
You get the insurance? Like you keep out? Just do it, like, stop asking me all these questions. The good thing is he saw what I was capable of and he offered me a job to be a line producer at Original Media. So I went over there and.
Edited by one Charlie Corwin. Charlie went an alumnus of this podcast and alumnus of Imagine Entertainment and also in the Maullshine.
Yeah, and they made me a line producer on a show called La Inc. We had just brought over Kat Vondie from Miami and we were doing this series called La Inc. And they wanted me to just look at the LA office. Let me know what I think of how things are being run and how things are going and.
Kind of production logistics.
Christ I wasn't on the creative side yet. I was just looking at the numbers. And I because I come from a live events background, I tried to apply that business acumen to the unscripted world, which worked well. I felt there was a lot of waste in my opinion that we were just doing I mean, we were just there was a lot of I don't know if this is appropriate to say, so, I don't know, it's kind
of great, it was very wasteful. So I was doing LA Inc. They brought me into Light Produce la Inc. And quickly they're like, hey, could you take on another project? The way on scripted working, you can give me ten projects. This is not a difficult job for me by comparison of what I used to do, you know, even from.
Creating a big, gigantic live event to all come together in one two hour time.
Yeah, I mean like live events is, you're working on it for a few months, you do it in one day, and you knock it down in a week.
You get out and you get no second take.
No, and you're out. And I'm looking at these budgets and fourteen weeks of edit per episode, Like I was like, what is it? That's crazy? Like I couldn't wrap my head around it. So I was looking at the economics of it, and I came up with a few business plans and I presented them to Charlie and Jay and ultimately I ran the LA office for a long time. I started looking for some venture capital folks to see, you like, put somebody back my company, and I found one.
You weren't scared off of jumping in some of the shark infested VC waters.
I was scared. I'm always scared. So I partnered with William Johnson from Demorest. William Johnson is Franklin Temple dit Johnson's I'm still friends with him. I now help him with his stem cell rejuvenation hospitals in Thailand. I am not a doctor, but they're still friends. That company, you know, it was a good stepping stone to learn wasn't the
long term company I was going to stay with. And then I was fortunate enough to find somebody that was also in media, Jeffrey Sorrows, who started Los Angeles Media Fund, and we've been partners. I think it's nine years now if I'm not mistaken, and he's great, I mean, just solid human being. He believed in he believed in me, he believed in the vision of what we were going to do. We've done it. It's definitely ups and downs throughout the nine years. But he's about as solid of
a person as they come. He's a good human, he's a good father, and that's that's what I try and look for now. I grew up in the world Don Mischer about Baying great Sales, Kenderly, you know Lewis J.
Horror, that's a hall of fame of you know, big TV events the last thirty forty years for sure. Let me ask you about Jeffrey Soros, what is it about your partnership and the way that that whether the how the investment works or what level of input they have. What is it about that partnership that works. We've seen examples of times when private equity combining with creative people doesn't work. What is it? What is it you think that has allowed it to work in your case, in the case of invent TV.
Well, he's very smart. So he's not you know, he's not a passive investor that doesn't understand the industry. He knows the business, he knows the trends. He's very well read, not just in general, but like he's well read in the industry. I mean, he knows he has a pulse on the market. So when we're having conversations about ideas or shows. We talk every week, sometimes more. But it's not you know, here's money, go go do something. It's
you know, we're strategic with each other. We have conversations. He asks smart questions. You know, he watches our sizzles when we're going to sell a show. He gives good input on those cuts. And he brings ideas as well. He's like, hey, what if we do this project? And he brings ideas to the table. And he's obviously well connected, so sometimes he brings talent or relationships to the table as well. So I feel like he's not you know, Goldman sachs Or or Chase Bank or some lender that says,
here's money, let us know what the numbers are. He's obviously interested in the numbers as well, but it's he's very collaborative and he cares. It's not again and cares in a different way. It's not just where's the money, what's now? He cares about the greater good of the company.
So do your career path has been really interesting and illuminating about how the media business works and where entrepreneurs can find can find their ins Entrepreneurs and hardworking inventive people what would you say your goals five to ten years for invent TV. Do you kind of like where you are? Do you want to grow?
I definitely want to grow. One thing that's working well right now is you know, I'm on eight boards, soon to be nine. It's learning. These boards that I'm on teach me a lot of what we're doing, what we're not doing, where things are going. There's a company I'm on the board of right now called Partners in Kind and going back to the you know, just doing kind and doing what's right for the world. Like this is a phenomenal organization. They're doing shows that have an impact
on the world. So they're co financing ideas and projects. But it's not just like feel good projects. It has to have an impact campaign that follows so that long term we're actually making a difference in the world. We're actually doing something that's going to better things, whether it's climate change or awareness of certain issues, whether it's autism or down syndrome, or I have a kid on the spectrum. So that's very important to us. But they're not just
going to finance shows that's a one off, right. They want to make sure that it has legacy and that it follows and that people actually do something, And that to me is just phenomenal approach on our industry. I wouldn't it be great to watch a show that you walk away a better person or that you make an
actual difference just by consuming it. Like I'm going to watch this show and I'm going to binge watch it, and unlike you White Lotus, I'm not going to go kill somebody for their money, but rather, I'm going to learn to live a more sustainable life. I'm going to learn to be more appreciative of a certain ailment somebody may have, whether it's Luke or anything, just to just to be a better human in general. To be able to get that from consuming goes back to like what
I said about Housewives. Right, you watch Housewives and it's a mess, but you turn off the TV and you're like, oh, I'm happy with what I have. I would love to be able to create content that just brings hope, inspiration and changes, you know, the out the outcome of something that could have been negative. Like American Idol. I love that show because somebody from Middle America with nothing stands on a stage and sings a song that we all
fall in love with that person. How do we create something that somebody falls in love with, doing right by the world, doing right by a community, doing right by by everybody, and in turn helping other people, keeping employment, keeping ratings, keeping you know, investors in like I want to keep growing and teaching as well. Like I love being on these boards because they also, you know, learn from each other. So long term, I hope to join more boards that can benefit invent and that we can
help as well be strategic partners. I'm really getting a kick out of that. I think it's a it's a good education. It's a lot of work, but it's a good education as well on both sides.
Well. That is incredibly high standards. Sergio, thank you so much for this conversation. Thank you, thanks for listening.
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