This is Tales From the Pros, where business leaders and influencers share their stories of inspiration, struggles, and successes. And I'm your host, Michael Georgiou. Hey, everyone. Welcome to Tales From the Pros, and this is Michael Giorgio, your host and cofounder of Imagine Ovation. My wonderful guest with me here today is the CEO and cofounder of Loop Media with over 30 years of media and technology industry experience working with teams at both the corporate and start up levels.
He cofounded Loop Media in 2016, and they acquired Screenplay Entertainment in 2018 and continuously prepare preparing for expansion. Loop TV is the 1st media company focused on fully integrated 360 degree engagement of music videos and other premium short form content by consumers and businesses. Please welcome John Nierman. John, I really appreciate you, man. Thank you so much for being here.
Hey, Michael. The pleasure's all mine. Thanks for having me.
Absolutely. No. This is great. I, as we were talking about before, I know there's some technical issues with with, with Zoom, but it's okay. We're not we're not promoting Zoom here.
We're we're trying to talk about you and your story. But, no. I'm I'm really thankful for you joining this, and, I I love love speaking with innovators and people who are or just so creative and, who started from from really from nothing. I mean, you had this amazing idea, and we'll we'll get this we'll get into, you know, your your platform and, what you guys are are doing. But, I first wanna start off, John, with, you know, I I love storytelling.
I think you've heard other a few other episodes in this podcast and combining it with with, you know, a lot of business as well. Can you talk a little bit about your story, in a way of of how did you really get to this position where you are right now? I know you have a lot of history with with Disney being executive, and and media other media companies, and, you're you're a techno you know, technology executive as well. So if you can kind of just give us a rundown of your story and how you got here today with Loop Media.
Sure. Happy to. It's really a story of kinda passion, luck, and networking. And so I grew up in Southern Illinois, not to go too far back. Don't worry. I'm not gonna bore you, like, oh my god.
When you were bored and
Exactly. I was a big baby. Yeah. But, anyway, I grew up a small farm town, and and our summer vacation was always a trip to Disney World. And then we went 1972 the first time after it opened in 71. Mhmm. And I didn't do wanna do anything but work for Disney. I kinda had that passion of, okay. I gotta find a way in. And turns out one of my college, fraternity brothers, dad, who knew the president of Walt Disney World, got me an interview, and that was awesome.
So right after college, went to work for Disney, was with them for 15 years, and just loved it. You know, I never thought I'd leave, but, had an opportunity to go to electronic arts when they were starting to boom. And I was out in Asia at the time and, rode that for a while and always wanted to do my own thing and finally kind of summons up the courage to start it, but a little bit late in the forties, you know, when I'm in my forties. But I figured after 22 years of corporate career, had great companies under my belt, thought I'd give it a go. And here we are today, 10 years later, after, a series of entrepreneurial ventures.
That's great. And just with, like, with Loop Media, I wanna get into that a little bit because as as I mentioned before, I did some research on the platform. I love what you guys are doing. I kind of call it a little bit and and if if this is premature, let me know if this is wrong. But I kind of see it as, like, a video streaming, but Spotify, it's like a I
love it. I love it. That's good for you. Tell everybody you know. I like it. No. That that we we we're not gonna be mad at that description. So it it works, it works for us. It's it is exactly that. It's kind of thinking of streaming as opposed to audio. You're streaming music videos.
And what was the, really, the purpose behind it? I know you started in in 2016, but what was the inspiration behind, creating this company? And and tell tell us a little bit about about that story and and, you know, just the the the journey.
This is another luck component. So Mhmm. We I started a content company in in Aviso. I spent 15 years out there. My background's television primarily, so I wanted to do a bunch of things kinda bridging Asia and the West.
We started out with a late night talk show and kinda created the 1st late night talk show in Asia in English, which did well and went for years. And then we we got involved with radio network, and we also started a talent competition to put together an Asian girl group, believe it or not. We had members from China, Korea, Japan, India, and the Philippines put them together in a super Asia group and then brought them to the west. And one of their recording sessions at a studio in Burbank, studio's Evergreen Studios, Barbara Streisand's old studio. It was owned by a guy named guy named Sean Driscoll, and he was working on a music video for Billy Ray Cyrus, Achy Breaky Heart 2, believe it or not.
And he was going on and on about music videos and how popular they were, and 40% of YouTube views are music videos, and 23 in the top 25 all time videos or music videos. And I, you know, I never really paid attention to that, but I thought, well, that's pretty cool. That's where people watch music videos these days, and, the label started a company called Vivo, then Universal and Sony did you know, really started that together. Part of it. And it turned out they were making a bunch of money putting music videos on YouTube through digital ads.
And it was it was interesting that they were really the only player, and they're, it was it was interesting that they were really the only player, and there were a bunch of audio players. Now the last part of this story was this founder of Screenplay Entertainment, which owned a massive music video library, was in that meeting as well at that same studio. And he talks about how he was providing music videos to businesses. And we all thought sat together and how can we grow this, and that's really how loop really started.
And were things really different before I know with with COVID, it's been affecting, I mean, everyone in in in numerous ways. But before COVID, how different were things for Loop and then compared to now and some of the changes that you guys are making? I know you have a a really strong team. Right? You have a a core team involved in Loop.
We have a great team involved. I tell you and, you know, you hear it from everybody. Without that team, we wouldn't be anywhere. And I'm very fortunate that I've I've had a chance to meet a lot of these folks. That founder screenplay, Mark Breeling, built up a very loyal team.
Like, all of his employees were there probably longer than 10 years, and they did a terrific job of building distribution across thousands of locations. They were profitable. They had this great experience. We had the opportunity to purchase them. You know, we went out and raised money to buy them, and then we wanted to build that distribution as well as create a consumer application on top of it.
So, hence, the 360 component of in home, out of home, and that was always kind of the vision for screenplay. 1 of the first guys I went to was our product guy called Liam McCallum. He worked with me at Electronic Arts building up our online gaming platform. So I was like, Liam, how do you how do we build this thing? And he's like, I never he's from Australia.
I don't no worries, mate. I got this. He comes back with this beautiful world class product and, you know, it it it really is, though, about the team and about delivering on the promise.
And I'm assuming so when you guys acquired a screenplay that gave you, you know, that gave you the increase in distribution and all that data to really allow you guys to streamline your and and expand your company.
Yeah. It did. I mean, if you sit there and you kinda sit in a room and you talk about, hey. Let's go create a music video business and where people currently watch their music videos is YouTube. It sounds a bit crazy. So we had to have a pretty, you know, strategic approach. Using that out of home as a base was that approach. So the fact that screenplay had this great relationships with the labels already, they had this great team
I was gonna ask about the labels. Yep.
Yeah. I mean, that they have been working with them them and and make an incremental revenue for the labels for for over a dozen years. And, you know, you can't just walk into a Yard House or a Margaritaville or a Hard Rock or Buffalo Wild Wings and and just say, hey. You wanna put this stuff on the screen? It takes time to nurture those relationships.
It was a very long sales cycle, and, and, you know, it was part of the reason that we just thought, alright. We gotta we gotta acquire these guys, and then this is the way to do it. Because if you try to do it on your own, the risk seemed a little crazy. The cost might have been out of proportion, and, you know, this, we felt was right way to go.
It was really it seemed like it was a strategic investment, long term investment
for you guys. Yeah. For sure. And, you know, those guys are still with us today, frankly. And the screenplay team, they're helping build loop.
They've got this wonderful knowledge that anytime we're in a pitch or we're whether it's with investors or with potential distribution partners, these guys could just talk about the history and what worked, what didn't work. And the timing couldn't be better, you know, kind of for the streaming business, if you think of it that way. It's weird to say that when you're in a pandemic, but, I mean, you know, like, what's happened with streaming this year. So we were fortunate that we had this b to b component that we built a consumer one on top of, and we were able to really switch to that fairly quickly at the beginning of the year.
And what was the exact year when you, acquired screenplay again? That was before COVID. Right?
Yeah. It was it was 2018, so it was about a year prior. We had already started working with them. We took a minority stake in 2016. So we had a a terrific relationship with Mark and his team and kinda built that up over the years and, you know, did the baby steps. Like, alright. Let's, let's start dating. You know the typical story. And then, okay, this seems to be working well. Let's just join forces.
And that happened right at the end, literally, like, December 31, 2018. So Oh. Or no. Sorry. That was 2,070. Right? 18. Yeah. Right before no. 18 19. That's it. Lose track of time, don't we, all these days? So the end of 18 going into 19. So we had a full year really to ramp this thing up before COVID hit.
That's crazy. Wow. So it's you guys really you you really adapted with, you know, through the whole crazy, you know, global pandemic and everything. It seems like you guys adapted and and added this b to b platform, not just b to c, which is gonna drastically, you know, hopefully, gonna increase your revenue, your top line revenue, and your sales.
We did. And and the funny thing is, we went public through a reverse merger, like, a month prior to Wow. With hitting as well. So we had built up this amazing new b to b product. We were gonna go out to all the bars and restaurants in any public venue.
Think of anywhere you see a public screen. We've got the license for that with the music labels, and, you know, we're gonna go out there and really provide this great content, because we knew the businesses were looking at cutting the cord like homes were. So they're looking in a streaming option. So we had spent a couple years building this thing up. Liam developed an amazing product.
The team got it ready. And here we are in February. We get on the market. You know? Our little LPTB symbol, we're all excited, and then boom.
You know? It just hit, and things shut down overnight. And, you know, it's tough. It it's tough for everybody involved in that industry, but we were way more fortunate than others, you know, in the sense that we had something else that we could turn to on the consumer offering and the fact that a lot of our clients were were bigger. Like I mentioned some of the names earlier, they were able to withstand this a little better.
Yeah. Absolutely. They had they had really had the buffer to, to make higher investments and and even make some mistakes. When you're doing so well financially, you kinda you can kind of you have a a larger room for error.
Yeah. You do. But you still have to work you have to have empathy. Right? I mean, we we obviously, paused billing and did whatever we could to help people get through those initial months, and so they developed a plan and things started to reopen. So everybody kinda did their part. You know, the team took cuts, the typical thing, you know, with salaries and pay.
Yeah.
So everybody was really trying to manage because you just didn't know. I mean, you know this better than anyone talking to people and their stories. But at March, April, you're just thinking of survival, you're thinking of growth, and you're thinking about how can we help. Mhmm. Since we're in a position here that looks like we're fortunate enough to maybe be able to withstand this thing.
And this is what I really want people to learn from you, John, is you being in business for so long, you know, being a founder of companies, you know, working with enterprise level organizations and companies around the world, build building partnerships and learning how to, to start, grow, and scale a company like Loop Media, which I think is gonna make a huge impact on people and businesses. What were some of your toughest challenges aside from COVID? We know COVID was very tough, and I I love how you guys adapted. But what were some of the the startup challenges for you guys in terms of, you know, maybe even, seeking funding and investors? Did you deal with any any angel investors, VCs?
I'm sure you got some funny stories about that.
Do you have 3 hours? Like, can we this podcast? I mean, I I had no idea. I was so naive. You know? I I kinda came from this insulated I've got a business card from Disney and from Electronic Arts. You know? People are you know, they'll pick up the phone, blah blah blah. And all of a sudden, you've got a brand on your card that no one's heard of. It's tough to kinda get through that door.
You know what I mean? Even if even if people might know you, you kinda get that first chit of a contact. Yeah. We'll listen to you. But when you're kind of working off a PowerPoint and you're talking about how you're gonna go out there and create a a company that's gonna compete with these multibillion dollar behemoths.
Mhmm. You know, people start to look at me as as if I might have lost my mind, and maybe I did. I don't know. But maybe I needed to do that to really make this happen. So I also I didn't know, and we didn't really know how to value the company.
We did we knew that we didn't wanna go through the traditional route of VCs and all of that. We went purely friends and family. We went through high net worth individuals. We had a a terrific first investor, the Berry family, out of Tennessee who just believed in us. They had this they saw the passion, and they stepped up to support us.
And, you know, that we we just kinda grew from there, but, you know, they could only do so much. So then you had to go out and raise more money by talking to other individuals. And when you're dealing with individuals, hey. Funds get tight certain times during the year. They've got another investment, and you run out. Runway comes real short. We hit multiple peaks and valleys. You know? So this was not a smooth ride by any means. You know?
We we learned along the way. We, we just did it. You know, we have the credit card stories. So anything that you've heard of stereotypically, we've done it. And I think perhaps the experience a lot of us had, you know, provided some resiliency, provided, we're just gonna make it happen, kind of that stick to itiveness or whatever word you wanna use.
Right. Well, so we for sure you know? And even in the discussions of, like, with the labels, it took probably a year and a half, almost 2 years just to get the extension from b to b to consumer. Because, again, we're a small company. They got bigger fish to fry, but they were great, and they always work with us.
And so but it's still it just took a long time. So I guess the biggest learnings were try to get more money up front. Not a bad idea. And secondly, it's gonna take longer than you think. And, you know, I had always thought that we could just make this happen.
But, fortunately, again, I think timing's actually worked out for us. I think that it's better that we didn't launch in 2018. It's better that we really made a big push in 2020, because music industry, look what Spotify has done with its offering and and how valuable they are, is kinda hot again. And, you know, the streaming business is hot again, and we're a SaaS business. You know?
So that's not a bad place to be. So right now, I think it's all aligned, and and, fortunately, we were able to kind of stick with it. And, again, credit to the team. You know, people could have bailed left and right. They didn't. They believed in it. And, without that, we wouldn't be here.
You have to go through a lot of hardship and struggle and obstacles, you know, walls, barriers, whatever you wanna call it to, I mean, to see the light at the end of the tunnel. And and and for me, I always talk about this is it's never about this is my opinion. It's never about the end goal because there's not really you you shouldn't always try to seek an angle. I mean, yeah, of course, we have our we have our, you know, our our dreams and our visions of, hey. I I I would like to exit.
I mean, you hear about those startups, right, after 3 years, 5 years, 10 years, they wanna exit and all this. But, you know, then after that, then what? You know what I mean? In in regards to achieving your personal happiness and and, having that fulfillment, like, you love, I mean, you you love entertainment. You've been in it for so long.
You love media. You love people, technology, and and those are passions that that drive you. And and I think that's very important to learn that you're willing to do whatever it takes to overcome all those obstacles and those hurdles. And I think people can learn from that because for us being entrepreneurs, and I told you this earlier, like, I own a tech company. My company builds apps and all of that.
We have a team of about 25 people. And it took us so long to get here with so many failures. And the resilience that you gained, the perseverance the sorry, the perseverance, the patience, it's unreal. You have to really have those values.
Yeah. A 100%. And, you know, it's funny. It's like that logo, stay calm. I mean, you really have to stay calm.
You have to you just for yourself, number 1, so you don't go crazy. And number 2, for your team. And if you really truly believe in what you're doing, which we did, and and we knew that we were getting the conversations we were having were positive. But just for whatever reasons, you know, circumstances have popped up along the way, it just kinda made us turn left and right. So by the time COVID hit, frankly, we were so used to detouring and surviving that we said we got this.
And, you know, and, fortunately, the team was mentally prepared to do that. You know, it's funny. I got I have one other story, one other actor, and I share this with with, a couple of people that and I was a young president of Disney. I think I was 35 whenever I when I got that that title in Asia. And then suddenly, I became the old guy.
And when we were doing our funding rounds, one of the bankers looked at me and goes, you know what? He goes, you need to find a company that, wants to be led or is willing to back a company that's led by a domain expert. I'm like, domain expert? Yeah.
It's experience
Yeah. It's an experience. I and I think he meant it as a compliment. I'm not quite sure, but I get it. There's all these 20 something entrepreneurs who are brilliant and great ideas and fresh out of college, and I'm one of the older batch. But, you know, with that does come that kind of, that battlefield experience, so to speak. But I had no idea I was a a domain expert in this industry. So I wear the title proudly, Michael.
Mhmm. You do. You have or the, you wanna call it the vertical experience. Vertical is another buzzword for, I think, industry. So many of these buzz it's crazy. It's just full semantics. It's yeah. Trying to get these words right or, you know, I think create some stress and I don't know. Trying to get all this stuff right. But, you know, do you guys have does Loop have a, a funding strategy moving forward?
Are you trying to seek more more capital from, you know, people that you know within your net worth your network and and, maybe VCs and all of that? Are you trying to bootstrap it based on the revenue that you're, that you're receiving that's gonna fund the company moving forward?
I look. We're still raising, so we're certainly we're certainly still seeking capital. We're we're very close to the point where we're gonna have to go to the institutional, you know, based on the scaling that we wanna do, especially with you know, we we wanna uplist, obviously, from where we are, you know, on the OTC to one of the bigger boards. So there's there's a lot of things that we have in our road map, ahead of us that are gonna require bigger support for sure than bootstrapping and and some of the other people that we've been lucky enough to have back us. You know, we're we're talking may way more money.
So we're definitely going to seek that. I think I think that, being public, having that stock as a currency has been helpful. And, you know, I also think that the initial success we've got a 3 pronged approach now to our business. We've got the b to b component. We just launched a great free product.
It's an ad supported product. So what used to cost businesses maybe a 150, $200 they could get for free, you know, with ad support. If they don't wanna do that, they could still do a subscription that's, like, $30, so it's way, way cheaper, way more affordable. Wow. Okay.
We and it's good to scale. I mean, you can you can literally go to loop.tv. You could sign up, and within 5 minutes, basically, you can have the service streaming in your venue. And it caches so in case the Wi Fi goes down, you're you're protected. We've tried to cover all the boxes. So, yeah, I don't know how many times you've gone to these public venues, but you go and you sit there on the screen during during happy hour, and it's like judge Judy or some boring stuff, and you're like
I know.
What is that? You know? Give me a give me some music right now. You know? Give me a little Jimmy Buffett to get the night going then or whatever your taste. So, you know, we've got lists for everything. We let our venues become program directors where they could use content. By the way, there's more than music. We've got drone footage. We've got viral videos like fail army, from Juke Media, Pet Collectives, sports highlights.
So it's it's a bunch of short form stuff that works in these public venues. So that's vertical number 1. Vertical number 2 are these OTT linear channels we have with, services like TiVo and Plax and Twitch? Are you guys doing their Twitch? Well, we did we did a live festival with Twitch.
So as a lot of people were doing kind of in that April time frame when all this started happening, the artists really were losing all their income. We did our part, and we had 35 emerging arc artists from around the globe, 12 countries. It was really terrific. We had artists from Hong Kong and Israel and Hong Kong sorry, and and China and Europe and, combined with different parts of the US, Canada, etcetera. So, you know, we work with that on Twitch and MusiCares and had a really great festival, which we we wanna continue to do those for the emerging artist.
So those are linear channels. The 3rd component is is this music video app. You know, we're the really the only pure music video app in the market. We're gonna be launching that early next year. We've already launched it in Latin America. In Mexico, we're rolling out there because that's a great market. So by q one, you'll be able to see all this stuff
for me.
Yeah.
And is is it very, excuse me, is it very different than Vivo?
Yeah. It is. So first of all, Vivo is not available in, really, anywhere but YouTube or Vivo.com. So
Yeah. That's true. You're right. Yeah.
I mean, I always look at Vivo as kind of a landing page. You search for Vivo, and then it takes you to Vivo, and you watch it on YouTube. It's really not a consumer destination. It's not like people intentionally go there. They don't have a consumer app. Yeah. I don't think you know, what we're trying to do is create a very curated experience, a very social experience. You could do a watch party with music videos. You can comment. You can be invited to a friend's loop.
You know? You have you can do a little video shout out. I mean, there's all sorts of fun things. You have to make it engaging to kinda pull people away from that static YouTube experience.
I always talk about the new currency now is really attention, isn't it? Everyone wants it it's all about attention. I mean Yeah. The the best brands in the world, they're getting so much attention. People are loyal to their brand. All they see, they see their ads on TV or all over the Internet. Their digital marketing efforts are so strong and so powerful, and they're so diverse. You know? It's a it's a multichannel approach. It's crazy.
Yeah. Absolutely. And, well, especially in streaming, look how many people are trying to get in that space, and people are going direct and and good for Disney, by the way. So, you know, they're the perfect example of loyalty, content that's unique. You know, I don't think there's any other brand that could do what they did.
And Netflix and Amazon started by using other people's content, built up a great subscriber base, and then they started doing their own thing. You know? But, Disney is just able to kinda go at it from the beginning and say, yeah. Here we are. We've got all this great stuff. I I think along the way, you're gonna have some sort of peak, in terms of number of players that could come in there
Right.
And some consolidation, but it's a really interesting space right now.
And what do you see with your experience in building loop and even working at Disney for so long? Where do you think, the music industry and even streaming, where do you think that's heading? Do you do you see any new trends or anything changing? Any challenges? Or
It's it's funny that music industry got knocked for being late to the digital game so long ago. We kinda remember that. And, you know, I I think everyone else has learned from that, you know, whether it's TV or movies now by by all these windows that they have to change? Do you go direct to the consumer? Do you go to the theater?
So, you know, music's always kinda that cautionary tale, and and I I do think that they finally obviously, they figured it out on the audio side, and they're still figuring it out on the video side. And, you know, I think we're a part of that. I think that many things have changed because of this pandemic and because of artists being forced to go virtual that I don't think a lot of the big names would have sat down and done these virtual things from their living room when they're able to just make 1,000,000 of dollars selling out stadiums. So it leveled the playing field for new artists and for the big names because you really have the same technology to try to reach fans. And, you know, I think that that's what is is kind of unique about this time that we really want you know, we really wanna be part of that where we wanna be a platform, you know, that that artist can get noticed on and then we can help really have them also earn some incremental revenue.
So I think for the music industry, it's gonna continue to grow. I think they're in a good space. I think it's gonna become more and more global. Look what's happening with BTS, k pop. You know, it's funny. We tried to do that group, like, 10 years ago. And now, you know, here here comes the Korean boy band just just knocking it off and out of the park. It's amazing. So I think that there's an appetite with this newer generation Yeah. And I think you've, solved
Yeah. And I think you've, solved the problem in the industry as well. I think especially with a lot of the music artists, don't get me wrong. I mean, the the top ones, they're doing very, very well or they have been doing well. I mean, it's it's crazy, the the money that they've made.
But I think the opportunity that you're gonna provide, you're offering for the artists that are not so mainstream. You're creating a lot more opportunity for these smaller artists, which is great. And I can see, like and this is just me being creative. I can see, you know, SoundCloud maybe integrating with you to some point. You You know? There's just all these platforms. It's it's I I love it. I I really do. It's Yeah.
It's funny. Our our team is majority of the people are are artists and musicians, you know, just to just shout out, like, our our head of comms, Justice Kao. You know? He's he's a trained artist, went to Berkeley College of Music, you know, with, Luke Y, Craig Smith. They're all on our team.
Mhmm. Grant Penske, a young independent artist. You know? So we've got these these people that have this wonderful background and and truly can be empathetic towards the artist. And I think that you have to have that authenticity. It's it's an important word, and it's a real word.
It is.
I I couldn't do that. I played the baritone in the high school band. You know, does that does that qualify me as an artist? No. But, you know, these guys, they really know. They know how to reach reach everybody, and I think that's important. And we wanna continue to do that. I mean, if anything learning through this path of entrepreneurship is you've gotta help people. And, you know, I always appreciated it along the way. I know people from our team appreciate it.
I'm sure you appreciate it, you know, from the business that you start, and you remember that. And we really wanna be that service that that truly does try to help these artists.
It's so important, John. You know, I think you and I have both met a lot of, entrepreneurs and even super successful entrepreneurs and and executives and CEOs of companies that they they don't have the best intentions and motives behind what they're doing. A lot of it is just very monetary. And for me, that's it's it's a short way of thinking. It's it's short term.
You know, I always try to tell people when when startups come to me for advice and all this, and I say, you have to be in it for the long game. You really do. Because if you don't, you're not gonna survive it. You're just not. It's very, very tough. It's very challenging. There's gonna be thousands of challenges and obstacles that are gonna be coming your way. So you have to know how to manage and respond to those things. You know?
A 100%. You know? Again, we are fortunate enough to buy a company called Speaker, a podcast company. It was started by Andy Shone. Andy's been in the music business for years, you know, early MTV guys. Started MTV. Has a tremendous following, you know, great team that's been loyal to him that are part of our team. And, you know, he he's he's been through this path too. He's he's been through the corporate. He's been through the entrepreneurial thing.
So for me, it's great to kinda have that, person that can that can help push forward together that has that similar experience, albeit different. He's way, way deeper than I am on the music side, but it kinda goes back to that whole thing of getting the chessboard just right, right, in terms of having to play it with the people.
I know. It's it's crazy. And there's so many other outside factors involved, like timing. Timing is very important. You know, the people you have around you, the economic conditions, the market demand, the fluctuations. There's just so many things, but that's why you just gotta keep trying, trial and error. You're gonna make mistakes. Just keep moving. Keep moving forward.
You can't be afraid of it. I mean, you really just have to go for it, and you'll figure it out. You know? I I think that if don't give up. It's kinda one of those things that you just turn turn left or right, pivot. That's one of the buzzwords these days. Right? So we're doing we're doing words. It's like we're pivoting so much. It's like a basketball player that just pivots in a circle and just keeps pivoting. So, you know, you just gotta pick a direction and go.
Yeah. Yeah. Instead of trying to do to to be everything to everyone. Right. Trying to do something to stay focused, and I've been through that too. I know I know what that's like. It's hard. It's it's, it's stressful. It's it's hard to try to meet the demand of everyone. So Yeah. You gotta you gotta stay focused. But and and so what do you see as the future outlook for, for Loop? What do you guys kind of have planned? What do what's your tell me the the ambitious side of it.
So the ambitious side is we want everyone to know about Loop. Right? Who doesn't start a company? We don't want it to be a a household name. Right. So 2 pronged approach. Our product guy, Liam, always says, I wanna I wanna LOOP sticker in every window. So if you go walk by a a bar, a dry cleaner, a restaurant, you see a loop enabled venue. It's it's ASCAP BMI. You know it's licensed for music, which is important.
I like the logo, by the way.
I thank you. That was that was, that was Liam too. Came up with the name. Liam did the logo. And, you know, it's it works for music. You know? And and it also so many things have looped me in and all that stuff. But so I we wanna be the biggest player on that b to b side, you know, and then we want to also have this consumer experience that's that is just fun and engaging. So I think that we wanna be up there. We wanna be up there, obviously, with all the big players that are in this space.
I want people to think of of loop like they would a a Bebo or if you you know names like Snapchat, Instagram, who doesn't wanna be thought of that way? So we have high expectations. We have high hopes, and we do believe there's a big green field ahead of us based on the players that are kind of currently in this music space and the size of them.
I love it, man. I love it. So this is the, well, I was asked as as the final question with everyone that I interview. So we talked a little about about little bit about storytelling earlier and, you know, the the purpose of this podcast. And, it's to understand the stories of of know, successful entrepreneurs and and thought leaders and, you know, and and understanding their challenges, their successes, their obstacles.
So with that being said for you, John, what how would you define your story in one word? In just one word.
Perseverance.
Love it because that's mine. Alright. Whoo. We got it. I think I had one other person. I forgot who it was. It might have been a few months ago, but, yeah, he said the same thing, perseverance. And then I've heard some weird ones too. I think, maybe I think money was one of them for 1 person. But
Lord.
It's okay.
Yeah. Well, hey. To each their own, man. Right? That's right. To each their own. But, I'm I'm happy to be in your boat, and we'll persevere together and bring that 3rd guy too, and it's awesome. We'll all get together.
This is great. John, I I really appreciate this, man. Thank you so much. It's an honor meeting you and talking to you and, for the little time that that we've had, you know, understanding your story and and what you've been through with with this company. And, you know, I look forward to staying connected with you, and this is this is great. Thank you so much. I I really, really appreciate it.
Oh, thanks, Michael, and congratulations to you for what you're doing and building. And, it's it's an honor to be connected for sure. Let's go in touch.
No. This is great. And one last thing is, where can everyone find you? Your social media or your, you know, the websites?
Yeah. At looptvofficial. Go to loop.tv. So check us out on everything Instagram, Facebook. Go nuts. Go crazy. Have fun. Download Loop. You only get the loop app. You know? If we're on Amazon Fire TV, you you could find the loop app on there. So we were gonna be, you know, VIZIO, Roku. You could find the Loop app. Mhmm. So there it's in many platforms. Just look for that cool logo.
Fantastic. Well, I really appreciate it, John. Thanks thanks again, man. And, well, I I I can't wait for people to listen to this. I think they're gonna be inspired, and they're gonna learn a lot. So thanks again. And, again, this is Michael Georgiou, your host from Tales From the Pros. And until next time. Thank you, everyone. Please subscribe to our YouTube page and also follow our social media.
There are links somewhere around here. But, we really appreciate it guys. Thanks for all the support and I'm gonna be giving you awesome content continuously And we look forward to seeing you soon.