IAM1362 – CEO Creates an End to End Solution to Support Producers

Ronald Thomson has a legacy of experience in securing capital for companies in the global media/entertainment and technology communities. A transformative thinker who has proven time and again his ability to guide companies and accelerate their growth, Ron's extensive industry knowledge is the result of founding and building multiple global techs & entertainment businesses.

• CEO Story: Ronald is a serial entrepreneur with a series of companies always in the media and entertainment industry always from a technology standpoint. Was asked to join Liquid Media Group to reformulate their business and grow the company –  now on steady growth.
• Business Service: Business solutions company focusing on independent content creators that film and television.
• Secret Sauce: An alternative to the studio model for independents.
• CEO Hack: Reading the Autobiography by Richard Branson – be able to understand why you are doing it.
• CEO Nugget: Mentorship and confidence. Faith (in yourself, the universe, instincts).
• CEO Defined: A leader. Be comfortable being yourself. Fearless in making decisions. Be a trailblazer.

Website: www.liquidmediagroup.co

Facebook: LiquidMediaIR

Instagram: liquidmediagroup

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Transcription

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00:15 – Intro

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkness values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO podcast.

00:42 – Gresham Harkless

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast. I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Ron Thompson of Liquid Media Group. Ron, it's great to have you on the show.

00:51 – Ron Thomson

Great to meet you. And what a great show. I've been listening to it and preparing for this. So you got a great show and congratulations on this.

01:00 – Gresham Harkless

Thank you. I truly appreciate that. You're doing so many phenomenal things. The best thing about what I get to do is I get to interview really phenomenal people like Ron. So, of course, before we jump to the interview, I want to read a little bit more about Ron so you can hear about some of those awesome things. Ron has a legacy of experience in securing capital for companies in the global media, entertainment, and technology communities.

A transformative thinker who has proven time and again his ability to guide companies and accelerate their growth, Ron's extensive industry knowledge is a result of founding and building multiple global tech and entertainment businesses. Ron, again, excited to have you on the show, my friend. Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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01:37 – Ron Thomson

I am, I am, thank you, Gresh. I'm gonna turn off one of my many phones here, which are going, going, of course, they always start when I need to do an interview. It's incredible. There we go.

01:48 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah. Well, everybody, everybody wants to speak to you know, about all the awesome things you've been doing. So, yes, the chaotic, I wanted to rewind the clock a little bit Here is a little bit more on how you got started.

02:02 – Ron Thomson

Do you know, I started my business career far too many years ago, but I've actually been a serial entrepreneur and I've had a series of companies in the media and entertainment industry, always from a technology standpoint, which has always been one of my strengths. And really that's what brought me after a long series of years with my own firm, I got asked to join Liquid Media Group about a year ago, just over a year ago to help them reformulate their business and grow the company.

It's a public company, I'm trading on Nasdaq. It's YVR, it's the ticker. I've really moved the business from where it was in the capital transformation stage into more of an operating business with a new business plan and new capital and new people and all new. So it's been very, very exciting. It's been a kind of a whirlwind tour this last year, and now we're on steady growth. It's actually gone great. I'm really excited about it.

03:04 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, that's pretty awesome. You know, especially, you know, you being able to kind of tap into, like, it sounds like the experience and the ventures that you had to be able to kind of lead this organization. And I imagine that that didn't happen from day one. It probably took some time to kind of build all that expertise knowledge and experience.

03:19 – Ron Thomson

It did. I've been building companies now for the past 27 years and have been involved in my own series of companies also on the client side, I've probably had over 120 clients, major media companies and studios media groups telecoms providers, and production and distribution companies all over the world. I run a global business and have been involved with the global industry. My own firm's company, sort of company offices have been in Europe and here in North America and also in Asia.

And so I've spent time in all 3 of those places over the past. It's been interesting. And it's always about trying to create things that are sustainable, business ideas that can grow, that respond to a pain point, and always things that have a global possibility, never simply local, but things that potentially have the opportunity to expand internationally. I really don't see borders, nor does my company, and any of the businesses that we created have always been very broad in scope in terms of their.

04:35 – Gresham Harkless

Nice. Well, I appreciate you, you know, expanding upon that, because I think so many times again, you know, you hear the 20-plus years of experience that you have. And I imagine that has definitely equipped you with the ability to be able to, you know, look at a company or organization and probably say, okay, from my experience, you probably see patterns and things like that and you can see what decisions to make.

And I think to be able to kind of, they say you can see you so much farther by standing on the shoulders of giants. So I could definitely see why these organizations are bringing you in because you have that breadth of or that amount of experience and expertise. So I wanted to drill down a little bit more and hear a little bit more about Liquid Media Group. Could you take us through a little bit more on how you serve your clients and your recommended impact there?

05:14 – Ron Thomson

Sure. We've recalibrated what was the traditional business of liquid into a business solutions company focusing on independent content creators. That's film and television, production companies, distributors, studios, mini-majors, and all the various people in the feeding chain who are involved in creating audio-visual content and the idea is that they're great at creating and great at being a creative force to take ideas and sort of make them happen and put them on the screen.

They are not always necessarily the best at essentially handling all the business aspects of that, including looking sort of scientifically, statistically at what it is they're producing and how that will ultimately resonate and how it will eventually recoup its investment in production and make money. So essentially what we did is we took a step back. As opposed to being quote-unquote producers ourselves, what we're in business to do is to create a comprehensive end-to-end solution to support producers so that they can go off and create.

We basically can handle on an industrial basis through a very structured approach that business infrastructure caused them to be successful, to really give them the helping hand and do it on terms which are potentially more economically interesting to them. And so really what we've done is that we've raised some money last year in the market. And so our investors nor this industry has time to wait around for us to start from scratch.

So we've been acquiring companies that basically fulfill part of our entire value proposition, whether it's in 1 of those various 4 silos that I mentioned. And it's going well. We've 4 acquisitions that we've announced, 3 of which we've already completed, 1 of which we're very close to completing and we have more to come. And so the whole idea here is to provide this entire solution, including partnerships for companies that perhaps we don't need to acquire to provide a one-stop shop dependence.

07:23 – Gresham Harkless

Nice. I absolutely love that. And this might even touch on the kind of like the secret sauce and what you feel kind of you personally, the organization makes you unique, but I almost feel like you're helping people be in their zone of genius, essentially. And I'm not sure if that's what you kind of see in your secret sauce, is being able to kind of see that pain point, see like the creatives they want to create, but they also want to make sure that they do have, I guess, for lack of a better term, the agency, some of the, you know, I guess the fruits of their labor, so to speak, that they benefit from that. Do you think that your ability to kind of see that and understand like the force for the trees is part of the organization or your personal secret sauce?

07:59 – Ron Thomson

I do. I think The fact that we have war wounds scars from decades of working in the industry. I mean, my life is the film and television and the media industry and all the technology around that industry. So I've been through this now and my team and people that I've worked with who are smarter than me, frankly, I'm the quarterback at the end of the day. With all the various requisite core areas of expertise, I've got a phenomenal group of people. It's all about excellence. It's all about know-how.

And that experience of having tried and tested, done things, found out what works and what doesn't work, understanding trends, being able to look forward with key things which are evolving in our marketplace and identifying what those are, identifying those pain points, having courage, real courage to be able to go off and take some chances because it's about risks, take some business risks. You always evaluate from a cost-benefit perspective.

But I think with liquid media, what we've identified here is, I think really the big idea that no one's talking about, the way that people are perceiving us is that we are an alternative to the traditional studio model for independence. And I think that's very powerful. It's a big idea. It's not like anybody. It's a new, more modern approach for content producers, to plan, execute, and realize the success of their creative genius. And that's what I'm helping enable. That's what our solution empowers.

09:42 – Gresham Harkless

Absolutely. I appreciate that. So I wanted to switch gears a little bit, and I want to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an app, a book, or a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

09:56 – Ron Thomson

Well, there are many. As I get into my mid-50s, So if you asked me 10, or 20 years ago, they would be a bit different. Always for me, I guess I'm a person who has always had a lot of aspirations. I've had a lot of I've been a motivated self-driven person, a lot of times because of fear. And I think there's a hack, I read a lot, I used to read more than I do now, and now I just do business reading. But the things that I do read tend to be biographies of people that I respect, that I revere.

I think one of which I think really is perhaps one of the core ones was Richard Branson's autobiography. I think the first version of that I read, is such an inspirational, iconic publication for anyone who's an entrepreneur that really causes you to understand and sort of be able to ask yourself, why am I doing this? And then come back and say, this is now I understand why I'm doing this. And so that was a really big thing for me when I read that book. But subsequently, I've read all kinds of other similar books. And I think I just read the most recent was the Elon Musk book, which was interesting. He's obviously amounted to something as it turns out.

11:14 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, that helps out tremendously. And I almost don't know if those are kind of like, I call them CEO nuggets, which are kind of words of wisdom or piece of advice or something you might tell your younger business. So is it that mentorship and believing in and, you know, even touch on that self-confidence piece? Do you think that's something you might, you know, tell your younger business self or just, you know, kind of, I guess, give somewhat peace and knowing that as much as it might feel like we're in the on the road by ourselves that there have been others that have maybe not blazed the same trail, but potentially other trails that we can get confidence in that you think that's part of your nugget?

11:46 – Ron Thomson

I think so. I think the concept of, I say believe, it's like faith. And I would say it's not blind faith. It's just faith, faith in yourself, faith in factors, faith in the universe to some degree. It's a little bit ethereal at the end of the day. But If you don't have it, it could also be the difference between you and somebody else who doesn't have that same and looks at things very mechanically. I don't want to say I'm an optimist. Of course, I'm an optimist. I'm a realist, but I look at things.

I'm definitely a glass-half-full person. It's not to be evangelical, but I think it is to have faith and to have faith in yourself and faith in ideas, your instincts, especially once you've done it for a while and you know, who else knows better than you? Why are you being asked to lead? And that's why I'm asked to lead because I know usually things that you should and shouldn't do, we can and can't do. Not everything, but at least for the things that I don't know, I'm going to find out, I'm going to make it my business. I would absolutely be ruthless about finding out and then executing and having faith along the way.

13:00 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, that makes so much sense. And I love that it starts out with, you know, maybe I won't call it blind faith, but a little bit less faith. And then as you get that experience and you know, you try that thing and it works out, you start to kind of grow that that that confidence over time. So absolutely appreciate that. So I want to ask you now my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. We're all gonna have different quote-unquote CEOs on the show, so Ron, what does being a CEO mean to you?

13:27 – Ron Thomson

You've got to be a leader and you have To be comfortable being, as I said before, by yourself sometimes and making difficult decisions and being fearless with those decisions. You have to be prepared to be by yourself and be a trailblazer. Many times you will be wrong. You have to be prepared to make mistakes, hopefully little ones. If you're not prepared to make mistakes, you shouldn't be in the business because there's nobody who does this without making mistakes. And to have stories that are not so successful, to learn from them, and to wear that.

And I've had those too. You call them business failures or life failures, whatever. Call it what you will, they're learning experiences. Wear them. There's nothing wrong with it. Anybody who thinks that you can be 100% successful without ever having failed, for how long? For how long? And you learn things along the way. Always keep learning, always keep improving, keep bettering, keep studying. As I keep saying to people in our industry and even in my own business before Liquid Media is always, I'm a student of our industry. I'm not an expert. I wouldn't, I'm not an expert on anything. And don't ask me about cooking. I'm definitely not an expert on that. I'm trying to get better and I'm a student.

14:43 – Gresham Harkless

Truly appreciate that. And of course, I appreciate your time even more. So what I want us to do now is pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know. And of course, how best they can get ahold of you and find out about all the awesome things that you and your team are working on.

14:58 – Ron Thomson

Thank you, Gresh. I hope that's helpful for people. If anyone wants to get in touch with me, it's Ron Thompson. I'm the CEO of Liquid Media Group. I'm best reached either by calling Liquid Media or by emailing me at rrthompson@liquidmediagroup.co. And to our website, which is www.liquidmediagroup.co. I think we have various social media feeds, which we're trying to get working.

So LinkedIn is always a good 1. I'm very active on LinkedIn actually. Disaster on Twitter. So I'm told that I have to get Mac together on that. Instagram I'm a train wreck on, but I have some help now. And then we have Discord and we've got all these other sort of social media chat things we're doing. So there are various ways to get in touch with me. Otherwise, call it Liquid Media Group and someone will put you in touch with me.

15:55 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. I truly appreciate that, Ron. We would definitely have the links and information and the show notes as well too, so that everybody can get ahold of you. Truly appreciate that. Appreciate your time, of course, and your wisdom. And I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

16:07 – Ron Thomson

Thank you, Gresh. Have a happy weekend. Great to meet you. And I'm here whenever you want to talk and great to talk to your listeners.

16:15 – Outro

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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