Larry Namer : The Man Who Revolutionised TV & The Kardashians Best Kept Secret?
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People really get caught up in this follow your passion thing.

But at the end of the day, we all have to pay the rent. We all have to eat. So if your passion is not going to put off enough income to make this idea sustainable, you're probably going in the wrong direction. If I looked at my passion, my passion is cooking. Every time I've invested in any restaurant-related activity, I've lost money. So if I would have followed that passion, I would probably be living on the street. What are three of the biggest lessons that you would teach an entrepreneur?

one is the second one is the other thing is my name's rudy moore host of living the red life podcast and i'm here to change the way you see your life in your earpiece every single week if you're ready to start living the red life ditch the blue pill take the red pill join me in wonderland and change your life

Guys, what's up? Welcome back to another episode of Living the Red Life. Today we've got Larry joining us from Entertainment Television. You've probably heard about it. You've probably watched the Kardashians and many of the other shows that he's helped produce and bring to life. You know, if you don't know, E! News or Entertainment Television, they are valued around $5 billion. He actually sold to Comcast.

They are accessible in over 140 countries. And today we're going to dive into how we built one of the biggest entertainment giants on the planet from zero. Larry, welcome to the show. Hi, thanks for having me.

It's great to have you here and I'm so excited. I know you've had an amazing entrepreneurial career and obviously given some of the biggest celebrities and brands a platform. So yeah, let's dive in. If someone doesn't know who you are and they don't know, you know, e-entertainment, I know you've obviously sold now, but can you maybe give a little bit, a 60 second story about what it does and how it became so successful?

Sure. You know, my partner, Alan Marufka, and I, you know, two ordinary guys came up with this idea of doing, you know, entertainment tonight, 24 hours a day, or MTV of the movies, as we called it. And we weren't smart enough to know that people don't start TV networks. So we just wrote a business plan and we went out and, you know,

I think even today, it's the only TV network that's ever been started just by people, as opposed to big media companies. Going out looking for money, people going, nice idea, but you're not Time Warner and you're not Comcast. You can't do that. People won't start TV networks and

I guess Alan and I weren't smart enough to realize that you're not supposed to be able to do it. So we just kept going until we finally did it. Well, sometimes I say in entrepreneurship that blind optimism can actually benefit you because you don't overanalyze or limit yourself, right? And that sounds like what happened with you guys.

Yeah. And, you know, it's a great example of, you know, being necessity, you know, really pushing your creativity to limit. When we started, the going rate for starting a TV network was somewhere around $100 million. And, you

kind of a low end, maybe 60 million. But we found a place on Wall Street that said, we love this, but we only could sign for two and a half. And, you know, we were like, well, what do we do with two and a half million? But then we realized nobody's given us the 60 or 100. And we said, you know what, we'll give us the two and a half, we'll figure it out. And it really did push us to, you

to really be very innovative and think of stuff. We didn't buy real broadcast equipment, we bought used equipment from like some companies that were using it for training videos. And I had a friend that was teaching radio, television, film in Austin, Texas, UT. And we called them up and said, you know, Brian, do you have any kids that need intern jobs?

And he did, he sent us 31 interns. And so he actually started with 11 employees and 31 interns. And, you know, just some of the shows that really broke through originally were showing movie trailers and, you know, how to host in front of a green screen MTV style. But, you know, the first show that broke through was Talk Soup. And, you know, when we came up with that, you know,

Even our own crew was going, wait a second, you want to do a TV show that makes fun of TV shows? And I was like, yeah, exactly. And we were getting clips from the best shows on television for free. And even though we were poking fun, gently, for them it was a great promotion and it was free and they loved it and they got behind it and

stuff like that. And then we used what we did there was instead of selling the inventory to advertisers, we use the ad inventory to promote the other shows on the network so that people would tune in to see that crazy show. But then we would promote what else was on the network. Yeah, it's kind of smart because you're using already really strong brands, right? Or shows and then you're pulling them into yours and leveraging all their audiences.

Yeah. And, you know, and originally we started just with movie trailers. And, you know, when I called the studios and said, hey, the only time I ever see a movie trailer is when I'm in the movies. And that's probably the best two minutes of a movie. Don't you want me to see that at home to make me want to go to the movie? And I said, well, we can't afford it. And I said, you know what, send us those things and we'll put them on TV.

So if you think about early MTV, when they actually showed music videos, they stood a host in front of a green screen and they would point to it and say, and Madonna has a new video. And we said, we can stand the host in front of a green screen and go, hey, and Schwarzenegger has a new movie. So we started with all this incredibly high quality, high level content.

And then we did TalkSoup and then Howard Stern, you know. So once we developed the audience base and the revenue stream, you know, the rest kind of followed. We started doing new shows and, you know, E! Hollywood True Story and Wild On E! and, you know, it kind of went on from there.

But this is, you know, I was so excited for this episode because, you know, it's become a massive success now. I mean, it's about, you know, valued over 5 billion in 100 plus countries. And you obviously sold to Comcast. But like this all started with a big idea, people telling you it can't be done, figure it out, raise a little bit of money. But like, you know, maybe what, like 5% of what you maybe needed or less. And then like, how do you make it?

And that is entrepreneurship at its core, in my opinion. Yeah, well, thanks. You know, we, you know, like I say, we were forced into the position of figuring out how to maximize the value of every penny. And, you know, the other thing we did, which, you know, turned out to be really smart. People say to me, they go, oh, you were so lucky you had all those great hosts.

you know, and we had Greg Kinnear and Julie Moran went on to do Wide World of Sports and, you know, so on and so forth. And then, you know, the later days, Brooke Burk, Ryan Seacrest. And so there are a lot of good people that came off of that network, but it wasn't an accident. You know, Alan and I realized that

we're not going to dazzle anybody with fancy production. And we said, we're going to really spend our money to find the best hosts. We can love them or hate them. We wanted you to feel something about them. And we, we ended up putting over 7,000 people on tape in order to get those first five hosts. So that was not an accident. That was the smartest thing we did. And again,

Again, that's like, you know, you kind of have that vision, right? I mean, a lot of the time entrepreneurs often get caught up because they don't know where to invest the money or they don't have that clear plan. But, you know, it sounds like you had that clear plan, that thesis, hey, we're, you know, we can't maybe compete on production level, but we can compete on hosts if we really dedicate our time, energy, effort and money there. And obviously it paid off, right?

And if someone's listening, what are some of the other shows? I know we spoke about, you know, a famous one, but what are some of the other shows that came out of all of this? You know, Top Soup ran 20-something years, and then Howard Stern obviously did well, and then Wild Bonnie, and E! Hollywood True Story, and, you know, and, you know, Ryan Seacrest, E! News has been a staple of

television around the world for many years now. And, you know, then of course the, probably the one that everybody knows is the Kardashians. You know, that's, you know, a global success, not just in terms of audience, but look at what it's done to elevate the Kardashians into becoming a global brand.

Yeah. Do you ever look back and look at all the success of these shows and what you feel and like remember those early days? What would you tell yourself knowing where you got to now with it all?

Well, it's actually kind of funny. E! obviously was financially, you know, the best one. But I've been doing a lot of stuff in Asia in the post-E! years. And I decided at this late date, I'm actually kind of funny and I'm going to write comedy. So I wrote a sitcom about the contradictions among Chinese life and we made it in China.

Strangely enough, it went 72 episodes before I decided I can't be funny beyond 72. But the interesting part about it was it was actually nominated in the Asia TV Awards in the best sitcom category, and it was the only sitcom from China that was nominated.

So when I look back at the stuff I've done, I go, okay, I figured out that people around the world love Hollywood gossip. You know, that was pretty, but to write a comedy in a country that you didn't grow up in, in a language you don't speak, I go, that was actually kind of pretty cool. So, you know, a lot of people are surprised when I say that, but you know, that writing comedy in China really is the highlight of, you know, my stuff.

I love that. And what would you say, you know, a lot of entrepreneurs, people listening, you know, this company got built, obviously it's valued at billions now. And, you know, you started with this big, crazy idea, right? And determination. What would you say to anyone listening that wants to build a big company and just like you, maybe they, you know, get told it's not possible. You can't do it. It costs a hundred million. Like, what would you say to the entrepreneur listening?

Well, I think, you know, for me personally, I think, you know, the greatest...

you know, thing that I do is I wake up every morning with 10 new ideas. By the time I go to sleep, I realized most of them were pretty dopey is everybody, you know, I find people really get caught up in this follow your passion thing. Well, you know, follow your passion is kind of interesting, but at the end of the day, we all have to pay the rent. We all have to eat. So if your passion is not going to put off enough income to make this idea sustainable, then,

you're probably going in the wrong direction. So I have this thing, I put my ego aside every night, I self assess all the things that I'm doing or thinking of doing. And like I say, a lot of times I just go outside thinking this morning, that's pretty dopey.

We all have the same amount of time. I don't care who you are. You could be a zillionaire. You could be poor on the street. Time is something that we all have in common. So how do you maximize your time?

And a lot of people just, their ego makes them stick with ideas that for whatever reason, it could have been a good idea yesterday, but the environment has changed, the technology has changed, is to be able to look at stuff literally every day and going, is this still viable or is it just my ego telling me to keep going?

And put your time where you can maximize it. And again, if it's not going to be revenue generating and it's not going to let you eat and pay the rent and feed the kids and do all of that stuff, it's not going to last long because the realities of life will take over.

Yeah, I like that. I think, you know, I always say to people, you've got to build something that is smart and it can be profitable and scalable and has good ideas. And I think if you can, you know, if it's something that you wake up excited for every day and it's something that...

you know, you're truly passionate about, that's a bonus. But in business, there's going to be ups and downs. There's going to be times where you're loving life and winning. And then there's going to be times where you're like, you know, in a black hole and trying to fight your way out of it. Right. And I'm sure you've had some times and stories of that in your career, too. Oh, God. Yeah. You know, and, you know, for me, I mean, obviously TV is I do pretty good at, you know, I've created, you

shows literally all around the world. But if I looked at my passion, my passion is cooking.

And every time I've invested in any restaurant related activity, I've lost money. You know, so if I were to follow that passion, I would probably be living on the street. But I do it for myself. And for me, it's instead of going into therapy, I go in the kitchen and cook and I takes all the stress out of my life. And

stuff like that. So, yeah, I think it's a good example of, you know, sometimes your passion needs to be part of your life, but it shouldn't dominate your business life. For sure. And I want to ask you, you know, we talked about the Kardashians a little offline and, you know, that was obviously a big, uh,

you know, success, what was some of obviously, you saw behind the scenes and obviously a close with a family? What are some of the things you saw there that kind of made them so successful? Because obviously, you gave them a bit of a platform, but they were already like we said, you know, they have the brains behind it, too. I'd love to talk about that for a minute.

Sure. I mean, you know, they come from an interesting family to begin with. You know, you had the

you know, Chris was married to Bob Kardashian, who was the lawyer for O.J. Simpson, you know, for many years. And that was always in the press. And the girls kind of grew up in front of the camera. You know, then Chris ended up with Bruce before Bruce became Caitlyn. And they just, they were doing infomercials. They were always, you know,

in the public eye. And, you know, quite honestly, I think he certainly, we gave them the platform to show off. But I've always said, and I still to this day, the really, the person who formulated the strategy for elevating them into a global multi-billion dollar brand is the mom. It's Chris. You know, Chris just groomed those girls. And, you know, when they,

They learned how to act in front of the camera from a really, really young age and stuff. And, you know, a lot of what you see, people forget that it's television. So it's overly dramatized. So don't think that they're exactly what you've seen on the show. A lot of it was performing for the camera and stuff. But you look at the girls. I mean, they've been amazing business people. I think the mom kind of laid the foundation and the girls...

have picked up and learned from it and they're on their own. And then you look at things like what Kim is doing for, you know, prison reform and stuff like that. So it's a great example of how they made their fortune and now have turned to trying to do good there. And I don't think they get enough credit for the good that they try and do or good that they do do.

Well, you know, probably better than anyone. I mean, entertainment and Hollywood, they love to, you know, push your flaws more than your wins and the good you do, right? That's reality a little. Yeah, you know, the whole thing, you know, people think of reality shows being real. They're the furthest thing from real.

I crack up when people say, oh my God, did you watch Survivor last night? I wonder if Joe's going to fall off the cliff. And I go, no, the 200 people from the production crew are going to make sure he doesn't fall off the cliff. You forget that there's...

This is a TV show and there's always someone on a reality show. I call him the person with the pin, you know, and that's, you know, when things kind of get a little bit slow, somebody comes in and sticks someone in the butt with the pin and go, do you know what they said about you? You're going to let them get away with that. You know, so you have to have drama. That's why people came to the show. And if the drama is not natural, you know, the show has the, the way of, you know, getting it going.

Yeah, I just shot my first TV show last year as this summer and I just shot a second show where it was kind of my show and I fully produced and directed it and I was the guy with a pin quite a few times, you know. I mean real life is more like this whereas in TV it has to be like zero to a hundred, right?

You gotta have a certain amount of drama within the show or the audience goes somewhere else. And, you know, I mean, that's why they came there. And, you know, and again, it's a TV show. People have to realize that, you know, this has been condensed and you may have 48 hours of footage that you've condensed into a half hour TV show. And you're showing the audience only what you want them to see. Yeah, yeah. And that, but that is the art of,

storytelling, right, and creating content, which we now do on social media, on TikTok, on YouTube. But, you know, that psychology of how we like to consume content is generally the same. Our attention spans might be shorter than ever, but at our core as humans, I mean, we like to be entertained, educated, motivated, inspired. So, yeah. And obviously you did a good job on those.

Yeah, it's all the same. And it's that way on a global scale. I mean, people say, how do you manage that? I've had a hit TV show in Russia for 10 years. I've been developing shows and doing them in China and stuff. And it's,

Essentially people are 80% of the same and 20% is cultural, geographical where you grew up with. And we all have those common things. We go to work, we work our butt off and we come home and we want to be entertained and educated or, you know, and it changes at times. I mean, it's not people go, television is dead. And I go, no, it's not. Sometimes I watch it on my TV.

my telephone and sometimes I watch it on the big screen. It's story. It all boils down to its storytelling. And sometimes I want on the big screen, sometimes on a small, sometimes I want it in two minute bites. Sometimes I want it in one hour so I could just lump out on the couch. It's all of those things. It's not one of those things.

Yeah, I love that. So, you know, obviously building this business for many years, it's been very successful. But what are three of the biggest lessons that you would teach an entrepreneur? Like I always like to ask from someone that's been in it and kind of came out and exited and built a successful company. Three lessons you would love to teach the audience listening today.

Well, I mean, some of the stuff, I mean, number one is this don't get caught up in the follow your passion thing. Really be honest with yourself and self-assess everything you're doing to make sure you're maximizing the value of your time.

in every way possible. You know, the second one is always hire, look at the different components of what your, your, your task is going to be and hire people that actually can perform those things better than you can. I mean, I'm really good at managing people, but if you were to tell me, go edit this, I can hire editors that are so much better than I am, but I know how to manage those editors. So always hire smarter. And yeah,

The other thing is just really pay attention to the environment.

you know, the business climate changes, the technology changes. Now everybody cracks me up, you know, fighting artificial intelligence going, oh my God, it's going to take our jobs. It could be one of the greatest tools you've ever used if you learn how to use it. And, you know, people say, what would be a good, you know, a job for the future? I said, learn how to prompt.

I mean, people who know how to pump AI programs are going to be invaluable because you can do stuff. I mean, in my example, if you were to come to me and say, could you design a TV series about XYZ? Normally it takes me five days to kind of lay it out and develop it and whatever. Now, you know, I've been using GBT from when GBT was,

just starting in GPT-4. It now takes me 30 seconds to get it. I spend about an hour cleaning it up because it never comes out right. It comes out 80%. So now in one hour, I'm

I'm getting done what used to take me five days. So I can either do more of those or make more money. I could spend time with my little grandbaby. I could learn how to speak Spanish or I could learn how to cook Portuguese. I could reclaim time. Again, time is finite. We all have, you know, we all have to deal with that reality. I don't care who you are or how rich you are or how poor you are. It's we all have time and time is finite.

measured by, you know, some Supreme being who decides how long I'm going to be here. Yeah. I love that. We, uh, we've had about 80,000 entrepreneurs through our, we have an AI, um, event online where we teach entrepreneurs this and, you know, we, it's changed how we run our business. And even when I was filming my show, uh,

couple of months ago one of the challenges it kind of messed up and we weren't able to get it you know all the props and stuff in time and we literally went on there and in 10 minutes we had a new challenge idea that was able to pull off within 24 hours right it's just crazy and you know they the 80% thing's fascinating because a lot of people complain about that to me and I'm like

You know, I've hired thousands of employees. I have about 100 employees now. And I go, that's just the same level an employee would get it. But I don't have to wait a week and pay them a bunch of money, you know? Yeah. No, it's-- I think, you know, the thing with AI, it could be dangerous. We don't have-- our regulators, lawmakers, politicians haven't really begun to understand it yet. So there's nothing that governs this thing.

I mean, in the example I use, if a 12-year-old kid decides they want to drive a car, they can't just get in the car and drive. You got to be a certain age, you got to take driver's education, you got to take a driving test, and then you have to obey the rules of the road. I think with AI, it's the same thing. I mean, there needs to be something that says people who have bad intentions know there are consequences for getting caught exercising bad intentions.

But, you know, you go back and you look at, you know, cavemen used to paint on the wall of a cave, you know, with like blood. And they weren't real happy when somebody invented canvas and paint. You know, horse ranchers weren't thrilled when somebody invented cars. Technology marches on whether you like it or not. I think the music business probably learned that lesson. And they fought digital music for 10 years.

And you wouldn't have had iTunes and Spotify and, you know, you wouldn't have had these, these strong monsters that, you know, now the music industry is trying to figure out how you lessen their leverage and, you know, and until Taylor Swift came along, they, nobody figured it out. But, um,

You know, you've really got to realize that if technology can do good, there will be people who figure out how to harness it for good. And if it can do bad, there will be people who figure out how to harness it for bad.

Yeah, totally. So, you know, we're wrapping up today. I appreciate all the lessons. It's been awesome to dive into your career and, you know, obviously building this massive entertainment empire that many of us have known and consumed and all your lessons doing that. Last question I always ask everyone, what are you up to now and where can people learn more about you?

You could go to LJNmedia.com and find out more about what we're up to. My company in China is called Metan Global. With COVID, I started doing stuff in the U.S. again and doing...

We just created a series, Financial Wellness for Millennials. We just did another series called Conscious Parenting about the difficulties of being a parent in today's complex world.

We're working on finishing up the development of a series called Uncanceled, all about cancel culture, which I don't care what side of the fence you're on. I saw something today where Disney decided Tinkerbell was not politically correct to be a greeter at Disneyland because her body images were...

This has just gone way over the top. So we're doing something to create a platform for people who have been canceled right or wrong to at least get their side of the story out there or apologize for, you know, sometimes they say, hey, that was dumb. I shouldn't have done it and apologize. And then the other thing I'm doing, there's, um,

Found a woman out of the UK named Natasha Graziano, who six years ago was a homeless mom in London. Today, she's a life coach to Will.i.am and Steve Aoki and folks like that. And she's living in Bel Air. And so we developed a nighttime talk show around her because interestingly enough, there are no women in late night television in the U.S.,

um with and she's less of you know so tom cruise tell me about your next movie and more about she'll interview like king batch who you know was a big vine star at you know one time and you know really get into like what what are your feelings about life and emotions and relationships and things like that so she's very motivational inspirational as opposed to promoting your next

media project kind of thing she's a good friend of mine too she's um supposed to be on the podcast as well soon so small world yeah no and she's uh she's different you know we did a i shot a pilot with her and um you know it's interesting because she is totally different we shot it in a nightclub on la cienega um as opposed to shoot it in tv studio and um

And, you know, we actually use John Lucas Amos production company. So, you know, we have a woman host and an all Latino production crew. And, you know, and it's a very different take on late night television. It's a throwback to an old show that you happen to used to do called Playboy After Dark, where you felt you were

kind of a fly on the wall looking in on his living room on a Friday night and his friends would just drop in. And that's kind of the feel of the show. It's somewhere between Playboy After Dark and Graham Norton, you know, out of the UK. It's not your traditional host behind a desk talking to a guest sitting in a chair next to him kind of thing. Love it.

Cool. Well, Larry, thank you so much for coming on the show. And it's been an amazing time here. And I know everyone probably had an amazing, amazing experience learning, obviously, such a massive company that you build. And guys, that's a wrap. Until next time, keep living the red light. Take care.