44. Once Upon A Veteran in Hollywood with Mark Harper

Brock Briggs  0:00  

Hello and welcome to the Scuttlebutt podcast, the podcast for current and former service members looking to build a life outside the service. I'm your host, Brock Briggs and today I'm speaking with Mark Harper, the ex Optimus Prime MySpace page manager and the current CEO of We Are The Mighty. Mark recounts in this conversation how his interest in videography landed him a job in the Combat Camera division of the Air Force. He tells a story of how and his people were there to document some of the first footage of the Iraqi purple fingers back in 2005. 

We talked through how he's leveraged his military experience filming to land a job in Hollywood, where he's been working ever since. We discuss how media and content have evolved in the last 20 years, and how that applies to the type of content current and former service members consume today. Lastly, we get into the founding story of We are the Mighty with co-founder David Gale from MTV. Mark outlines the different business models We Are The Mighty has gone through, how they're reaching millions of service members with different forms of content today, and how acquiring the Military Influence Conference will serve as a platform for future growth. 

Mark was really fantastic to talk to. I really could feel how genuine his goal is of storytelling to elevate the military community. I'm eager to see how We Are The Mighty continues to execute and excel with him at the helm. As always, I'm looking to grow listenership by providing evergreen content that is instructive and inspiring. I don't charge for this show. But if you learn something or find yourself inspired and want to give back, you can do that by leaving me a review on Spotify or Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to it. Or by sending this to a friend. Both of those things help me out tremendously and help get this content into the ears of those who need to hear it. For now, please enjoy this conversation with Mark Harper.

Brock Briggs 

One of the things that I'm really interested to know about people is the one thing that they're really proud of, but don't get to tell a lot of people about or it's like very low on the list for like telling. Do you have something like that?

Mark Harper  2:36  

Yeah, it's funny. I started coming out more recently as I kind of roll back through time, but I was the Optimus Prime's MySpace page manager for the Transformers movie. So first off, I'm dating myself, right? Because MySpace was a thing. 

Brock Briggs 

Right

Mark Harper

But yeah, it was actually the second film. I had just left the military. I was working at Paramount Pictures. And I was set to manage the social media for the campaign, but specifically Optimus Prime himself, so my top five friends I think were like Bumblebee, Megan Fox, Shia Labeouf. And then I think some other random Decepticons. I don't know why Optimus Prime was friends with Decepticons. I don't know. But that's something that I used to have to manage. I think I had 500,000 fans at the time. So it was just kind of a unique little moment in time where that was my thing.

Brock Briggs  3:42  

That seems like a big lift, just the fate of the world as we know it like resting in your hands. You know?

Mark Harper  3:49  

That's right. Yeah, absolutely. It's back early, like nascent social media days. So there was, like a lot of scrutiny on okay, how many fans do we have today versus yesterday? It was like really calculated in very, like small increments of time. And the numbers were not really all that big or interesting. And then on Facebook, the numbers were just like in the hundreds, not the 1000s. So reporting back on those metrics has always kind of it felt silly at the time, but now it is a major part of any advertising campaign. And sometimes the entirety of an advertising campaign.

Brock Briggs  4:25  

Well, it's interesting to see how those metrics have evolved over time. It's like, from a consumer or like an everyday non business perspective, it’s like expected that somebody have a million followers if you're famous or have a TV show, but that doesn't really mean anything to you as the person anymore. But what it does mean is something on the business side is oh, we can reach a million people with that and like what can we do with that type of like viewership.

Mark Harper 

Right 

Brock Briggs

So you've been in the media space for a really long time. I was just reading an article in preparation for this about your 9/11 story. And 

Mark Harper 

Oh, yeah

Brock Briggs

How you had had an interest in video prior to actually joining the service and yet convinced the Air Force to allow you to change your major to duel with computer science and video. What gets you into video so early on in your life?

Mark Harper  5:29  

I had an interest based off of what like a VHS camcorder back in high school and had done a couple of like video projects and a very rudimentary editing system, and really loved it. But my Air Force ROTC scholarship dictated in very specific terms that I was to be a computer systems engineer. And to this day, I still do not know what that means. But that was my major going into RPI in upstate New York. And so I petitioned after my first year to change that from computer systems engineer to computer science with a dual in basically video production and animation. And the Air Force said you're moving from one technical role to another technical, will allow it. We don't care if you're doing dual or something. Your diploma has to say computer science on it at the end of the four years there, basically. 

So that was my sneaky way to add in video production animation. And it was really what I spent the duration of my collegiate experience doing was not only my homework, but anyone else who had video projects that needed done, I would do their homework as well. That's how much I loved it right off the bat. And it gave me a unique skill set that I wasn't sure I was gonna be able to use in the military. I was turned into a communications officer on my way into the military. During that commissioning day, one of the CADRE pulled me aside and said, you know, you've got this really interesting video. If you look for it in the Air Force, you'll find it. And so depending on what you know, the questions are for this, we may jump into where that transition actually took place once I joined the military.

Brock Briggs  7:31  

You called that or the Air Force called that another technical degree, which is interesting to me. Because when I think of video, I think of a creative mind and what it takes to produce a visual piece of art that people can sit down and enjoy versus the computer science. I think of coding and much more cut and dry things. Could you maybe compare and contrast?

Mark Harper  7:57  

Yeah, well, to clarify that they were allowing me to change from there dictated computer systems engineering into computer science. So it's going from a technical degree to technical degree. And then I did at the same time I tacked on this dual degree in video production. And they said, well, Big Air Force said, sure, we don't care if you have a dual in something, your degree has to say computer science somewhere on there. You have to have a technical degree because we basically have you slated to become a communications officer if you're not gonna be rated for a pilot or something like that. So it was very much technical to technical transfer. And they didn't much care about video, although what they wouldn't know is that the better part of my Air Force career was in combat camera, which was kind of ostensibly all video production related.

Brock Briggs  8:50  

Is there any kind of cross pollination that you saw learning a technical skill or going through school, and then applying that to video production?

Mark Harper  9:02  

Yes, so it was mostly in the realm of when there was crossover to do things like special effects or animation. Those things are largely once you kind of get past like the very topical version of it and you start getting into, I guess, dazzling productions up a bit, it quickly gets into having a program in elements on the screen. And so that can come into like, you know, equations and a lot of math for spreading things around, etc. Those have all largely been turned into very easy keyframed elements at this point, but in the early days, I was creating animations that would end up in like, I'm not kidding, in PowerPoint. 

I would literally program into a PowerPoint. You have this ability back in the day, I forget what the program language was. But it was basically how to start and stop animations inside of it using this thing called flash that's now obsolete. And that actually is what was the beginning of getting me into combat camera, was the programming that I did to make these PowerPoint presentations a little bit more, I think just jumped out a lot more during big presentations to like inbound generals who are visiting our wing.

Brock Briggs  10:36  

When I first saw that you had the title of combat video, one, had never heard of that. So I really had no idea what to expect, but had a lot of questions about that. Can you maybe kind of like unpack what that role look like what your responsibilities were? And were you or were you not the one shooting the commercials for the Air Force in the early 2000s?

Mark Harper  11:02  

No, we were not shooting the commercials. Although that would have been interesting. All that is largely held in multimillion dollar deals with marketing agencies who are much better staffed and resourced for that. But the Combat Camera Squadron in this case in the Air Force, it was the first Combat Camera Squadron based out of Charleston, Air Force Base, now Joint Base Charleston, has the global mission of documenting everything the Department of Defense is doing. And inside of Combat Camera is the video flight and the photo flight, there's logistics and there's the maintenance flight. 

So I was put in front or I was put in charge of the combat, or sorry, the video flight, which had about, I think, 50 some odd airmen underneath it across a couple different elements. And we would deploy around the world for natural disasters, for contingencies, obviously, there was deployments in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom, in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. And all the imagery that we gathered would get cleared by public affairs and then it would go to either out through public affairs to some story that the Air Force was telling or it would go to psychological operations, and it would go to the DVIDS, Defense Visual Information System that would that basically holds all imagery from the military for all of time. 

And this is the kind of footage you’d see like, you know, back in the day, the History Channel or the Discovery Channel from previous conflicts way back in the day, I used to say the stuff we're shooting now guys will be on TV in 20 years. I didn't know there wasn't gonna be a TV in 20 years. I admit that that life was about to change dramatically in that respect, but for posterity’s sake, it's a documenting of everything the department events is doing.

Brock Briggs  13:20  

What was it that you were tasked with, if anything? Was there some higher mission that they kind of dangled in front of you and said, this is what you're doing. This is the impact that you're bringing to this organization.

Mark Harper  13:34  

Yeah, so I'll give you an example of a real world version of that. So December 15, 2005, when the world woke up and saw purple fingers from Iraqis voting. My teams were at the voting booths documenting that happening in real time. And our mission was to tell one of two stories. One, that democracy was prevailing in the 36 country coalition that has been fighting this war, was doing their job, or that the insurgents had taken over some of the polling stations or the voting stations, and to tell the Iraqis do not come out and vote because they'll get blown up. So it was actually a pretty heavy responsibility because it was our team of 79 videographers, photographers sent all over the country of Iraq to have enough security behind them to get to the polling sites that were classified until the day before they went live. 

And to set up the mechanism for getting that information that visual information back from remote destitute areas. And by that, I mean there was no internet. We had to send out satellite terminals that would bring the information back to Baghdad where we were using an imagery management team as quickly as possible, get them cleared through public affairs, and then send them out to world media outlets, and beyond. And so it was really cool to be able to see, we had a global impact that day. We were telling the story to the rest of the world of what was happening outside the wire. And it could have gone very wrong. And we were there either way to tell that story and to change the tide of what was happening in real time, based off of the imagery that we were sending back.

Brock Briggs  15:40  

Was gonna kind of ask about what the challenges are of that role. Something like that really portrays really fulfilling the name combat video. I would imagine that there's probably a fair amount of circumstances where there's a certain element of physical harm that you very well could be in.

Mark Harper  16:01  

That is correct. It's changed right over time. GoPros were not a thing back when I was doing this. GoPros largely supplanted some of the missions that Combat Camera was doing. The challenge that we found was largely in education. Your question exactly, what were you guys doing? So you can imagine me flying to a remote fob in Iraq, meeting with and I was a captain in O-3, meeting with a colonel in O-6 and saying, hey, Colonel! Sir, would love to bump one of your hard charging freedom fighters from the stack so I can insert one of my photographers to document what your folks are doing. 

And then the response was always, you got to be out of your mind, Captain. Get back on that Blackhawk, fly back to Baghdad, don't come back out here and waste my time again. I have to say, sir, with respect, we're both laddering up in different chains of command. But the Pentagon here is looking for very specific types of content that have to be taken from here and I walk you through the lives that we save, by what we're documenting here, and where it's gonna be deployed in other places, throughout the continent, or sorry, throughout the country. And 9 times out of 10, I was successful. I felt more like a salesperson than anything else. Because it's hard to make that justification because of the safety of everyone who are out there, doing their jobs. 

And then to have some photographer come in, you know, and that's, you know, their words, some photographer, we were all trained, you know, as well as we could have been for these types of missions. But we still had a lot of proving ourselves and a lot of articulation of exactly why the mission that they were doing required this type of documentation. And so that was a pretty interesting one. And there were many pretty interesting challenges. But there were many times or my photographers and videographers, who would get into some really terrible situations and some came away with everything ranging from Purple Hearts to Bronze Stars for some of the situations they were in. 

Brock Briggs  18:26  

I think that that really reinforces the point that there are so many competing missions that are driving for resources in this country within the Department of Defense. We have warfighters. But then as you point out from the Pentagon and from our US government's perspective, we also need to show that we are doing something and hopefully doing something good. And that probably in some circumstances, maybe even a higher mission than some of those other minor things. Has me curious, was there ever points where you were maybe given a directive of something that hey, this is what we are trying to portray? Or was it just go, report what is there? I'm curious about serving those two masters of this is what the facts say. And then maybe if there was ever conversations that were had about, hey, this is how we would like to show this. 

Mark Harper  19:34  

So the beauty of what Combat Camera is and its cleanest state is just the gathering portion of that question. So much so that we were not allowed by AFI, our Air Force instruction. We were not allowed to ask someone to even move to your left or right while shooting them. So we are not to manipulate the scene at all. And because we were not Public Affairs at the time, I say that at the time, because now combat camera rolls into public affairs. We are not spending any particular story, any way shape or form. It was go shoot what is there, hand it to us. And then depending on who the end was, public affairs, psychological operations, straight historical documentation, the media would be taken from there to serve a different purpose. 

Brock Briggs  20:33  

The extent that you know, still you maybe kind of alluded to this a little bit, but how has that role changed? Has the distance between the filming and the recording collapsed? Or is there even more distance in between those two?

Mark Harper  20:48  

Yeah, it has collapsed. In fact, I believe the Navy no longer even has Combat Camera anymore, when we would go on these joint missions. So Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom. Traditionally, all of the services would roll up underneath the Air Force, I think because the Air Force had slightly more funding, and therefore we had slightly more leadership capability to deploy and then run teams. 

But when I was leaving the military, there was a giant conversation taking place about that collapse, about about what is the distinctive need for Combat Camera, as versus what public affairs does? And what's the crossover? So there still is Combat Camera, they are still trained in a much different way. For not necessarily for like the storytelling perspective, but how to be out in the middle of nowhere, fend for yourself or be embedded in sister service. And it does ladder into public affairs at this point, which probably streamlines that media getting to where it needs to be a little bit faster. 

Brock Briggs  22:04  

Just from a pure creation perspective and all kind of politics of the military aside, what do you think about that? Is it better for the people that are on the ground taking in the information? Should they be the ones that are doing it? And I am looking to kind of draw some parallels to maybe today's media, but I'm curious what you think about how and whose responsibility that ought to be.

Mark Harper  22:35  

There are a lot of powerful emotions and feelings about whether or not Combat Camera should live inside of Public Affairs. And I didn't fully appreciate it. But the people that have been there for decades, the senior senior leadership. I remember, especially in one of our chiefs in E-9. He was ready to go toe to toe with anyone who dared mentioned that becoming public affairs was the right thing to do. 

You know, I think what the big divide was, is exactly this notion of sending someone out to have no intent on what is happening other than reporting straight back what it was that was there, and then not having to have the additional training of, can we show this? Can we not show this? Imagery would get classified, depending on things like blood in the picture or not, right? Or how it portrayed the military in any specific light on any side. And so ultimately, I believe it made sense to have a camera roll up into public affairs, but I do understand that to many, the notion that it would become somehow bastardized or changed was the driving fear behind all of it. It's kind of a moot point now, but we still have Combat Camera. And it still continues to be a very impressive source of media that comes out of the military.

Brock Briggs  24:12  

You did one enlistment if I've got this right in the Air Force, and then went on to Hollywood and worked at Paramount after the service. Was there any particular reason that you chose to get out? Was it not fulfilling what you were looking for? Were you looking for more?

Mark Harper  24:32  

So I had two assignments in the Air Force, the first as a deployable communications officer, and that's where I changed the course of my Air Force career and was able to guide it in the Combat Camera. And that's where I spent the better bulk of the seven years I was in, was out First Combat Camera. It was the best thing the Air Force could have done giving me my dream job. It was also the worst thing that the Air Force could have done giving me my dream job because I had gotten to the point where I deployed a handful of times. I go into a bunch of T-wise for exercises. It really was the most fulfilling type of role I could have had. 

And I had to make the decision, could I go back and just be a communications officer again, working on security for like, a local network at a base or will forever be looking back over my shoulder at my previous life, creating content, telling stories of our military community to the world. And I decided I wanted to see if I can parlay this experience of being essentially a producer in the military into something in the greater part of Los Angeles in the entertainment world. And so I made the decision to kind of blindly move out to LA without a job, and see if that story could serve me in some way, shape or form.

Brock Briggs  26:03  

It's interesting, you don't hear a lot of people talk about how the military gave them and had them realize what their dream job actually was. In fact, I don't think that I've ever heard anybody say that.

Mark Harper  26:17  

Yeah, I mean, the first job that I had as a deployed communication officer, they had me doing things the name would suggest. We would go and deploy and create the infrastructure that a base could be built around. So we were running the cable, running the telephone lines, etc, building out the very nascent version of the internet. And that's what that team did. And so for things like 9/11, which happened just a few months after I joined the Air Force, half of my squadron deployed on 9/12. And they went out the door to go to some four locations to then get told where to go next, to start building out some of these future bases. 

And as I stayed behind and I kept doing things like silly PowerPoint presentations, the one that I was mentioning earlier was, I take in an eagle and animated it flying across the screen, flapping its wings, grabbing a lightning bolt, having a globe spin up underneath it, and a shield wrapped around it with like lightning flash on the screen and the eagle screech to create our squadron shield. And that was in a room full of like 300 people, for general. I'm sitting in the back of the room of the general and said, I don't even know how you do something like that. And PowerPoint is back in 2001, I think, at this point, and someone just pointed to me in the back and he said, come see me after this. And I went to go see him. 

And he said, I don't know how you did any of that stuff. But it seems like you can figure out visual things as a whole. I want you to go to the training school here and help with training videos, etc. And while that was a secondary duty, I found out that what they really wanted me to do was to make videos that were more on the morale side of things, making fun of leadership for special events like combat dining ins or dining outs and retirements and PCs. And it was after a handful of those that I did that, you know, that same individual said you'd be great for Combat Camera. And I didn't even know what it was at the time. But I said that sounds exactly like whatever it is, I want to do. And that put me directly in the path of moving over to First Combat Camera. 

And it was one of the very few officers who have gone through combat camera that actually had a video production experience. Like I had a you know, a degree and then I had been working on it in the Air Force in some way shape or form. But traditionally, as a Combat Camera officer, you're really just supposed to be managing specific elements or flight and tasks to run these teams when you go out in the field. I just happen to have this background in exactly all of that. So I was never actually the one holding the camera in those positions. Except for one very brief time when my photographer had to be in the shot itself. But it was you know, it's more just like a special alignment of things that really should never have happened and doesn't really happen in the Air Force now.

Brock Briggs  29:39  

Walk me through what was going through your head moving out to LA without a job and fresh out of the Air Force at that time. That is, it's a scary feeling getting out and I know that anybody who has gotten out understands what that feeling is, the feeling of I have no place to call home anymore. And it's hard to quantify what that feeling is. And I'm sure even more daunting showing up to a place hoping to pursue a degree and something that you may or may not be qualified for. What's going through your head at that time?

Mark Harper  30:17  

I did have one very crucial component, which was a place to stay, at least when I was going out there. So my journey to La actually started in Baghdad, where my peer, a Combat Camera said to me, you really liked this stuff. And I'm like, what do you mean by this stuff? And he said, he really liked this video production world. And I'm like, well, don't you as well? And he's like, nah, it's really just a job. I was like, well, yeah, I actually really liked it. He's like, you should move to LA. In fact, I have an extra bedroom, you should move in there while you figure things out. And it just weighed on me like, okay, the signs are lining up, my next assignment was starting to come in, and it was gonna be something that was, you know, again, not Combat Camera. 

And so just with the, I guess, that safety net of at least have a place to live took a little bit of that out of there. But I moved out 2007. And the day that I got there, writer's strike hit Hollywood. And what that meant was, every single production, every TV show, every film went on hiatus, the second that I touched down in Los Angeles. And that made my job search a lot harder because while I was able to get initial meetings with this amazing Combat Camera story of me sending, I had photos of what that looked like in the military, things you wouldn't normally see in the newspaper. 

Once I got in the door and talk to people, they're like, well, everything's kind of shut down right now, come back in 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 months. Actually, we don't know when things are gonna go back to normal. So I had that as a challenge. It was the challenge of not really understanding the landscape of, you know, of what Hollywood actually is and the entertainment industry, how things get made, how they get distributed, green lighting process, and just how big the entertainment world actually is, and continues to keep evolving and growing and expanding. So not having of even an understanding of like, where to start. And it was to kind of choose your own adventure was also a bit daunting. 

There are now many wonderful resources out there. The largest one being Veterans in Media & Entertainment. Their meetings are out here usually held at the American Legion Post 43. And it is a great resource for people who want to do exactly what I did way back when, with a lot more structure to it and a lot more mentorship with people already working in places like Universal, or that know how to get you into very junior positions relatively quickly. And they kind of put you through their own mini version of a bootcamp to make sure you represent the military veteran community in the right light as you walk in the door. So I wish that existed when I first got out here, that made life a lot more challenging at the time.

Brock Briggs  33:20  

Can you maybe give us a sense for how the landscape of the entertainment industry has changed from when you showed up until now to kind of get some perspective. I know that Hollywood is just kind of this interesting beast that unless you're a part of it, nobody really seems to know what goes on there. But I know that there's a lot going on that's behind the curtain, literally and metaphorically.

Mark Harper  33:45  

Yeah, I think it's really weird to say this, but when I moved out here, there was no streaming, that wasn't a thing. There was no Netflix. There was Netflix, but it mailed you DVDs. And content was largely created by the seven major studios at the time. That would then end up on any number of channels out there that have grown probably tenfold since or disappeared meaning the way to get and consume media has just exploded in so many different areas and venues. 

So it's yeah changed a lot from the very simple in air quotes version of I've got an idea. I pitched it to one of these studios or one of the production companies that works inside of one of these studios to everything now. You could be an individual creator of content and be an influencer on Tiktok in a matter of days and have more viewership than any TV show on network television good. And that has really flipped the, you know, that whole dynamic of what is content? What is quality content? What are people watching? Where’s viewership going on its head? And so just so much has changed in the last 15 years alone, that it's sometimes hard to like look back and even think about the way things used to be on you know, TV and film. 

Brock Briggs  35:33  

I think it's probably pretty easy to see how the changes to the entertainment industry have been a good thing. Everybody likes being able to fire up 10 different streaming services, the only challenge is trying to decide what to watch. I think that those benefits are pretty obvious. What have been some of the downfalls of that rapid change over the last, say 15, 20 years that maybe you've experienced throughout the time in the industry or maybe watched other people go through?

Mark Harper  36:05  

I think one of the biggest things which isn't visible to most is just the way things get funded and produced now largely is, unless you're a major like tentpole director or producer. The cost of creating something, especially as a new person largely falls back on the creator themselves. I have a handful of extremely talented veteran directors out here who are funding significant projects by themselves in an attempt to ladder into that equation in that world who take jobs creating things like commercials or what's called informationals for companies to raise that type of money.

Or even crowdsource that type of money to create their passion projects to get seen, to hopefully get bought by a streamer or a network etc. to then start making films or shows at the behest of a different, you know, master as it were someone who is working, or a studio that is working in a national distribution system. So I think the economics have turned in some ways for the better, in some ways for the worse. There's a lot more buyers out there now than there used to be. But it's also a lot harder to get, I think, kind of herd because there's no real like linear path to it. I think like there used to be a better version of that.

Brock Briggs  37:43  

You mentioned this a little bit earlier, but how did you use your time in Combat Camera to kind of pry yourself into the media industry?

Mark Harper  37:58  

There was this presentation that I would send forward. There's this concept of informationals in probably many different industries out there. But in entertainment, this is someone takes a meeting with you, you tell them your story, tell them what you think you wanna do, they then connect you to someone else, and you start that process again. And I would attach you know, reach out to people you know, maybe initially trying to find their email and LinkedIn etc. Or ask someone and then send ahead this PowerPoint presentation, nothing fancy just images, of some really impactful stories from the military, that you could just kind of visually see right off the bat.

And then say, this is the Combat Camera update from and I would just change the link. And they would see this and say what? What is Combat Camera? And then a conversation would start and say well, I would fly around the world and do X, Y & Z and it's where the imagery would go. And these are the stories that usually don't make it in their entirety out to the rest of the public because of X, Y & Z. And then they'd say, come on in. And I wanna hear more about what you want and talk to you about what you wanna do. And so that was, I think my way to get my foot in the door as it were. Sometimes I would also have to use my background in like, as a website design. I would reach out to a producer and say, look at this Combat Camera thing. I did this one time, specifically, like it was kind of a camera thing. Oh, that's interesting. And then they would go silent. And then I would write back. Also your website is terrible. And they made you a new one. And then they would say, oh, I'd send them the link. 

And then they would bring me in and say I mean no one ever gives me anything. Everyone always asks me for something and I'm like, I actually don't even know what my ask is, but I am giving you something to begin with. Here's a new website for your production company. Easier to do back then I think than now because I think there was a lot more mystery behind HTML etc. But I did that in some initial early stages because I just didn't know what else to do. But I did hear this concept of: give someone something before you ask them something.

Brock Briggs  40:15  

I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that you probably had some extensive experience coding your MySpace profile and leverage that to make websites for people. Am I right at that?

Mark Harper  40:28  

Yeah, that's mostly true. It was really I mean, really, it was grounded in this now defunct or obsolete program called Flash, right? I would make a very glitzy quick for me to do hard to replicate, glitzy version of someone's website. They went from a static thing to this thing that animated their logo and spun around the screen and looked really great. I could do that pretty quick, and then send it over. And it was impressive at the time.

Brock Briggs  40:56  

You held a couple of different roles and worked at several different companies before coming to We Are The Mighty. Can you kind of walk me through that timeline, maybe at a quicker pace and cover any of the highlights that you thought were interesting working in like the media world?

Mark Harper  41:14  

Yeah. So I worked at Paramount. When that contract ended, and that's the way some of the studios operates like annual contracts, and they have been a flow based off of what films are coming through the pipeline, at least interact a marketing. I ended up on the business side of the entertainment history working in at a company called Technicolor, which is a major post production company that, you know, at the time I was there, I did everything from set to screen. And created color film back in the day brought us Wizard of Oz. And when I joined the company, had six major business lines that they were feeding. It was a global company of 22,000 employees. 

I think they're much different looking nowadays, and are focusing on different things. But that was a really cool opportunity to see entertainment from outside of the studio. But on the other side, at post production part of the world, which also went into distribution. So I kind of got to see entertainment from all of the angles. It was during this timeframe that I went to UCLA Anderson School of Management and did my MBA, feeling that I needed to kind of catch up to where my peers were in at least the business world. And while I was doing that, still working at Technicolor, I actually started a project for one of my classes called Odyssey, it’s a high end headphone company. When I say high end headphone company, I mean these headphones started at $1,000 and then went up from there. We could not make them fast enough. 

And there's a tiny part of my life that revolves around launching Odyssey with a handful of partners that I left in 2014 right before We Are The Mighty went online. And while I enjoyed my time at Odyssey, I wasn't in Los Angeles to be a consumer electronics person. I just kind of have rolled into it from business school and the opportunity to get back into entertainment proper and to utilize my background in the military came when I got to meet David Gale, who was the former head of MTV Films, who created We Are The Mighty when he saw a lack of a platform for storytelling inside the military community. And so David Gale was responsible at MTV for such treasured classics as Beavis and Butt-Head Do America, the entire Jackass franchise, but also things like Election, Varsity Blues, Napoleon Dynamite, Kings of Comedy and about 20 other films that people in Gen X and Gen Y worlds kind of grew up on. 

And it was a really amazing thing that he set out to do in 2014. So the DNA of We Are The Mighty is grounded in TV and film and creating a platform in our case the.com, wearethemighty.com and our social media channels to figure out A, if there was an audience. It turns out there was. B, what that audience likes. They're not shy of telling you if something is trash online and then trying to take those ideas and concepts and ladder them up into things like TV and film. That last part is easier said than done. So even with background and running one of the most successful studios in Hollywood, we were kind of starting from scratch with proof of concept, proof of audience and then the authenticity behind We Are The Mighty. Everyone that worked in the creative part of it have worn the uniform or been completely ensconced in the military community, so much so that everything that we put out, had gone through several layers of scrutiny. 

And so that was, that's really what made We Are The Mighty kind of standout from a storytelling perspective over the years. And we did have the opportunity twice to create shows. We created one called Meals Ready To Eat, where we went around the world and found places where the military intersected with food culture. Sounds interesting or maybe doesn't sound interesting, depending on what that sounds like. But we did everything from like go to where MRE’s are designed and how they're like formulated and built all the way to remote parts of the world where bases had influenced regional like food culture and vice versa, and how that affected the local community. And so this show actually broadcasts on PBS in Southern California, and now streams in all the VA hospitals across the US while you're in the waiting room. 

And another show we did is called 10 Weeks, where we find army recruits from beginning to end of Army boot camp. It's the first time in over two decades that the Army's let anyone in to document that process. That ended up being a kind of a mini digital series that now streams on Roku. So we did get a chance to do a couple of those things. We sold a couple of scripts for film. But at the end of the day, We Are The Mighty’s main line of revenue and what we do day to day is we act as an agency for brands that are looking to authentically connect with the military community. So either that being advertising on our site, or us creating branded content, or even sometimes commercials or pre roll for brands out there that are marketing to the military community at large.

Brock Briggs  47:06  

At the beginning, you were talking about how you had to like prove out that the military community was a group of people that actually wanted to consume content that was “for them”. What did that early validation phase look like? And what kinds of things were you looking for to prove that that community existed?

Mark Harper  47:30  

The landscape of social media has evolved over time. But way back in the beginning of We Are The Mighty, we saw proof of concept or things we were doing by doing something like this. We'd create an article, like this was like 18 photos of life on an aircraft carrier, take that article, find an aircraft carrier group or a series of groups that were kind of tangential to that on Facebook, plop it in the feed there. And I'll never forget the first time we did this, that particular article took our site down within like three minutes. So we had, we went from putting it in there to 1000, 2000, 4000, 8000 people hit the site all at once. And the servers went down, and the site went offline for about an hour or so while we figured out how to address an influx that would go that high. So over the early years, we were able to kind of build a pretty fast and big audience around We Are The Mighty in social media. 

And we reached 1.5 million fans pretty quick. And it was impressive because some of the other established brands like military.com or Military Times, just could not get there. And they're a little bit different than us in the fact that they're kind of more straight military reporting and resourcing for the military community. And we were doing lifestyle and celebratorial content around battles, heroes. Do you remember this? Do you remember that? And we'd watch comments on social media, while people were like coming alive with pulling other people into conversations about like on life in an aircraft carrier. We'd see people tagging hey, mom, this is what I did. Remember I told you about this? This is a good article, it shows all this. Or hey, Jimmy remember when we used to shirk duty and go sleep in the wherever. 

We actually have an article on the best places to sleep on an aircraft carrier when you're trying to escape duty as well. But that's what made us different than some of the other publishers out there and we were really, we're kind of more like buzzy meets the military than anything else in those early years. We spent a lot of energy and resources in building out video content just to continue that proof of concept. And those shows, those early shows that we created, which ranged from no kidding, an animated series about a retired drill instructor whose vein on his neck would come to life and calm him down every time he got into a situation where he was too worked up, like the DMV or something. I remember pitching that story to David. And he's like, wait, you want the vein to come out of his neck and then yell at him to like, calm down? I'm like, yeah, it's gonna be great. 

We actually did, it actually got a lot of play, a lot of views, and even laddered up into a script that got sent around a little bit to some studios out here in Hollywood all the way to, we made this show. This one also actually airs in the VA called Bryan Style, where we follow a triple amputee around in his daily life watching how he does things like walk the dog. And it's one of the coolest and most inspirational things that we've ever created. Because Bryan, who by all intents and purposes here should potentially be a little more downtrodden than he is with only one limb left explains why today's the best day ever, and why walking his dog while he sits on a skateboard. And the dog is, you know, basically riding him or, you know, guiding him around the streets of Burbank. It's just, it's one of the coolest things that we've ever been able to kind of capture because it has all these different tenants in it that are just so inspirational to it. That are not the types of stories that you necessarily kind of see from that side of the community. 

And so we try to find unique perspectives, unique stories that sell and we spent the greater part of the first three years, three or four years creating these like tiny digital series, that were just proof of concept that we could do bigger, better things. And that helped us land that, you know, one of those shows and the one that, 10 Weeks project that is now on Roku. And eventually some of the work that we're doing for the VA right now. One of our projects actually just got an Emmy nomination, which is kind of amazing to say because you wouldn't really pair those two together. That type of content would be something that would be Emmy nominated worthy. So we're doing some incredible things still. And it all has to do with kind of those early years of just grabbing the camera, coming up with ideas and shooting projects.

Brock Briggs  52:45  

Being in the military niche of like podcasting, I've spent a lot of time thinking about the types of content that service members current or former are looking for and looking to consume. What is it that you think that people in that niche are looking for? And maybe how is that changed? A lot of the content that I see that is military affiliated is often extremely polarizing. It's either gun fighting videos or it's extremely inspirational story of a triple amputee, like you said. And maybe it's about cliques. But I think that there's more to it, I'd love to hear like what your take is on, what the state of that is and why it's that way.

Mark Harper  53:34  

Yeah, it certainly has evolved over time. But I think that there's a different couple of categories that may be more universal, but fitness is a big vertical of content. A lot of influencers you see out there now, especially on Tiktok are in that particular world or YouTube stars or in that world. Life Hacks for doing things better inside of the military or being part of the military community and having access to like your benefits and understanding what that actually means and utilizing them as another kind of big category. And then, you know, just military humor itself is really what I think has the most like broadest appeal. 

And you see some entities like Vet TV doing that making an entire business model off of you know, their version of military humor all the way to the incredible advertising is done by the Black Rifle Coffee group. They knock it out of the park each and every time they go and make a commercial for their coffee and coffee products. So I think that the consumption pattern has changed quite a bit and it's now almost fully mobile. And it needs to be in real bite sized version to at least start that hook into more in depth experience. But you see a lot more military, I've witnessed a lot more people from the military community becoming content creators over these years. So that now we've got, obviously more than ever, and they're really dispersed and diverse around the community itself.

Brock Briggs  55:18  

I would love to talk about some of your time working through the ranks at We Are The Mighty. You were there like from very early on and have worked your way up and are now the CEO. What have you learned about spending time within an organization and what it takes to kind of take that higher path and like literally from I'm not sure where your original position lie, but I'm guessing that wasn't incredibly entry level, but you're now leading the company and kind of in charge of the destiny, so to speak.

Mark Harper  55:55  

We have had so many different iterations of what We Are The Mighty has been in the past. It almost feels like three different companies that I've worked at. So when I started at the company, I was hired on to help David run it operationally. We were doing something that didn't really have a super defined business model at the time, it was right when MC ends were kind of collapsing. Those being the big channels of syndicates of influencers on like YouTube, where you'd have, you know, a cohort of 20 different creators mentioning this because the initial We Are The Mighty business model was kind of, can we make an MCN for military on YouTube. But it started to kind of, those started to kind of evaporate, but sort of break down. So we went into this format of build a publisher, build out social media, and create content. 

So I would say like this with, I'm gonna screw this up. But it was like what the Marvel Universe, this is phase one of how this goes. And we were assembling, you know, the team to create the voice and tone of what the content would look like moving forward. And so we had our writers and we had our video creators, and the company over the course of those first five years, got pretty large. It went from, when I started 5 full time employees up to something north of 20. And we got to a point where the business model was unsustainable for how we were kind of growing internally based on the revenue. And we had sort of like a restructuring of the entity in 2019. 

And that's around the time that the original founder, David Gale, left the company to go back into TV and film and he took with him a couple of the properties that we developed to see if he could go turn those into TV shows and films. But he left me in charge of the company. I don't say this in a negative way. But the company wasn't on the right track at the time. And so we went from 20 some odd employees down to 8, we'll call this phase two. And we really had to get an idea of what that meant. When I say we went down to 8, it means that some of the employees had already left but others were converted to contributors on the writing side of things. So we went from full time to this model where we're buying content from a handful of writers across the country. 

And we had to rebuild what the business model was gonna be and how the company was gonna operate. And right as we were getting some early signs that we were back on to something, the pandemic hit. And we were all positive that the digital publishing space had no business existing during that time frame. Because immediately some big marketing contracts that we had just signed, just evaporated overnight. And where we had thought we were going ended up disappearing. But fortunately as things started to come back online, people's web browsing time skyrocketed. As people were kind of stuck at home, we started doing really well in traffic. And we were also willing to get out the door, being very safe and following COVID protocols but we were able to go in and get back out there with production teams to shoot projects before some of the larger agencies were able to just based off of insurance issues alone. 

So that gave us like a leg up to go shoot some projects. And some of those that we did during that time frame are still some of the best, I think, projects that we've done, period. Because they came from such a different and unique space. We were at that point, this team of 8. We had a real mission ahead of us. And it was very exciting to essentially build the company from the ground back up. When we got to a point where at the end of 2020, a gentleman named Curtez Riggs, who had started the Military Influencer Conference, approached us and said, you know, We Are The Mighty, you guys have been champions of the Military Influencer Conference for the past, we'll call it five years at this point. As you can imagine, the events in general taken quite a hit. 

But you know, regardless of that, I found in all the days that those three to four days of the actual event itself, the other 361 days of the year, I was having to rebuild, essentially, what We Are The Mighty was, which is a daily conversation with the audience, a daily reminder of why this audience is connected and mean something. And so, I'd like to see if there's a strategic version of a path forward between our two companies, and we acquired the Military Influencer Conference at the very end of 2020. And had kind of early 2021, I'm getting my ears confused now. As we kind of rolled into this last phase, which is, we had grown the company in such a way from that time frame in 2019, that we became attracted to some outside private equity firms that were looking at the military space and recurrent ventures acquired us just about a couple of handfuls of months ago in May.

We now joined Task & Purpose in a company called or publisher called The War Zone, to make the largest syndicate of military audience that's out there on the market right now, which is really exciting. Because we have come from just a small digital publisher way back in 2014 to now being part of the largest brands and authorities in this space that reaches an incredible portion of the military community each and every month, across all those different digital publishers and social media. And now two events, Military Influencer Conference and MilSpouseFest. So it's been a real amazing experience to be a part of that rise and subsequent balls of the brand during that time frame. But now being in phase three, and joining this incredible team, a recurrent and a much larger mission.

Brock Briggs  1:03:18  

What do you think was the primary driver of your rise through the ranks to the position that you're at now? I am guessing that it wasn't just you stuck around and happened to be there, and they needed somebody to take the role?

Mark Harper  1:03:33  

I think that was a big part of it, honestly. 

Brock Briggs

Far too modest, I'm sure. 

Mark Harper 

Yeah, I was David's right hand man from day one, basically. We weathered a lot of storms together. We had to raise money for the company, we had to build strategy. There were so many nights I just remember in our office and our office was kind of magical in itself. It was the last commercial building before the Hollywood sign. So everyday driving to work, while dodging tourists who are in the streets doing selfies with the Hollywood sign. We were always reminded, everyone that worked at We Are The Mighty, that, you know, the big mission focus goal was really grounded in entertainment and storytelling. 

But I spent, you know, so many just countless hours with David, working on the company rebuilding it, pivoting, pivoting. And, you know, over the over those years, I eventually was kind of de facto, obviously running on a day to day operations. But when it came time to essentially bring in the new CEO, I think it was just the board's choice that it'd be me who had been intimately familiar with the company and the audience but also the fact that I was, you know, a veteran or am a veteran and I've been operating this space for so long, I think made that decision matrix for them a little bit more clear. So I think that's really those two things sticking around and putting in a lot of elbow grease during that time frame.

Brock Briggs  1:05:20  

I'm sure had I asked you this next question. Over the last couple phases of the business lifecycle, it may have been different. But now in the CEO shoes, is there one driving goal or question that you push for every day that you view as your ultimate responsibility?

Mark Harper  1:05:44  

I've always looked at that company as in probably to my own detriment, as if it were my squadron from back in the military. So I'm always singularly focused on the mission of making the company successful but people was really important to me and the team that helped us get through those really tough times and get us to where we are now is something that every single day, I would wake up and worrying about making sure that I was fulfilling my end of the deal of ensuring that they had a job, ensuring that we were all moving in the right direction. There were many months, many years ago, or I was waking up in a panic to a declining bank account and how am I gonna, you know, meet payroll next month. 

And after we kind of right sized the company and we're moving in the right direction, those fears abated, but they were still largely there. And we're only as good as our last quarter. So it was perpetually making sure that the team was happy. And as fired up to continue to keep going, because we were continuing on, you know, a tremendous amount of sacrifices from each and every single person on the team while we were doing it. And I think all of that, you know, finally landed at the very end of 2021, when we were excited to tell everyone you know, this was our first profitable year. 

And it was an amazing thing to say that each and every month, we were every quarter, obviously, but we were profitable. And it was just something that was so hard to imagine in the very early years that we would get to that side of the fence, I guess as it were, but it was really all grounded still in, you know, caring for the team and making sure that we were all rowing in the same direction.

Brock Briggs  1:07:55  

That is a significant milestone and turning point for the business. Being profitable, you gotta have that in the long run to stick around. Can you maybe talk to me about what the scale of We Are The Mighty was at the very beginning and what that might look like now, just in terms of maybe reach eyeballs, any other metrics that you think might be relevant?

Mark Harper  1:08:20  

Yeah, so we did grow very quick in the beginning, a couple of hard resets occurred through Facebook algorithms and then Google SEO algorithms over the years that would seriously knock off significant traffic and fell swoops. But we, in the very early years, were doing anywhere from like 1.5 to 3 million monthly uniques. And that would ebb and flow over traffic patterns that would rise and decline over the course of a year. So now, being a part of the other brands Task & Purpose, The War Zone, we now do something north of 18 million pageviews a month, and is a sizable part of the military community. 

And very exciting that we have so many people reach every single month across those three publications, feeding everything from news all the way down to lifestyle entertainment. We really cover a very broad spectrum of content related to the military community and the social media channels across all of those are also very significant. We've got a YouTube channel on the Task & Purpose side that is just north of 700,000 subscribers. So it is very influential into its own right as well. And it's exciting to see all these things coalesce.

Brock Briggs  1:09:58  

You mentioned earlier talking about the acquisition of the Military Influencer Conference. That's something, just the title of that is very, should be ringing in the ears of all of the younger veterans of the world. Talk about what the Military Influencer Conference is and where that fits into the mission of We Are The Mighty.

Mark Harper  1:10:25  

Yeah, the Military Influencer Conference is a really interesting conference. So in many ways, we'll just start this with a disclaimer, the name has, it has been outgrown. So initially MIC was started. As it picked up the baton from a tiny conference that USAA used to do, where they would bring together all the military bloggers into a room in San Antonio, let them network and talk with each other. And then for USAA’s sake over products and elements, as each one of us probably had some version of a connective tissue to USAA itself. And we're influencers onto our own right inside the community. 

So they sunsetted that conference, and immediately that's Curtez Riggs who I mentioned before Army veteran, I started Military Influencer Conference as a way to bring together entrepreneurs in this space who are looking to kind of start out and figure out how to find resourcing, how to network, how to learn from each other. And not too dissimilar from Bunker Labs. And Bunker Labs was like onboarding early stage companies. This was like early early stage companies, people with ideas or some people that were doing well, and since there was no like conference, it was bringing these types of individuals together, it was kind of a unique moment in time. At the same time, there was kind of not really a sidetrack, but a component to it that was just strictly trying to bring together I think, even like the military spouse community. So what's a way to get everyone in the same room together just to talk about things that we need to talk about. 

So that was in Dallas, there were 162 people that showed up to that first one. Orlando in 2018, exploded to 418 so more than doubled, which was really amazing to see. And so from employment, talking about entrepreneurship, there were some other tenants that kind of came to that as some of their brands are starting to like, join and see what this conference was about. And well started going through I think, like social impact tracks and things about that were like a little bit more important to the military community and bringing in guest speakers, talk about various topics. Going from Orlando to DC in 2019, the last in person event before this year is 2022 in Las Vegas, we really started defining some of the tracks. 

So like the main five pillars are employment, education, social impact, benefits and wellness. We were kind of covering down on four of those at that point, complete with an expo for military owned or military related businesses. So there were, you know, booths. And you know, at the convention center to having our own mini like TEDx there, we had this thing called Mighty Docks for people where we had very specific speakers and one of them was Florent Groberg, Medal of Honor recipient, who, you know, detailed his story. Speakers like that who were giving, you know, an 8 to 10 minute TEDx talk about a very specific topic. And that was incredible to see. I start really diving into these different verticals. And now in Vegas this year, we've got a lot of things planned. 

So across those five verticals, those are those tracks or eight actual learning tracks that you can see on the militaryinfluencer.com that showcase all the different things that are taking place. We also have a Veteran Comedy Night, we've got four incredible comedians from across the US, very accomplished or we're putting on a show. We've got Rob Riggle coming out to the event to do a fireside chat. And he'll be introducing that Comedy Night. We've got Remy at Alou K who is our keynote speaker. He's a producer who's worked with Michael Bay on a handful of projects and a bunch of his own former Navy SEAL to a lot of those other additional mighty talks or TEDx talks that are taking place that are sprinkled in between some of those big tracks that we're having there. 

And so we're slowly moving into our version of a South by Southwest for the military community. And we hope to continue to keep bolting on things like entertainment and much bigger, better ways. But we're really excited about what this year is kind of shaping up to be and excited to see how the community interacts with it. And the results we get after the end of this conference this year.

Brock Briggs  1:15:30  

Do you have any idea how many people you're expecting this year?

Mark Harper  1:15:35  

I think it's gonna be north of 700. Again, this is an interesting timeframe where people are just coming into live events again, at least from what we're seeing. So Vegas is an interesting venue, it's one that’s easy for people to get to, but also one that's probably harder for some people to justify with their respective businesses to say this is a work trip. But it will be running from October 26 to 29th. 

And what makes this also a little bit unique as well as the very, very beginning of it this time is dedicated to the local veteran military community in Las Vegas itself. We're actually working with the city of Vegas, which is separate from the strip to basically help the city of Vegas, Las Vegas connect its, you know, somewhat disparate population of military veterans in a way that they haven't been able to do before. And that's kind of the exciting part of what MIC ultimately is, is bringing the community together, forging these relationships, creating this activation where people are meeting each other and they're building out their networks and building their businesses and the relationships across it. So we're very excited to see a specific city get involved and interested in what we're doing as well. 

Brock Briggs  1:17:08  

All of this work and effort putting back into the military community is incredibly inspiring. I love talking with vets who have that desire and passion to kind of like feed back and to give. What is it that you think that the veterans of our country really need, at the end of the day?

Mark Harper  1:17:31  

I think they need to be heard, but better than that, understood. That civilian military divide is a very real thing. And part of what We Are The Mighty endeavors to do is to kind of give a look underneath the hood of what serving the military actually kind of means or was about. While our stories may seem, you know, nonsensical on one very side of the spectrum, it's very humanizing as to what that is, what an airman, a sailor, a soldier, a marine, a guardian, or a Coast Guardsman like went through day to day is a little bit more accessible when you have, you know, publishers like We Are The Mighty, and Task & Purpose talking about what everyday life and struggles are about. 

But more specifically, when it gets to things like the social impact side of things, mental health and awareness, destigmatizing what the, you know what our service members go through, it's really hard for the civilian population to get past. You were someone that most likely carried a gun around and you did something, maybe you could do something security related outside of that is really just not the story that the military community wants, employers to hear or think about when they think about your service in the military. There's so much more, obviously, that we're capable of doing and these types of conferences also help to educate brands on why they should be hiring military community members, why there is such a need for understanding what this unique community brings to the workforce into the population at large. So I'm happy and proud to be a part of that connective tissue.

Brock Briggs  1:19:38  

Well, I'm happy to have heard more about it. I was aware of We Are The Mighty before this, but this is certainly giving me a more intimate understanding of it. I want to close out here with kind of a playful question of being in the film industry for so long. I'm sure that you're a fantastic film critic. I would love to hear what you're watching now and maybe any all time favorites.

Mark Harper  1:20:07  

Well, how about this. This is slightly easier, we are way more relevant, Top Gun 2, Top Gun: Maverick. We actually were part of Paramount's PR efforts, we helped wrangle the military community on behalf of them for Top Gun: Maverick. And we had this amazing ability, it's gonna sound crazy, but we had this amazing ability, because of this relationship, because of a relationship with brands like USAA to host a screening of Top Gun: Maverick a couple days before the actual release on the intrepid in New York City. So basically on an aircraft carrier, we showed Top Gun: Maverick to an audience of over 180 people, 180 uniformed service members from across all branches. 

And I couldn't believe that it was so successful at the end of the day, but it was like almost surreal to be able to watch that with that group. And I think many of us went in maybe with a chip on the shoulder that that movie wasn't gonna be able to stand up to the lore of the first. But I have to say, I was floored with how amazing it was and the reaction of the crowd in live just sitting there with everyone just going crazy in that theater was really amazing. So that was a really special kind of moment, Hollywood moment, as it were that happened in the last several months that I really, really enjoyed and thought I would highlight.

Brock Briggs  1:21:47  

Mark, I really appreciate you taking the time to chat with me. Where can people go to find out more about you, connect, or with We Are The Mighty?

Mark Harper  1:21:58  

They can always find me on LinkedIn, Mark Harper, but please come in and go to wearethemighty.com. Like us on social media. The Military Influencer Conference is happening 26 to 29 October. We'd love, we really want anyone and everyone from military community and beyond to show up for that. We really wanna make this thing something special and the more people that show up, the better opportunity we have to do that. So excited to see how that grows this year and for people to kind of get a little more involved with what we're doing.

Brock Briggs  1:22:36  

Awesome. Mark, thank you so much! 

Mark Harper

Thank you!