SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
Ep 478: Fans Pay $500K To Keep Favorite Shows, Will This Kill Netflix with CEO Ben Dobyns
14 Nov 2016
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
This is The Top, where I interview entrepreneurs who are number one or number two in their industry in terms of revenue or customer base.
Chapter 2: What led Ben Dobyns to create Zombie Orpheus Entertainment?
You'll learn how much revenue they're making, what their marketing funnel looks like, and how many customers they have. I'm now at $20,000 per top. Five and six million. He is hell-bent on global domination.
Chapter 3: How does Zombie Orpheus Entertainment fund its projects?
We just broke our 100,000-unit soul mark.
Chapter 4: What is the Journey Quest series and how is it funded?
And I'm your host, Nathan Latka. Okay, Top Tribe, this week's winner of the $100 is Zach Ferron. He's a 22-year-old Apple employee, and he's listening to the show and loving it.
Chapter 5: How did Ben leverage Kickstarter for his projects?
For your chance to win $100 every Monday, simply subscribe to the podcast on iTunes now and then text the word NATHAN to 33444 to prove that you did it to enter. Guys, a little CEO weapon for you. I hate going back and forth via email to set up a meeting time.
Chapter 6: What unique strategies does Ben use to build a fan base?
You know, you gotta send 12, 13 emails, go between your inbox and your calendar. It's a pain in the butt. I started using nathanlatka.com forward slash assistant, totally free, which I loved.
Chapter 7: What challenges does Ben face in the film industry today?
I reached out to the founders and said, you should pay me five grand. I'll make you a sponsor on the podcast. They did. I'll tell you more about the tool and how I negotiated the deal later on in the episode. But for now, check it out.
Chapter 8: How does Ben plan to scale Zombie Orpheus Entertainment?
nathanlatka.com forward slash assistant, totally free. This is episode 478. Coming up tomorrow morning, you're going to learn from Ray Granger. He's raised over $45 million and has over 5,000 project management customers for his business, Mavenlink. Good morning, folks. Nathan Latke here, and our guest this morning is Ben Dobbins. He founded Zombie Orpheus Entertainment in 2010.
He's been giving the company's films away for free ever since. He still does, and he ends each year in the black. We're going to talk about how he does that. Ben, are you ready to take us to the top? Let's do it. All right. What is a zombie or fee a zombie or fee as entertainment? How do you make money?
Sure. So basically I had a really terrible experience with Hollywood distribution back in 2008. They made our film, made a lot of money for the company and they didn't pay us. So kind of turned around and said, well, this doesn't make any sense.
And how much money, how much money do they make for the company?
Uh, the last statement that we had from them was, uh, after a couple months, they owed us 30 grand. They continued to sell the movie for another two years and we never saw a dime and forgot another statement from them.
And what was that like 10 or 20% of total total sale revenue or what?
Uh, that was, they were the sole distributor. So, um, I, unfortunately we just didn't get the numbers from them after that. But, um, we basically saw nothing.
They owed you 30 grand though, right? So what was the agreement? They pay you 10 or 20% of the top line or what?
Oh man, I'd have to go back and check the contract. It was eight years ago. Okay. Got it. All right. So what happened? They didn't pay you. So they didn't pay us. And, uh, I was putting together the investment plan for the next film. And in the film industry, the pattern or the process is we put together what's called comparables, where we show other films and how they've done.
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