Sean Stockell: How Entrepreneurs Can Build Authority Through Streaming

Welcome back to the Authority Is podcast, where we help you to grow your business, attract new opportunities, and outpace your competition. My name is George Wright III. I'm your host, and I've been partnering up with Valiant CEO Magazine to bring you the hottest entrepreneurs, thought leaders, and experts from around the world that are crushing it in business. Together, we're going to unpack strategies and tactics that they're using to become the authority in their field. And my goal is to help to inspire and motivate you to do the same. So let's get right into it. Welcome back to George Wright III. And I'm excited today because we're going to have a new topic, one that we haven't discussed yet with Connected TV and streaming. And you guys know I've been a big proponent of authority and getting seen by the public. And we have an amazing individual here today. Let me give him a quick intro. So Sean Stockwell is the CEO of Your Home Digital, but he's also the founder and executive producer of Your Home TV and the publisher of Your Home One Source. Now, you guys have heard me talk about our new upcoming show, so I'm excited to have him here because Sean is business partners with Kathy Ireland worldwide. They provide digital media, marketing strategies, program streaming opportunities for tons of leading brands and influencers. But just last year, just the stats, I'm sorry, this year is they have over 6.3 million new mobile viewers and also 53 million views. These guys have a ton of stuff going on. So, Sean, welcome to the show. Great to be with you, George. Thank you. Yeah, we're excited because you're bringing a whole new channel, which is really the up-and-coming, growing channel of streaming and connected TV. And for even people that are not marketers, they're obviously viewers. And so let's do this. Just for people that don't know you, and they don't know your background, give us a little bit of the backdrop because you didn't come from the digital world and streaming. You came from banking. So I want to kind of hear what you did. Give us your background and then we'll kind of go into some more details. Sure. Thank you. Thank you. Well, I grew up in the Midwest in St. Louis County, Missouri, and I got into the savings and loan industry after working with my father and his real estate company when I was in community college. And, um, so, you know, first was licensed in real estate, then I have my, my broker's license in real estate, then got into the savings loan industry. And that was in 1984. So I'm kind of showing my age. And, um, I was always in the mortgage banking division of the, not sit, but not only savings and loans, but then moved into wholesale mortgage banking, community banking. So 32 years started in the Midwest and then relocated to Tampa, Florida, 27 years ago. But yeah, 32 years in banking and community banking and mortgage banking before I really focused on the digital media space. So there had to be a transition or a pivot point, right? Because that is a completely different industry. And now I've known you as kind of a marketer and a guy that's on innovative trends. And so what was the point that created that pivot for you? Which, by the way, the reason I bring that up is so many people today, because the marketplace is going all over the place, they're facing a pivot. They're facing new challenges and new industry moves. And so I'm curious, did it force you into that or did you identify an opportunity and move into it? Great, great question. So, well, yeah, absolutely. Change is required no matter what you're doing. And we all watched as the Internet, you know, began to change our lives in 1996, 1997. And definitely by by the year 2000, everybody was realizing no matter what business you were in, you better be active online if you're going to be relevant in the future. and uh so i was one of those guys that i learned over the years to listen and to read and to study and to observe and then to act right choose the path forward so um i kind of raised my hand uh in in the banking groups that i was with um self-trust banks specifically and then in bay cities bank in Tampa and said, you know, Hey, I'll, I'll, I'll, how in the, um, you know, development of and deployment of websites and online interactions with our customer base. And I loved it. And that right there was the turning point. I really enjoyed the creativity of it and, uh, just something new, um, a new direction. I still create, uh, uh, maintained my, uh, you know, go going to different meetings in person i maintained that but you had to be able to do both and and so i did i got into the the technology side they just kept learning more and more the the last bank you know i opened their lending division and also developed their website and by the time we sold that bank seven years later 80 of our mortgage business was done uh through the website that i helped develop up. It was, it was fun just watching. So I'm quite curious though, because like the skill sets of banking and digital, um, is it just something you just stumbled across cause you wanted to get into it? And then you just, since then you've kind of loved it or did you, did you do anything with tech or any of that while prior to it? I did. There was, there was a number of things. So i've always been kind of a entrepreneur and and uh way back in 1993 um this is a funny story i was actually on vacation uh in virginia with my family and uh an old friend that we used to play football together in our younger years and he called and said sean i have this idea um he said i was thought i was almost asleep you know you know late at night he said how would you like to develop uh basically a system that would allow people like uh turbo tax to be guided through the the home mortgage process and i just thought about that for a few minutes and i was like that's a great idea you know so we did it we spent all of 1994 and 1995 i had a little team and this was evenings and and and saturdays side hustle yeah exactly i was working you know full-time in banking but uh we we were doing these very creative and strategic development initiatives, usually two to three evenings and then every other Saturday. And that went on for a while. So the product that we developed, just to tell you how early on that was, these were floppy disks. We literally had, yes, it was called Lone Source. And this was back when we had a series of five floppy disks that you had to insert into a tower, you know, CPU one at a time, load the program. But it was beautiful. It walked people through all of the terminology, how to be qualified. You know, in fact, this is before credit scoring. That's, you know, top. But so I was actually engaged in technology development 1994, 1995, before the internet was even on the scene. So it's interesting because I think sometimes people, you know, as an entrepreneur, you're looking at a bunch of different things you're exploring, you're trying to learn. Sometimes you do things that you don't realize later on will benefit you as you find opportunities. And so, so many people are trying to make or break things they're doing or not spend time on it. But, you know, these things stack up over time. So, okay, so fast forward, you know, banking, you start to really dig deep into digital. but you know you had a pretty heavy learning curve right and with your team as you so take us through kind of the transition into this digital and then tv space okay and and what happened because obviously as with most things it was not just a smooth downhill glide into what you're doing right now right absolutely yeah there was some some some difficult times and And so I had already planned on creating some type of an online platform to engage home industry consumers because that was my background. And then came the housing crisis, which, you know, a lot of people think it happened in 2008. It actually started before that. But we thought we start coming in late 2005 and definitely six and seven. It just kept getting worse and worse and finally hit the wall in 08. and uh so i was fortunate to be with a bank that had capital because at the time a lot of the banks had no capital and they were forced out of business um you know so anyway without getting into that everybody was trying to figure out what they were going to do because so many people were losing their jobs and companies were being consolidated and closed down during the housing crisis I thankfully had already started working on this pilot your home one source Oh at least a year or so probably more like two two and a half years earlier before the housing crisis. But I stayed at our, at our community bank and just continued to, uh, build the residential lending division while I was working on your home one source in the evening. So I kind of repeated what we had done with Loan Source, you know, roughly 10 years earlier. And so I was positioned now what I had learned was to surround myself with people that were a lot smarter than me. So I put together a board. I invited a number of people that I really respected and we put together a board that's just outstanding. And to this day, we have an amazing board. Our chairman, David McCain, who's been with me from the beginning. he was the former chief legal officer and CEO of Lennar Corporation, the largest at the time, largest publicly traded home builder in the country. So, you know, we have some phenomenal board members. So that was another piece of the puzzle was getting the right leadership team. What did you do in the early days? How did you attract that leadership team? Because so many people are like have these cutting edge innovative ideas, but they don't think that they could go get a team, a board like that. And I thought that was a really interesting strategy. What did you do to really kind of create that opportunity? Oh, thank you. Great, great question. So I built, you know, because I was a writer, um, I would, I would write, um, pretty concise, um, you know, business development plans and put it into the form of a presentation that was, uh, highly illustrated, really great graphics, which was one of the hallmarks of your home on source when we built it was the graphics that would really attract people, no matter whether you were discussing interior design or home building or whatever it might be, landscaping. So I built a presentation that wasn't too long because you don't want to have something that's too long, right? But, you know, let's say 10 slides, but, you know, between illustration and narrative, I could tell the story. And then I would go and meet with people. I would make an appointment and I would go and meet with them in person. and I would explain usually within 30 minutes to one hour lunch whatever bring the laptop and I would explain to them what my concepts were and I always approached everything as an alliance because you know smart executives realize that they don't have all the answers so I would always ask for feedback and I would always ask for people to join me and team with me and that together we would be able to figure it out. That's kind of what we did. I love it. I love it. Well, so that's a great way to do it because you don't necessarily have to have big salaries for your board and things like that. When you, number one, can create a story, I think people like to align with people. So doing a presentation and really being, you know, sharing your vision. And I like this idea of an alliance. Okay. So, so keep going. How did this slowly morph into kind of what you have today with your home? Well, the first thing was when I was what's called a key man at the last bank, the community bank in Tampa. And when that bank sold, that created a cash event for me and our children were grown. I've got four grown children. And I told my wife, I think I'm going to take that little nest egg, if you will, and I'm going to go a new direction and I'm going to go full-time into this digital media company. And so that's what we did. So that ended that right there. officially ended my banking career. That was in September of 2015. And we launched Home Digital and Your Home One Source platform January 1st of 2016. So that was the real turning point. And then the board, we just slowly but surely over the years added more and more leaders that were from different segments. We had e-commerce. So one of my advisors early on was the former general manager of Home Shopping Network. So we had that. Then our CMO had led e-commerce strategies for Hyatt, Hilton, JCPenney, Verizon, West Marine. So another brilliant guy. And so we just kept adding. But a lot of it was simply what we decided to be. We decided to be educators. We decided to put helpful resources on one website because we were looking at an industry online technology for homeowners that was very fragmented. So if you wanted a mortgage, you would go to Dytek or LendingTree, right? This is even before Quicken. This is before Quicken. Quicken kind of was coming on the scene, but, and then if you were going to buy a home, it was either realtor.com or something else, right? But everything was fragmented and we came up with the idea let's educate and let's engage home consumers on all home industry topics on one website other words let's take the walmart or the amazon approach which is all things in one convenient location because that's what consumers prefer and that's where your home one source was born and um we ended up we had over a period of our first five years we had 40 brands that we wrote articles for, including, including home advisor, Lowe's, home Depot. ADT was one of the sponsored, our home security page, bobvila.com on DIY. I mean, we had some amazing alliances that we put together in that first five years. What made you decide that to be an education focus? Because, you know, obviously, you know, you got to be thinking revenue for the company and things like this. But I think you're, from what I understand from our conversations, you know, you really just wanted to capture the attention, the eyeballs, like obviously it's the ultimate goal in any business. But was there a point and a reason why you decided to be that education? Was it that whole idea of being an alliance for all these brands? And what was it that made you choose that path? And you ask a lot of great questions, George. So that's a. Because you could have gone a couple directions, right? Like you could have definitely with your online digital platform, it could have gone several directions. Yes. Yeah. So, well, here's what, you know, number one was the belief that, you know, the home, uh, the financial collapse, the housing and industry financial collapse could have been, you couldn't avoid it necessarily. Right. But it would have been diminished if more people were properly educated and informed. maybe maybe some of them wouldn't have made decisions in haste and and would have been a little bit more cautious if they were fully informed so some of it was born out of that a desire to protect people uh believing that if they were better informed they would make better decisions the other side of the coin is something that i learned over all of those years in banking which is people do business with those that are number one, trusted advisors. And secondly, people who provide a high level of customer service. If you're not trusted, people aren't going to work with you. And if you don't have a high level of customer service, they're either not going to work with you or they definitely are not going to return. And so we decided to put both of the answers to those challenges into our into your home one source where we were educating people to help them make better decisions and the the service level if you will was just through the roof i mean the the resources we had at the end of five years it was massive it was a 900 uh page you know website landing pages we had all these 900 pages of content uh with nearly 400 articles we had checklist calculators we had outbound links to there were 22,000 outbound links to everybody, uh, from realtor.com to the national association of realtors to the national association of home builders on and on and on, uh, uh, American Institute of architects. We had a FEMA for people that were involved in a natural disaster where to go for help. Um, we formed so many alliances that there were there. We, We had, I don't know how many companies teaming with us to educate consumers in one place. And I think a lot of people forget and they don't realize that long game you played. It's not just about the content out and just alliances, but the online SEO backlink network that you created. Because, I mean, let's be honest, this has been an eight or nine year bill, right? This isn't like you just did this yesterday, internet entrepreneur overnight. But you also establish a ton of trust with this education. I think people, I'm learning more and more, and I'm seeing it more and more with authority marketing and media that we do, that when people trust you, they're going to stay with you they going to buy from you And that mirror effect takes place where they see you and they hear you and they read from you often you just your brand loyalty is just extremely high as well which then catapults to you being able to attract new brand partners too i would imagine it yeah absolutely um i would agree 100 you know and the other thing too is that we removed barriers to entry that was another thing we did a lot of similar studies and there were a lot of websites that required people to sign up to answer questions. They had to do something, pay a fee, whatever. And the bounce rate on those sites was really high. People didn't like that. And so we removed those barriers. That was another thing was not only providing all of the education, but it was free and it was accessed without hassle. And the thing is, is everybody would, in the early days they would say well that's a error in judgment if you don't require them to register you can't capture their ip data but that's not correct that was true 20 years or 15 years ago but uh well you know once you got into the days of google analytics and other types of things just the interaction of the ip address from whatever mobile device laptop whatever their wifi connection revealed this, the same consumer data. You didn't have to force people to do anything. And so we just made it easy. We removed the barriers, made it free and provided a great interaction. Yeah. And then from there, by the way, those home industry brands that were participating on the resource, the education side, some of them then started to hire us to help in their, in their digital strategies. And that was then, that was right there. the first pivot. We went from a B2C model, your home one source, to more of a B2B where we were a digital agency creating content that would deliver the consumer experience or interaction to the home industry brand. And so we started campaigns and did the search and display and YouTube campaigns for the home industry brands beyond just having our B2C portal. Yeah. And becoming a, and I don't know, was that your original vision was to create those relationships or did that happen because of the relationships? We wanted to create the relationships from the resource side. Got it. We never dreamed early on that we would end up, you know, helping in their digital strategies. That just, we thought, you know, everybody, especially some of these larger companies, they have their own teams. they don't need our help but it turned out that um we would present ideas or concepts that were new because we were you know out of the box thinkers and some of the executives were like you know what let me why don't we just team with you well and entrepreneurs and business owners they don't realize that some of the biggest opportunities come by executing on what you're doing and so you you don't have to have it all figured out. You're going to morph into that over time. And that kind of brings us to this conversation of your home TV. And you guys have obviously always been innovators. I loved how you took the education piece, dropped the barriers and boundaries for people to be able to connect with you by developing that trust. Obviously, the B2B relationships expanded. I'm curious why you decided to pivot into the TV and streaming space versus audio versus building your own products or building just a whatever it may be, because you're pretty diverse now. We don't have to jump all the way to that yet, but you're not just a home shopping network kind of a TV. So tell me what bridged you into that and Why did you choose that vein? Because that's a very fast growing opportunity you guys are in. Right, right. So, well, early on, in fact, it was the first year that we were in business, 2016. I acquired the domain, Your Home TV, that far back. And I knew that I wanted to have a library of educational videos. And we did. We built originally Your Home TV. I formed a partnership with Content Puppy, which was out of Atlanta, Georgia, and a dear friend, Harry Hayes, who has since passed. But he was brilliant. He had been with some of the largest advertising agencies in the country over the years, 30 years. He represented brands like Anheuser-Busch and TWA and Georgia Pacific and many others. and he was an expert storyteller in video. So Your Home TV originally was storytellers in video for the home industry. So we had over 200 videos, short-run videos, for home industry brands like Anderson, E-Series, Windows, and just on and on. We had flooring and all these different topics. uh we knew people preferred to watch uh the you know the the beautiful images and listen to a story rather than read read an article we were trying to be all places digital that was even our our phrase for a while was was all all all uh all things home and all places digital so anyway what happened was that your home tv uh aspect of your homeland source and those 200 videos led us into more and more video production and we started creating video commercials for home industry brands and placing those commercials not just on your home one source but on streaming outlets right so three and a half years ago we were teaming with tegna and odyssey in media and working with their their folks to place um you know these commercials out on streaming outlets. And we were doing nationwide placement of over 100 streaming outlets, including YouTube and HGTV and many others. And one day our CMO said, Sean, have you ever studied the growth of streaming? And I said, no, I haven't studied it. I know it's growing rapidly. Yeah, like 30% year over year. And it's projected to continue at that rate for 10 years or more. And I said, he said, so why don't we, you know, maybe we focus more on, on getting into streaming. And I visited with the leadership team of Kathy Ireland worldwide, one of our equity partners. They had breed and we started research. We didn't just jump right into it. We spent 12 months. We were 12 months in research of how to do it, with whom to partner and all of that. What do people want? The viewers. What do producers, the creators, what do they want? And after a year of study, we came up with the model for Your Home TV, and it was launched in November of 2022 as an independent OTT streaming platform. We're not connected TV, even though we're on Roku in 20 countries. Most of our viewers by design are on mobile devices in over 80 countries now. Yeah, it's interesting. So for those of you that don't know Your Home TV, it's a free global streaming network. And it offers, you know, live stream as well as video on demand. And it's, you know, very family friendly, but in 80 countries. And you showcase everything from, you know, trends and opportunities and home services, real estate, home finance, you know, building, you know, all kinds of things. In fact, that's where our, you know, our authority show will be as well. So it's very interesting to see how your background has gone from where you were at into digital, partnering with clients and moving on. And I think success leaves clues. You definitely have some principles that you've carried throughout the process. And I've seen that myself with the way you work with partners and your channel partners, as well as your relationships. I mean, it seems like the individuals everywhere from Kathy Ireland worldwide to some of your current channel partners all fit into a very good culture. And it does seem like an alliance building something bigger than just a product channel. Where do you see the streaming industry? Where do you see that going? Because you've talked about how fast it's growing for your home TV over the next, you know, three to five years. What's the, what's the vision of what's going to happen? And do you see any trends or nuances that are happening that, you know, people can capitalize on? Yeah, I would, I would say number one is, you know, there's been a lot of articles and a lot of discussion in the last couple of years about cord cutting. Um I think that will continue but people will continue to pay uh fees as well You know George if you were to think that you know if you ask somebody 20 years ago when the internet was coming on the scene, what's going to happen to newspapers or whatever, you know, mailers in the mailbox, right? You know, so many people said, well, they'll go away. Well, that's a partial truth. there's definitely been you know diminishing on the side of print newspapers as we know but there are still people that want to read a newspaper and there are still people that want to pick up a magazine at the store and there are still people that look at the offers these beautiful postcards and images and offers in the mail right so yeah but back to streaming it it's it's just going to be probably a combination of things you're going to have some platforms that focus on movies and documentaries and television reruns self television series reruns and you'll have others that are like us that is more short run programming that's kind of our focus is short run programming yeah while we have shows that are as short as three to five minutes and we have some that are about 60 minutes but I would say the average is 17 to 20 minutes. And so it's totally different than going on to Netflix, Paramount+, Disney, and others, where most people are watching movies. Yeah, the content has shifted a lot too, right? Like it's also been, you've seen this with reality TV and things like this. We were talking about this just before we got started today. The type of programming that people enjoy watching doesn't have to be such a high, high production end type of deal, which is why you see a lot of influencers and YouTube streamers and individuals like that creating content for streaming TV, not just on their YouTube channel. And we're going to be talking over the coming weeks as more and more opportunities present themselves for our listeners and for businesses. But I've started to see more businesses really create their own authority and branding and relationship with their customers, because if you're going to be trusted, you want to increase your trust in your authority, you've got to be seen. And right now people are streaming on and on-demand content on their mobile devices. And so would you say you've seen more and more, you know, it's like anything else. It used to be just the high production value. Then you see things like this, you know, Tyson, Jake, Paul fight, where it's like, how does, how is that not But like, how did they partner with Netflix and they're getting these things done? It's because it's all about influence. Do you see it becoming, I've seen you've dropped the barriers, but more possible for businesses to get into this market without there being big barriers to entry, like having a TV studio and having all these production values and things. Is that something that's become more and easier? And can you speak to that? Yeah, absolutely. In fact, you know, the smart business leaders, people that are leading digital media within these large brands, they would be wise to get into streaming more so than just commercials, 30 second or one minute spots on streaming outlets. They would be better to have their own fast channel or an OTT type channel like on our network. and now that doesn't mean they have to go it alone in fact that's our model you mentioned it earlier your home tv is a collaboration so instead of everybody going out and saying we're going to get into streaming or we're going to have our own streaming platform well good luck you know it's going to cost you millions and millions of dollars and take you several years and you'll probably lose more money being an independent streaming you may should have just stayed you know with whatever your core business is. Right. But, but if you let a company like ours, we are basically a technology host. We provide the technology platform. We even provide marketing services for the brand. So whether it's an influencer, a brand or a filmmaker, they don't have to go out and do all of this themselves. Uh, they can come to your home TV and we provide all of that for them. It's kind of turnkey. So I think it's collaborative, right? I think a lot of people don't realize that you try to do it on your own. You've got to hit all the roadblocks and obstacles. What you guys have done is innovative because you've lowered the barrier to entry. You've created a collaborative environment where people can work together as an alliance to bring their information to the marketplace by capitalizing on these principles you've talked about, education, building trust, being seen continuously. and I think so many people overthink how difficult that is to be and you to do and I think you guys have done a good job of making it simpler and I'm certainly gonna in our show notes I'm gonna include some of that as well but as we kind of get to the end here are there any final thoughts that you really feel like you'd like to share with anyone who might be considering getting into the streaming space what would be your advice to them if they know nothing about it right now yeah well Well, I would say a few things for producers or creators is make sure that you control and own your content. You don't want to get into whether it's short term or long term licensing agreements of your content that turn the control over to someone else, because then good luck getting it back. They may promise monetization. It may never come. Um, um, I think that that's another thing about our, the way we're structured is that the creator, the producer, they own the content. They set the production schedule. If they want to do one show a month, that's fine. And if they want to put one up a week, they can. The timing, if you, you know, you go with some of the larger networks, you know, it's like 2730 or 2830. And there's all these rigid requirements. I would say to people, stay with a company that is very flexible, that doesn't have rigid requirements. We like real people, real stories, and a lot of that occurs on mobile devices. And that's why YouTube, everybody thinks, okay, Netflix is the biggest or Paramount Plus. No, they're not. YouTube is the biggest by far. YouTube has 2.7 billion users. If you take all of the connected television networks out there, if you were to add Amazon Prime and Netflix and Disney and Paramount, you know, all of them, just add them all together. You got about 450,000 households, but on YouTube, 2.7 billion. And then if you look at streaming on mobile devices, it's actually 3.7 billion total around the globe. so I guess what I'm saying is you want to have your content on mobile devices the connected tv which is really looking you know to an audience that's sitting on the sofa at eight o'clock at night yeah that audience is not as um you know um what would you say uh relevant these days yeah you know everybody's on mobile devices so that's that over the top yeah yeah and plus I think I think that's great advice to so many people don't, they've got to open up their mind to the fact that you can control your content, your timing, your frequency. If you, if you, if you pick the right partners, you go in the right direction. And I think it's easier than ever for someone to be able to create relationship through viewing, streaming on-demand content for their ideal client, their ideal customer, and creating a community around that, not just in a social media aspect or even in your own database, newsletter-type aspect, but I think in a viewing, storytelling, educational way, which is why I'm a big fan and why we're pivoting that direction as well. So, well, this has been awesome. We're out of time, but I'm super glad that we had you here. And I know we're going to have you back. We've had some interaction with you on our mastermind. And I know there's a lot of people that have questions on this. So I'll tell you what I'll do. If you're listening to this episode, I'm going to put in the show notes some links to some information. You can get a hold of myself. And Sean, where's the best way or place for people to connect with you and follow your home TV? What's the best way for them to connect with you? Yeah, just go on your browser and type in your home TV. That's it. You'll find us, your home TV. That's beautiful. I love it. I love it. Okay, cool. Well, thank you for being here. And guys, do me a favor, share the show. Our goal is to help you to be able to level up in every area of your life. Obviously, I always say, and I believe it's never too late to start creating that life you were meant to live, the one that you want to live. And so part of that is just innovating. And so I'm glad you're here with us today. Hit us up on The Daily Mastermind on Facebook, Instagram. You've got my contact info in the show notes, and we'll talk with you more tomorrow. Have an amazing day. It's been a pleasure, George. Thank you.