K atie c ouric

Personal Brands
Carey thinks that the opportunities are even larger for personal brands. For
example, there are so few live music events and so few artists that go to
emerging markets to perform. If you’re a musician, the opportunity to get in
front of a crowd of five hundred or a thousand people just by being willing
to show up is significant. Again, the propensity of foreign markets to share
and comment will be of great benefit. Also, if people listen to your music
on Spotify in Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, or Singapore, the chances of
getting featured on Discover Weekly around the world are probably going
to start increasing. You’ll build up your reputation and internal metrics on
these channels. (This can be applied to many other fields as well. Use your
brain and make it happen.)
Carey shares that one time he posted a selfie with an Iranian company at
a conference in Istanbul. Within twenty-four hours it had been retweeted
hundreds of times and liked thousands of times. He had a bunch of
Facebook friend requests, LinkedIn messages, and invitations to go and

---

speak at conferences in Iran. The triumvirate of more time, more attention,
and more sharing means you can break out more easily. It’s a virgin
territory where you can get feedback and build a community, and then
return home with a hugely engaged fan base. This will make it much easier
for you to get a book deal, a record deal, or a movie role. And you’ll feel
like a rock star no matter what you do.
Today, so many actors are getting knocked back for roles because they
don’t have enough social media followers. Carey recommends going to
Indonesia or another emerging market, making two or three films, and
being the most active person on social media by engaging with fans in that
territory. Build an audience abroad and then go back and talk to the casting
agents in Hollywood or London, showing that you have a million followers.
In most cases, people don’t really know or ask where your followers come
from, just the fact that you have fans automatically makes you stand out
from the rest of the crowd. And your value also goes up when you have
access to an audience that very few other people have.
Hollywood movie producer, media executive, and investor Jon Jashni
adds that when producers are investing at scale they factor in worldwide
appeal; the narrower the target, the smaller the returns. A lot of filmmakers
are afraid that speaking one common language will dilute other languages.
Or they fear that making something for the masses will take away their
cultural identity, but this isn’t really the case. “The goal is to highlight the
facets of the jewel in such way that the market or territory understands that
that story is for them,” Jashni says. If you’ve done your job as a creator, the
universality of theme, character, relatability, and emotion will transcend
borders.