Managing your reputation is a crucial aspect of success in both business and life. Whether you aim to launch your own venture, pursue a thriving career in a medium to large-scale organization, or simply wish to be a valuable member of your community, your reputation plays a pivotal role. Selecting your associates becomes a pivotal part of this reputation management process, as not all connections are created equal. Some associations might not be the right fit for your goals or values. So, how can you discern which people are truly beneficial for your life and reputation?
In this episode, I talked with Amber Wyatt, Founder of Millennial Matrix Media, a dynamic agency specializing in marketing, video production, graphics, and branding, with a strong emphasis on SEO. Our conversation delved into intriguing topics such as media bias, addressing wrongful convictions, navigating the complexities of untrustworthy business partners, and how to maintain energy alignment within the world of business.
Don’t miss this enlightening discussion!
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Listen to the podcast here:
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Connecting and Building Reputation with Amber Wyatt
Welcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. Today, I want to talk to you about one aspect of business that really kind of applies to the rest of our life as well, and that is reputation. Whether you’re trying to start your own business, whether you’re trying to have a good career at a larger or even midsize company, or even if you’re just trying to be a good neighbor and have a good kind of presence in your neighborhood in your community, you need to manage your reputation and part of managing your reputation is choosing the people that you’re going to associate with because not every association is going to be equal to each other and not every connection you make is going to be equally beneficial and, unfortunately, there are some people out there that are, I don’t want to say not worth it because everyone’s worthy of something in life, but maybe not the right match for you and maybe not the right people for you to have in your life. To dive further into this topic, I’d like to introduce my guest, Amber Wyatt, the founder of Millennial Matrix Media.
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Amber, welcome to the program.
Hi, thanks for having me.
Thank you so much for joining. Amber, we met back in April when you were providing the media for an event that I was at. Tell us a little bit about Millennial Matrix Media. There’s so many different ways that media works for so many different types of events and types of organizations.
So, we’re a full service marketing agency that focuses specifically on video production. So, I do video marketing and that’s mainly where all my clients come from but we also do graphic design for branding, we do logos, we do websites, we do copywriting, we do headshots, we do photography and events, so all of it.
So all purpose media, and, of course, there’s social media, there’s standard, old school print media, there’s new media. Do you tend to specialize in customers that do the whole package or do you tend to look for people that are more geared toward one or the other?
A lot of the clients start out like wanting professional headshots and like blogs or articles, and then we kind of like warm them up to the video, because whereas like blogs and articles may be good for the search engine optimization, putting those keywords, those industry terminologies and things like that in there, you really want to boil that down eventually into a one- or two-minute-long video, because people don’t want to read that stuff anymore.
So almost always sell the video eventually but it can start from needing a logo or needing a headshot or needing a blog or an article or anything like that.
I know one of the things that intimidates some people in the idea of getting into video is that it seems like a good amount of work. So, obviously, Instagram used to have a picture, you post it, all you got to do is take the damn picture, put it up and watch the likes and whatever roll in, whereas video, whenever I see anyone filming a TikTok video, whatever, it’s always like some kind of a production, someone had to plan something. I often see people practicing their dance moves before they actually film the video. Is there any way to make that more accessible to people who are maybe a little leery about moving beyond just the standard photo slash blog?
Yeah, the quality is key, you’re right about that, and I think it’s becoming more mainstream, like the education about production and production value is becoming more mainstream. There’s some consulting I’ll do for clients that can’t afford my services and I’ll just tell them get your ring light, that’s like 101, you got to get the ring light. Get you a Logitech, get you a little webcam, you could start there. They’re pretty cheap, 50, 60 books. I try to recommend — Neewer has cheap tripods. You don’t want to go straight to the GVM lights maybe, you want to start with something lower on the totem pole there. So a lot of that stuff is out there and I think you can find like even like a baby teleprompter. They have apps for that now.
A baby teleprompter?
Just on your phone, because the teleprompter I have is huge, it’s a professional teleprompter but you can —
With the words in front of you, right?
Yeah. You can actually get like an app now called Promptsmart and you can just have it besides your computer doing your little YouTube production or your TikTok production and it times you as well so it’s super useful tool.
So, theoretically, right now, someone who’s maybe a bit nervous about making a speech, I don’t know what to say, they can use ChatGPT to develop a speech and then put it onto this teleprompter app on their phone and then pretty much read off of it and only have to worry about tone of voice, volume, pitch, and all the stuff that you would learn at a Toastmasters meeting.
Yes, and this is really going to put me out of business. There’s also a software called AutoPod that will cut the dead space out. You can put your video clip in there, the AI reads where there’s wavelengths that are valuable so if they’re small wavelengths, it just cuts it out. It cuts out all the dead space for you. So there’s software out there that’s actually doing the editing too.
Oh my gosh, that’s weird.
It’s really weird.
No, there’s a whole new venture in the world today, for sure. So what made you start this kind of multipurpose media company? What was your path to getting to where you are now?
It all started me at the skate park. I was just a skate rat at the skate park just hanging out and I just wasn’t good at skating so somebody ended up giving me like a Canon Vixia and then, from there, I did — already had like the basics of skateboarding to be able to film people skating and get cool glide shots. That was just where my friends were anyways, but I was no good at skating, I didn’t have no business skating so I just picked up the camera from there and I really loved it.
The thing that I loved is hearing people’s stories. It’s cool to capture something beautiful. Click To TweetI always liked the story part of it and being able to share that story or giving other people the ability to share their story. Sometimes, it’s not even a story, it’s just like somebody making one little cute comment but it tells so much about who they are. So I like doing that. It’s that part for me, telling the story.
So it’s kind of a personal connection. I just imagine, say, really certain minded people at a restaurant who would like to look around at everyone else dining at that restaurant and be like, “What do you think is their story?” and then someone will just come up, it’s like, “Fourth date, they’re not quite sure where they are now,” something along those lines, you kind of look at everyone and imagine that story, so it’s that curious about people and wanting to see why is that person wearing that shirt or why are those two people sharing a scooter together today or something.
Yes, absolutely. I feel like my entire life, I’ve been fascinated by humanity and I think part of this comes from my mom being a foster parent. So, my entire life, there was kids moving in and out of the house and stuff like that. Some of them will stay but then they go back to their families and different reasons and things like that. But I was actually getting to know these people. I wasn’t even just wanting, I was beyond curious, like I was asking questions all the time. I was basically interviewing these kids that came in and out of my house as a child. So I think I carry that into adulthood as something I never want to let go of. I’m fascinated.
I love to hear the stories. Everybody has such a different story and you can learn from all those stories. Click To TweetWas this something that you had in your mind even before you started that day at the skate park and you were filming people or did this something just click at that time, you’re like, “Oh, wait, this is a way to engage this part of who I am”?
Yeah, I think it was part of engaging who I am and I think that it is really deep rooted. I was growing up, I was becoming a teenager, I was a preteen in those 2005, 2006 eras. The paparazzi was everywhere and it was insane and it was like these it girls and like all that. I come from that generation. That’s my generation. So I think that it came from maybe there, like I was fascinated by those people and their stories and what they were doing, like Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton, I do come from that generation. It’s a little corny but I think that it kind of comes from there. Even before I was going to the skate park, I was watching them on TV.
So you’d see them and you just kind of wonder what’s their story, why are they constantly trying to show off their story.
Yeah, and I felt like it was significant at a young age too, like seeing kind of like celebrity life come into the public eye where it had been so mysterious, we were getting little tidbits now how these people are normal, like Louisiana girl, like walking barefoot, these people were starting to show a little bit more or we were getting ready to find out a little bit more from constant exposure to paparazzi. So I think I was interested in that, this celebrity coming into like mainstream as a real person movement. It was kind of a movement that was going on back then.
Well, it’s interesting because one of the things that the internet did is kind of just connected everyone, right? And there was certain things that were just so mysterious, like maybe a long, long time ago, you’d read like a newspaper clipping about how JP Morgan or John Rockefeller, those richest people, or maybe you drive by their mansion and you’d look inside and say, “Oh, I wonder what that’s like,” and then I think for a while there was that show, Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, that kind of transitioned to now, of course, every celebrity has — well not every, some choose to keep private but most celebrities have some kind of Instagram, TikTok, YouTube presence that allows you to just kind of see as much as you want to see.
Yeah. And I think one of the key components with that whole movement is like TMZ because they were telling it how it was and, honestly, what they were doing it from like a legal perspective or like a judicial perspective was a movement as well, because I don’t know if you remember but when I was a kid, Mel Gibson got pulled over and he was about to get off on it and that’s what they used to do. All the celebrities used to get off on it, drunk driving, high driving, anything, like they used to get off, cheating on their wife, scandals, it did used to go under the rug. But it was that Mel Gibson thing that actually the cops had gotten in trouble for it because they were saying it was not a big deal but it was a big deal and they ended up going back and like righting the wrong. And then, I don’t know, so I think that’s kind of cool. There’s a justice piece to it as well that I saw.
Yeah. Wasn’t he like excessively drunk?
Yeah.
I’m trying to remember, this is a while back obviously.
Yeah, totally. I think the story was like, one of the paparazzi just saw him, like they were driving up the Pacific Coast Highway and he was doing the field sobriety test and he was being rude and he went on an anti-Semitic tirade and he was being a racist and all this stuff with the police officers and they let him go, like they do, but then TMZ had videos. So once the TMZ came out with those videos on their little dinky website back then, the best they could do with the website, the cops had to go back and do the right thing because they were wrong by letting him go. And then after that, you hear about all these other celebrities and it was like their legal troubles and they didn’t have any legal troubles before because we weren’t talking about it. TMZ can be disgusting, the way they talk about women and things like that, but they really did play a role at the forefront of this movement, like keeping it real and telling it how it was. I think that’s what I wanted to do.
I want to tell it how it is and give you a platform to say whatever you want to say. Click To TweetSo, obviously, Mel Gibson, and I think I remember this being right around the time he did that Passion of the Christ movie and I think that’s why people were kind of comparing the two because he was promoting Christian message of this is what Jesus sacrificed for us and, all of a sudden, he’s on this rampage or rant, whatever, but can it work the other way around? Because can it be either someone who’s, say, previously voiceless, say, someone who just doesn’t feel like they matter in the world or someone who’s maybe been mischaracterized or given like a bad reputation, be able to have this platform in which to explain, maybe you have this idea of who I am. I think one of the examples is possibly even Britney Spears because she was tarnished by a bunch of people 2003, ’05, ’07, ’08, whatever, and then we kind of realized that there were some people in her life that were really just screwing her over and growing your reputation. So is there that positive and that whole giving someone that maybe didn’t deserve to be treated so harshly a platform to explain what their story really is?
Yeah, totally. And we’re going to plug it real quick. The Woman in Me just dropped so y’all got to get Britney’s book. I want to get it.
Did it just drop?
Yeah. And so there’s books and we have so many other ways now that the underdog can kind of tell their story and I love that part of it as well.
Yeah. So is there an element of that in kind of the production services that you provide? What is your typical client like, I guess?
So many different types of clients. I think there is an element of the underdog. Some of the event coverage that I do, like these live events, these people work their whole lives to be able to do. So that, I think, is a testament to their passion when they do these live events. So a lot of that, kind of like where I met you and stuff like that, it’s just people that didn’t come from much who now are using what they do have to help others.
Yeah. And that event that we met at, that’s what Unlocked Live really was all about. Terry was trying to help people kind of unlock power within them that a lot of people oftentimes don’t realize they have, especially because, oftentimes, the way the world just teaches you to not flex, to not throw yourself out there and to yield to people for one reason or another.
Yeah. And another thing that’s happening, like with my graduate research at CSU, I was looking at how the news coverage, especially in the 80s and 90s, played into stereotypes of different races and things like that and there’s one study by Dan Tyburski: on the Cops show that is really informative and really uncovered a lot of stuff with the way that things were framed and the way that the media frames things in general, especially with crime coverage and then like the Cops show. That’s another thing that I’m interested in because there’s a correlation between wrongful conviction and the way the media portrays black men so that’s what a lot of my research is about, and I haven’t been able to but I’d like to talk to some of the people who were wrongfully convicted. There’s some people where I’m from, like in Virginia that did like 46 years, 48 years for crimes they did not commit, I would love to help them tell that story.
It always happens in such a subtle way, right? Because I think a lot of the biases and everything that we read, everything that we encounter, we see in the news, it’s so subtle, like the obvious stuff, like Mel Gibson’s rant, was obvious and that’s why everyone could hear it right away but most of it, it’s like even what news story gets coverage and which one just gets ignored, or which one gets talked about in a slightly different tone of voice that you’re not really going to see unless someone’s kind of like really diving deep and analyzing it, noticing it.
And like more so than rhetoric, like it’s roles that you see. In the Dan Tyburski study, he uncovers that 3 percent of black police officers are shown on that show and, clearly, there’s more than that. There’s more black police officers but why are they not showing black police officers? They’re only showing black assailants, white victims, white cops. You see what I’m saying? So that’s where the framing comes in visually where the rhetoric will probably be subconscious but, visually, you’re seeing that, you just don’t know what you’re seeing. You don’t know that it’s not true. In the 80s and 90s, you don’t know.
Well, yeah, and if you only see a small subset of what’s going on, it’s like if you only see 5 percent of the world, that 5 percent of the world is kind of your reality unless you go out and seek it. I admitted this on a previous podcast but when I was a little kid based on where I grew up, I thought the song “Fuck the Police” by NWA was just like another example of like youthful people trying to be edgy and like, “Oh, authority, I don’t need it, I do my own thing,” and then, of course, later on, you listened to all the other rap songs and realize it’s really about that racial bias going on.
And brutality.
Yeah.
Yep.
So how do you keep your reputation good? What should anyone listening do to kind of maintain or try to improve that reputation that they’re having, whatever business that they wanted out there?
So I think I was really naive coming from a more homogenized community, so it’s been a learning curve for me in business to really identify where I need to put my energy, who I need to put my energy with, and I’ve been so just like Britney Spears with it, I’ve just been like so nice to everybody and I’m going into the sixth year of business now and I’m realizing some of those people didn’t align with me personally so they became problems as far as the vision for my business or the vision for a project or the vision with a client or something like that. The collaboration wasn’t there, it was forced. So that’s something I’m trying to be more aware of now, because it’s actually been a detriment at some times. It’s not that it’s brought my business to its knees or anything, but it’s that kind of went left, that could have got bad, and I should have been in as close proximity with those people or really, really inviting those people into my business and stuff like that. There’s a lot of people you can’t count on, there’s a lot of people who are competitive, they’re being jealous of you. There’s people who don’t want to see what’s best for you. I didn’t know that, unfortunately, and it sounds silly but I really didn’t even think about that. Why would somebody? So there’s stuff like that that I’m just trying to be better about.
Yeah. And it’s hard because it sounds like there’s a lot of different scenarios of different people and so it’s hard to really say what to look out for, I don’t know if you’ve had any keys to what you look for and even like when you meet someone and assess someone, is this person going to be a good relationship with me or is this person going to be a bad relationship for me? Or is it something you just have to kind of notice how you feel over time?
It’s a tough one because I’ve had some contractors, specifically video editors and project managers, that are terrific at what they do, I don’t know if I could have found anybody better, but they’re not good people. It’s like when you get down to really in deep with people and it’s like there’s nothing there, I think that’s like a big indication that I’ve passed by too many times, I’ve not taken that for what it was and I probably should have. So, yeah, I’ve had editors that I can’t even get an EPS file from. It’s produced under the guise of my company and I’m paying them $50 an hour and I don’t know where my videos are since March. We’ve been working together since March and I haven’t seen anything that we’ve worked on together. I can’t use it for my marketing. I wrote the scripts and I don’t know where it is. And it’s like stuff like that. It’s like why would you not even share my stuff with me? I had another video editor who literally just left with a hard drive, like he wanted the footage. Typically, you don’t do it that way. He didn’t bring his own hard drive. I gave him a hard drive, so he left with like a two terabyte hard drive, which is like really —
I mean, that’s a lot, yeah.
And my stuff for my client that I had to end up paying back for because I didn’t have it and I couldn’t come up with the final video because I don’t know where this guy is. People will block you nowadays. People have the ability to just cut contact with you and have your things in their possession and then you just have to take the loss. It’s losses like that, like it’s not anything significant but it’s like I’ve had to take financial and basically file lossage.
Yeah. That’s a big loss.
Yeah.
And what can you do when you take an L to I want to say get through it with the confidence in your business and with the ability to keep focusing on what you need to focus on to grow your business and to keep doing the thing that you’re originally passionate about, sharing those stories and filming those videos?
Well, as far as contractors go, there’s hoops for them to jump through now. You have to complete your W-9, you have to complete an independent contractor agreement. I had a lawyer write up contracts so to protect me, basically. And as far as clients go, it’s just like I’ve been a yes person all of this time, and I’m at 31 just learning how to not do that. I’ve had clients that have owed me over three months, invoices, and it’s racking up to nearly $10,000, it’s hurting me now, so, basically, there’s a clause in my contract that protects me from late payments. But even then, when I had that, I wasn’t honoring it, I was still trying to bend over backwards for people. So it’s like after a month now, people, most clients are on a net 30 payment basis, like if it’s past 30 days, I just have to stop working with that client because I’ve invested in two projects in particular that I believed in and it was a female empowerment kind of thing and I really wanted to be behind something like that, I wanted to help produce something like that, promote something like that, but I can’t pay for somebody else’s dream. And I did that twice and it was really hard on me. So it’s like, no, I’m not going to do that. It doesn’t matter how much I believe in something or I think it’s cool or I love this person, I can’t hurt myself to help others anymore. And I thought that was just the way you do it and it’s not. So, yeah, I have different parameters in place now to protect myself and mainly those business contracts really help.
So what’s more important, the practical, tangible aspect of it about finding the right lawyer, possibly even finding the right business coach to give you the right set of things, or the more personal, almost spiritual aspect of it, of believing in yourself and believing that you’re worth it enough to say, “I’m gonna stand up for myself and I’m gonna say I’m not gonna work with you on your terms all the time,” like you can say, “I want the payment right away,” or, “I want some kind of a commitment, I don’t want to just lend out my time for free to people all the time.”
It does go back to me some. I just think it goes back to me being a little naive and coming from like this Mayberry type of place, like it ain’t Mayberry out here and I had to realize that. And I lived in New York City before I lived here but running a business is a whole different ballgame with people.
I thought that’s how you have business success is being nice. My brother’s a very successful entrepreneur, another reason why I decided to do this. Back home, he has all types of businesses. “Hey, Jimmy. How you doing, Jimmy? We love you, Jimmy,” everybody loves Jimmy. I wanted to be like that in my community, wherever I went. I wanted to be loved and honored like that for the services that I provide. What’s your hard work if people don’t love you for it? That’s what I wanted to do but it ain’t like that out here because people is not my uncle and my cousin and my sister’s best friend and my grandma, it’s not close knit like that. So you’re literally working with strangers and you have to either give them the benefit of the doubt and take a gamble on your business or judge them, I wasn’t brought up to judge, so it’s hard to know when are you drawing the line, when are you saying, oh, this is somebody who you really don’t know till you get into it with them so you almost have to give everybody a chance and then you have to know when it’s time to cut the cord. One of the project managers, he was doing the invoicing wrong and he was making me lose clients and when it got to the point where I was losing clients, I had to let him go and I hated to see him go, I loved working with him, he became a good friend of mine, but I had to put that friendship to the side and cross my fingers and hope he would understand that I can’t have invoices going out wrong, you got the formulas messed up, we’ve talked about it before and I’m sorry, I gotta let you go, dude, stuff like that. You have to think about your reputation all the time and it’s hard and you got to make sure that you have people aligned with you. Same personal belief, same personal kind of perspectives on things, to reflect that because you can’t do it alone and you have people working for you, if they don’t feel the same way as you, I feel like if it’s not in alignment, then they might misinterpret what you’re doing. So now that’s your reputation on the line.
So you come from a place where, like so many other people want to think of the world, you wanted the happiness, you want everyone to be Kumbaya, you want everyone to be friendly and everything like that but then there’s the harsh realities of the real world. How do you prevent the harsh realities of the real world from, I don’t know, taking over your psyche to the point where you can enjoy, because there was the original reason you wanted to do what you wanted to do, there’s the original spark?
Okay, I understand. Yeah, that was a tough one, for sure. I felt like I was becoming a bad person. When I had over $6,600 in invoices unpaid, I was having to go to the bank and talk to the bank about what I was going to do. Why? I’m not a bad business owner, I’m not mean to anybody, I’m not rude to anybody. It’s because people aren’t doing what they told me they were going to do. It doesn’t seem fair. It’s like I did feel I was getting angry and getting upset and stuff like that and I wasn’t happy with my business anymore and I was ready to walk away from my business because, I don’t know, I never thought like these people aren’t paying me because my product isn’t up to par for what their expectations were, I never thought that, but I think I worried about it. I always talked myself out of that. I knew that we were providing high quality products. But, at the same time, I don’t know, it’s just hard.
When all I did was edit and do sales and client facing stuff, it wasn’t good because I think you have to have a good balance. You can’t sacrifice more than the client is sacrificing. In a certain way, if they’re not paying for it, you have to stop doing the work. That’s what made me feel bad. I kept trying to be 100 percent, give my 100 percent when I didn’t feel like I was receiving 100 percent. So, now, I kind of just try to match that energy. If the client isn’t extremely passionate about it or able to pay on time, then I have to give them that type of energy too. You just have to be aware of the energy and kind of try to match it. And then also stay in alignment with things that remind you of who you are. I was getting pretty irritable and stuff like that.
So it seems to me it’s a lot about protecting your energy. And so do you have a way of leaning into the people who have the right energy for you? Is there people in your life you keep or is there a certain customer that you just always know, okay, at some point later on, this day may have sucked, this week may have sucked, this month may have sucked, but there’s this other thing in my life, there are these people I can always talk to, there are these customers and there’s this one job where I’m just in my zone, I’m doing exactly what I want to be doing and everything’s running smoothly and I’m so passionate and satisfied with what I’m putting out there.
Yeah, I think it’s good to like talk to my brother. Like I said, he’s really living the dream out there. He always reminds me who I am and what my business practices are and how I want to do business. But also another thing I like to do is look at my online presence, look at some of the things that people have said about me and stuff like that, and where my videos are being posted and then what their fans are saying about it. And I think that I have a big internet presence. So there’s a lot of stuff out there that makes me feel good. There’s not much bad about me out there. So that’s a testament to my success. When I question myself, I can look at those things and it’s like, no, that’s not what you are, no one said that so where are you getting that from?
Yeah. And I always wondered about, say, just people having some sort of like a book or a deck of cards or something where they like compile just encouraging things that people say about them. Like I’ve had a lot of people who I’ve interviewed on this podcast then later tell me, “Oh, I really enjoyed doing the interview, I really enjoy your style of interviewing, you’ve done a great job,” and I’m just wondering if it’s like worthwhile for people to take whatever the equivalent of that is and just like put it somewhere where they can always access it so that you have this book on your bookshelf and anytime you just need a little encouragement, you need a little reminder of what your worth or you really need a reminder that people really do value you, you can always pull that book out or pull out a deck of cards or even a set of text message notes or something and say, “Okay, this was a rough week but look what this person said about me in June and look what that person said about me in August.”
Yeah, totally. I would love that. I think that everyone needs that. But you also have like the LinkedIn recommendations and like the Google reviews and stuff so those — I have a lot of Google reviews, like that’s something that some of the companies that do better work than me don’t have so I think that, at the end of the day, it’s about how you’re treating people. And even when people don’t have the money to pay me, I don’t want to treat them bad or anything like that. And I think people remember that more. With me and my company, I think people just remember me and how I treated them or how Kel treated them or something like — the people that work with me are the same way. And it didn’t start out that way. But there’s hope that you can get there and just talking to your brother and talking to people. I had somebody who was kind of like a crook, that was trying to get over all people and I talked to my brother about it, he’s like, “That’s not who we are. We don’t do that. We don’t,” so it’s like, okay, well, that person is not on my team anymore. And it’s just stuff like that, just having the reminders around and everything.
Well, one of the problems that this is kind of a universal issue in the sense that if you put yourself out there in any capacity, it doesn’t have to be your own business, it can be just trying to create a new community or just trying to do a new endeavor, there’s always going to be some kind of a setback and there’s always going to be someone in your life that’s going to not want to see you get there, in a way, and there’s a complicated list of emotional, psychological reasons why people will do that and sometimes it’s out of character for that person too, like something was triggered into their head so, hopefully, we can all find a good way to kind of manage that, in a way, because I think it’d probably be different for everybody. How do you, in the moment, stay true to who you are, like what your brother is saying, “This is not who we are,” yelling back at them or someone gives you a bad review or someone yells at your business, yells like, “That place is overpriced,” or, “Your product was shitty,” and as the business owner, there’s nothing you can really do because yelling back at them is only going to make you seem worse, or responding to every negative review online and saying, “Well, no, that’s not actually what happened,” people are going to read that and they’re not really going to appreciate that, so what do you to stay levelheaded in those moments when you’re tempted to say, “You didn’t pay me, you can go fuck yourself”?
Okay, so one of the things that really keeps me sane is yoga. Another one is kind of just like some of the books and stuff that I read. I like to read a lot of Eckhart Tolle, Deepak Chopra, Matthew Kelly, Rhonda Byrne, things like that kind of just bring me back to who I am. Can I share something?
Go ahead.
Okay. There was a time, like my mom passed from COVID, it was in 2021, August 2021, and she was really honestly, truly the main thing that kept my business going. She was the person that kept me sane in all aspects of life. So, it was really difficult and weird just learning how to be on my own, because I thought I was alone. But then when I didn’t have it anymore, it was like, oh, that was huge. Every day. That was huge for me. Just talking on the phone with her and having those conversations and stuff. So, I kind of just like try to think about her and who she was because that’s who I am too and that’s probably the purest form of me because my mom really lived her truth. She didn’t go for these huge aspirations that she really pushed me in the direction of. I think that she saw those dreams and goals out for herself through me. So, in part, my mom is the reason why I started the business as well. She wanted to see big things for me, so whether I wanted to see big things for myself or not, I wanted to make her happy, so that was one of the driving factors, not in an unhealthy way or anything, just trying to honor your mother, just trying to make her happy and do what she wanted to see me do. I found that I did want to do big things and I did like being in those big cities and in those big spaces and with those big people and those big names and stuff like that. And that’s just something that kind of brings me to who I am, thinking about my mom and how my mom was and what my mom wanted for me, because, in many ways, it was what I wanted for myself as well but I couldn’t even see it. You know how moms can see who you really are, my mom could see I was dancing the Spice Girls in 1995, like I wanted to be that person. I wasn’t like her, she was very introverted, so, of course, she pushed me to do those things because I was capable of it and I didn’t even know that I was capable of it. So I try to remember that. My mom knew I was capable and she was right so that’s something to hold on to.
And it’s amazing to always go back and think about the level of support you got from your mom and your family, in general, it sounds like, to take on these big things and do these big things and one of the things I’m wondering is, as the business progresses, as you’ve had the clients you had, as you’ve kind of been through the ups and the downs and you’ve kind of gone through some bad outcomes, both with staffing and customers and managed to keep going, what’s the long-term impact that you’re hoping to have with continued work through Millennial Matrix Media?
I think that long-term impact goes back to my graduate research and like being able to sit down with those wrongfully convicted Marvin Anderson, Ronnie Long, Joyce Ann Brown, letting them tell their story, sitting with them and, I don’t know, maybe doing a mini doc or something like that, maybe doing more impactful work like Viceland or NPR or — I am a journalist, this is corporate, this is marketing, I would like to get more into the journalist aspect of video production that really helps the people tell their stories like that. I think that’s the end goal for me.
There’s still work to do there. I mean, people think it’s over, like we’ve made huge progress, but those people’s stories aren’t being told because they can probably barely even tell the story anymore. If you spent 46 years locked up, you might not want to talk about it. So, I don’t know, I want to find a way to do that, to help those stories be told. And whatever’s most comfortable for them.
You got to get to know somebody to find out if they have a story to tell. Click To TweetI think a big wakeup call for a lot of people, a lot of people I know, myself included, was Anthony Bourdain because, on the surface, it was like, okay, this guy gets to travel, he gets to eat all the interesting food he wants and so many people are aspiring to, dreaming of and will never get to the life that he got to and yet he was still, I mean, did what he did. I think one of the things people like to do is they like to look at someone’s situation and just take it like, okay, you have this level of wealth, you have this job title, you have this family and that should be enough for me to understand who someone is. It’s not it. You never know what’s going on beneath the surface and you never know until you actually stop and listen to someone’s story.
Yeah. There was another thing that we got to do for a woman, she had a celebration of life before passing, she has cancer, she’s on her way out, and we got to film that as well. They did a tree of life planting for her. So, yeah, there’s somethings that I do get to do and those are the ones that really keep me going, I think.
Wow. Some of this can get really powerful on this podcast but one of the things that I think really does help with a lot of people’s reputation is not to shy away from these potentially powerful and potentially emotional experiences because they are a part of life, the same way everything that you talked about, the ups and the downs that you’ve been through, are all a part of your business. So, if someone out here is listening and hearing about these ups and downs, what would you say is the best thing someone can do, kind of taking back from the earlier, naïve version of you to where you are now, to prepare for these ups and downs but prepare for it in a way that they’re going to still keep going and still pursue that thing that they’re really passionate about?
Just keep nurturing the real solid relationships in your life. Don’t forget about those solid relationships in an effort to gain some opportunity or some financial gain that’s there. It could be there and you can just leave it there sometimes and that’s something that a lot of us don’t know. We feel like we’re not being successful if we do say no. If something doesn’t align with us, if it just doesn’t feel right, if we’re uncomfortable, we’re supposed to push through that. I don’t think that’s right. I think that you need to be super hyperaware of those times and spend time thinking about them. So, you stay in contact with what you love, you stay in contact with who you love, the people that lift you up and stuff and then just being extremely aware of how that’s impacting you and your business and how that aligns with you.
That’s amazing advice and I really hope that everyone out there, as you’re thinking about what it is you want or trying to decide what it is that you want, that you keep that sense of self-worth and you keep those relationships that really matter and find a way to stay away from the people that are just going to drain you in one way, whether it be economically, spiritually, energetically, etc. Amber, thank you so much for joining us today on Action’s Antidotes, for telling us all about how we can build a good reputation and how we can persevere through oddities, tougher times because, well, if it was easy, everyone would do it, so whatever your drain is, if it was easy, it would already be done, and so, hopefully, you can persevere, as we all have to at some point in time and the overnight success is really someone that’s been working at it for a decade and so, hopefully, you stay on that path.
Yes. Thank you so much for having me.
And I’d like to thank everyone for listening and, hopefully, you get your inspiration and, hopefully, you have wonderful time with the rest of your day and, hopefully, you stay true to yourself as you go out there into the world.
Yeah, of course.
Some are hard to — you almost got to just put the camera there and let them do their thing because you don’t want to dictate it too much.
It’s hard because, sometimes, you have to be sensitive of where someone is and what someone is ready for and, sometimes, people are just not ready for a certain message or not ready to share a certain story. Do any of the events that you work now give you the opportunity for anything, similar kind of that nature, you talked about some of your clients that are coming up from nowhere and just trying to get a certain specific message out, is there a viable business in a lot of that stuff?
I don’t see so much of that with the marketing but I did get the opportunity to do a documentary called An Invisible Disease for one of the actors that I’ve worked with since she was 15, I think she’s 22 now, so we literally watched her grow up and this entire time, she had this autoimmune disease that nobody knew about and she was really pushing through that and it was impacting every aspect of her life. So when I found out, I did a documentary about the disease with her entire family. I interviewed her sister, her dad, her mom, let all of them talk about how it had impacted their lives because everyone was impacted, and so they had to pull her out of school and all the stuff. That was something that I actually got to do with that. I want to do more but there’s not many opportunities like that. And like I said, people hide that stuff. I had known her for years and I didn’t know how badly she was struggling. She had had near-death experiences and she’s the happiest, most giving person that you’ll ever meet. Sometimes, you don’t know.
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About Amber Wyatt
Denver journalist and video producer, Amber Wyatt, has traveled the globe investigating globalization and oppression in 23 countries. She is also the CEO of DTC marketing agency Millennial Matrix Media. Today we hear her insights on business, connection, and reputation.