Breaking Schemas – Détails, épisodes et analyse

It didn’t matter if Gary Schanman worked in the mailroom at MTV, he just wanted to be in the media industry. Gary’s career path may not have turned out exactly the way he pictured it as a 19-year-old advertising major, but one thing he knew for certain was that showing up and having confidence at work matters. 

Gary is now the Executive Vice President of Video Services at DISH TV and Sling TV. He’s spent more than 20 years in the media and telecommunications industry and has had a front row seat to some of the biggest media disruptions in recent history. 

Breaking Schemas co-host and Michigan Ross marketing professor John Branch sits down with Gary to chat about the invaluable lessons he learned on dealing with imposter syndrome, the power of an MBA for career pivots, and the importance of adaptability in the media industry.

*Breaking Schemas is a production of the Yaffe Digital Media Initiative at Michigan Ross and is produced by University FM.*

Episode Quotes:

Consulting for big companies takes fortitude and confidence. 

08:37: You, kind of, have to fake it until you make it a little bit, but not think it sounds wrong. What you have to do is realize that you're just as smart as anyone else in the room. You can use deductive reasoning. You could use inductive analysis. You can do a number of things to say, this is what I think the best bet is and then be comfortable with the fact that it may not be right, but it's smart and thoughtful.

The key to entrepreneurial success.

15:33: It's funny how agility sometimes is the key to entrepreneurial success. It's not the original idea, it's the ability to pivot when you have that aha moment. I remember working with a company which manufactured one of the most boring products you could imagine, very large brake components for trains and tractor trailer trucks, right? And it was a German company which installed software to collect data from the braking systems in order to improve the quality of the braking systems. And then one day, light bulb moment, they realized that this data we're actually more valuable to fleet managers and safety managers at large companies because the data told these folks not about the quality of the brakes, but about the driving habits. 

What’s next on the horizon of media disruption?

20:13 The future is really this race for aggregation. It's the best of times in the worst of times, all the choices in the world. You can't even keep up with the quality of peak streaming, of the quality of content out there. TV shows are better than movies, but it's very hard to manage it. It's actually becoming very expensive now because each company, because they're all trying to do it on their own, all have these, the equivalent cost structures, because no one can actually lean on each other for what's best. And so, there's going to be this reworking, which is there's going to be massive consolidation because individual media companies can't compete because they need scale. It's going to be a massive race for re-aggregation. Find a single place where I can get everything I want that's going to require data sharing, which no one wants to give up. It's going to require ego, put in a way, because media is a very ego-driven business and a prideful business. And it's going to require a re-establishment, in my view, as a biased distributor, re-establishment of the partnerships that made the business strong in the first place.

Show Links:

• Professional Profile at Dish

From a young age while growing up in Jamaica, Knox Cameron knew he wanted to be a professional soccer player. In order to make that dream come true, he knew it was all about having the right mindset. 

Knox went on to become one of the top players for the University of Michigan when the program was just getting off the ground. He set the bar for the level of excellence expected on the team, and it’s what propelled him into the MLS. After a shining career in professional soccer, Knox pivoted and set his mind to a new task: being an all-star player in the energy sector for DTE. 

Knox joins Breaking Schemas co-host John Branch to chat about his soccer career at the collegiate and professional levels, the startup-like environment of the MLS, and how he’s brought that entrepreneurial spirit to the energy world with renewable programs like MIGreenPower.

*Breaking Schemas is a production of the Yaffe Digital Media Initiative at Michigan Ross and is produced by University FM.*

Show Links:

• Knox Cameron on LinkedIn
• Knox Cameron’s University of Michigan soccer profile
• DTE’s MIGreenPower

Episode Quotes:

Knox’s first leap toward breaking the mold.

[03:49] I was a highly recruited athlete coming out of high school. I could have attended one of a number of great soccer institutions and programs and continued with their legacy, and so on and so forth. But for me, it was an interesting opportunity to be able to lead a startup essentially, right? It was a startup organization that was labeled a men's soccer team, but we had the backing. So, you could think about your VCs in some capacity. That, to me, is the background, that is, the institution. That is the University of Michigan. So, I knew I had the comfort, the network, the community of Michigan behind me, but also knew I had this incredible opportunity and responsibility to set a pathway that was brand new.

Innovating business models in the electricity industry through MIGreen Power.

The program was launched because DTE, we knew, one, we need to construct renewable energy to support this clean energy transformation in time. But the program is interesting in that you can go to private subscribers who want these renewable energy attributes and we'll pay for it separate and aside from the utilities broader general rate base of customers. So, it introduces an incredible value proposition in that you can develop, construct, help the utilities earnings profile, which helps all of its investors, and that's a beautiful thing. You can help the end-use customer who wants these environmental attributes, and while doing so, you can help your affordability benefits to your non-subscribing customers.

Kicking off a new career: From all-star player on the field to all-star player in the energy sector.

[18:08]: As I completed my undergraduate degree and then pursued the career, Energy and the Utilities came to mind. DTE provided me an opportunity to learn and grow fundamentally, and I've spent the greater part of 15 years on developing my career, learning the industry, and serving at a company that has been around for hundreds of years, over 150 years, in fact. So, I think we certainly checked the box there from a safety and security perspective. I then sort of had the same set of mindset and pursuits as when I was actually on the field. Hey, what does it take to be a first-team performer now in the energy and utility sector? What does it mean to be the Big Ten Player of the Year? What does a first-team all-American performer look like? And then, what is a failed professional soccer career and all of the learnings? How do you put that also into the mix to deliver on what it is that you're doing today? That's the mindset, John, as I think about the work at DTE. 

If you ask entrepreneur and former NFL player Dhani Jones what he does for a living, he’ll say he reads the Matrix. His insatiable curiosity and experience in a vast array of worlds has made him a conduit of information. 

Whether it’s through his investments, his TV shows, or his consulting work – Dhani likes to help people make sense of the world with his unique perspective. A perspective that is deeply rooted in his love for football. 

Dhani joins Breaking Schemas hosts Marcus Collins and John Branch to chat about his path from the University of Michigan to entrepreneurship and strategic advising, how football has helped shape that journey, and why he believes the key to success is saying yes. 

*Breaking Schemas is a production of the Yaffe Digital Media Initiative at Michigan Ross and is produced by University FM.*

Episode Quotes:

Disruption occurs when you take chances

13:25: People always say, when you're young, you think you're blazing the trail; you're older. You look back, and you realize it's just a beaten path. I understand that quote too, but there's a couple of paths that are a little bit less beaten. So you have to be able to move downhill, take your chances, and take a shot. And sometimes, the more experiences that you have, the more times you've had to fall down. But that also means that you have an opportunity to understand what it's like to get up.

An advice for folks who want to disrupt their career and category

24:34: If you want to disrupt the category that you're in, you can't do what everybody else is doing. I think that's pretty simple, but the challenge with that is that you have to be willing to accept the consequences of going about things differently. And so that's two. And then the third thing is that you have to understand what your risk tolerance is.

The faster the game goes the slower the thought process is 

21:46: The biggest jump that people have when they go from high school to college and college to pros is the speed of the game. And that's because everybody is all of a sudden amped up their processing speed, right? If you think about the iPhone number one versus iPhone number 3000 that we're on right now, the processing speed has increased; therefore, you're able to do more things much more quickly, right? Same thing in sports, but that's also the same thing in saying yes. You have to be able to delineate between whatever that yes is and the yes that will be. And be able to decide, based upon previous experience and being able to process that much more quickly, where you should focus your yes on or your next yes to be.

Show Links:

• “Dhani Tackles the Globe” TV series
• Dhani’s LinkedIn

Most business leaders with good sense would say starting a for-profit company and a nonprofit company at the same time is not going to be a successful business venture. You need to make the money first and then invest in the nonprofit later. But that’s exactly what David Merritt, former University of Michigan point guard, did.

David was so invested in the mission of his company, Merit Goodness, he was determined to find a way to make his fashion brand work just enough to simultaneously fund his after-school college planning program for Detroit youth. Since starting the company 12 years ago, they’ve helped hundreds of students graduate high school and go on to college with the resources they need to succeed for the rest of their lives. 

David tells Breaking Schemas co-hosts Marcus Collins and John Branch that the key ingredient to Merit Goodness is all about shifting perspective on what success means. 

*Breaking Schemas is a production of the Yaffe Digital Media Initiative at Michigan Ross and is produced by University FM.*

Episode Quotes:

What is Merit Goodness?

17:00: We use Merit in a number of ways. It's the clothing, but it's also the platform where young people can discover their passions, create their own future, and start to build their skills in entrepreneurship, marketing, product design, and design thinking. And so, it's a holistic approach that we believe in, helping young people aspire, believe, and contribute.

Going beyond the typical: Innovation and creativity for non-profit

08:23: We are not a typical non-profit. So, when you think about our program, we want to think outside the box. We want to think: let's create something that hasn't been created before. How can we take elements of things that have been created and take our own spin on it? When it comes to our marketing and our videos, we don't really want to be seen in the same way as the typical non-profit sort of industry. We do like kind of mirroring both of those elements where we're taking things that are happening in business and taking things that are happening in technology, and how do we merge that mindset and expose our kids to that mindset as well.

Embracing the mission beyond success
23:11: It is really the mission that drives what we do. We have not been able to create a successful fashion company; that hasn't happened. So, he's exactly right. We've done 12 years of it. But the difference is that I'm not going anywhere. So, if it takes me 40 years to figure out how to make both of them work, I've got 40 years of time, right? Because I'm so tied to the mission and so tied to what we're doing. Whereas in business, a lot of times, you just don't have that luxury to be at a place long enough to really care about what should be cared about.

Show Links:

• Merit Goodness
• David’s LinkedIn 

What happens when you combine a business degree, a passion for hip hop, and an expert lens on pop culture? Disruptive magic. 

Music journalist Sowmya Krishnamurthy is the author of Fashion Killa: How Hip-Hop Revolutionized High Fashion. After earning her business degree at Michigan Ross, she moved to New York but wasn’t looking for a typical finance job that many in her cohort were after. She was there for the music. 

Sowmya joins Breaking Schemas hosts Marcus Collins and John Branch to chat about the years she spent paying her dues in mailrooms and interviewing stars like J. Cole and Travis Scott before they were huge, the importance of finding your authentic personal brand, and how to leverage a bricolage kind of disruption. 

*Breaking Schemas is a production of the Yaffe Digital Media Initiative at Michigan Ross and is produced by University FM.*

Episode Quotes:

Be yourself in the face of adversity and differences

17:00: I do think that for someone like myself and for anybody who is like an immigrant or who grows up in a place where you might not fit in for a variety of reasons, you can either lean into what makes you special or you can try to fit in. And I've always just believed in it. Be yourself. Whatever that is, it is special and unique, and nobody could be like that before.

Yourself as your personal brand

20:46: In hip hop, a lot of people have street names or nicknames that people have called you, and I was like, no, no, no. This is the brand. I need people to know where I come from— I need people to know that I come from another country. That was important to me, even as a kid. I don't want to come in calling myself something else because that's part of what makes me unique. And in the marketplace, there are people who gravitate towards me specifically because they know that's what I represent.

Unlocking your potential in a multi-passionate world

30:08: Nowadays, there are so many more opportunities to be a multi-hyphenate. Try things out. I've tried some things, and it's not a fit. I've been to auditions; I've done pilots that went nowhere and never got picked up. They will never see the light of day, but all of those experiences are just bricks in your story.

Show Links:

• Fashion Killa book
• Sowmya’s website

The relationships you build on your career journey can play a crucial role in your success. Whether it’s with mentors, peers in your industry, colleagues, clients, or all of the above – networking is key. 

But what does cultivating and leveraging those relationships look like in action? 

Larry Brinker, Jr. is the CEO of Brinker – a family-owned construction company in Detroit, Mich. that builds communities through projects like hospitals, corporate headquarters, sports facilities, stadiums, and arenas. 

Breaking Schemas co-host Marcus Collins chats with Brinker about his decision to start at the bottom of his father’s company and work his way up to CEO, the mentors he had along the way, and how his industry of commercial construction is evolving in the digital age. 

*Breaking Schemas is a production of the Yaffe Digital Media Initiative at Michigan Ross and is produced by University FM.*

Episode Quotes:

Opportunity doesn’t always equate to success

33:04: Opportunity is a window of time that you have to take advantage of, and then when you walk through that window or climb through that window, you have to work incredibly hard to obtain that success. Just because you get the opportunity doesn't automatically equate to success.

The power of exposure and networking

24:01: What I tell every student. I tell anybody entering the workforce that the two most important things in your career are exposure and networking personally. And if you can be exposed, create these visions for yourself or your company that turn into goals that you can reach. The sky is truly the limit, but if you don't know that it's out there, it's hard for you to set those goals, right? It's hard for you to reach that point. So it's all about networking and exposure.

How did Larry incorporate the things he learned in his music business career into his asset management construction career?

24:54: One of my probably greatest gifts that I've been blessed with is the ability to understand people, understand personalities, and connect. A lot of that came from those days of the music and club business because that's what it is. It's all about those connections. It's about understanding the vibration of a person, right? In terms of like, you have to know what fuels a person to be able to also push them to run through a wall for you.

Show Links:

• Brinker Group
• Larry’s professional website

In 2018, dancer, marketer, and nonprofit founder Grace French did one of the most courageous things a person can do. She came forward and reported the abuse she had endured as a child at the hands of an infamous USA Gymnastics and Michigan State University doctor. 

But that was just the beginning of her work that’s been shaped by courage. Grace went on to found the nonprofit organization, Army of Survivors, with a mission to bring awareness, accountability, and transparency to sexual violence against athletes.

She chats with Breaking Schemas co-hosts Marcus Collins and John Branch about the impact Army of Survivors is having around the world, how she’s applied her marketing education and background to the nonprofit world, and why she believes courage is contagious. 

*Breaking Schemas is a production of the Yaffe Digital Media Initiative at Michigan Ross and is produced by University FM.*

Episode Quotes:

Measuring the impact of efforts to break the culture of silence in sports, addressing sexual violence and abuse

17:35: Impact for us is something that we're consistently trying to measure because it's so hard to say. You know, this did this because it's a long-term problem. That said, I think some of the things that I am most proud of that made a huge impact is we've worked with the International Olympic Committee to create a curriculum for welfare officers. Globally, we have over 30 countries who have taken the course that allowed us to tell them what trauma looks like to an athlete, how to be trauma-informed in what they do, and how to respond to somebody if they do come to you about abuse.

On running your own race

16:52: It's important to understand that your blinders are on; really, it's not just about you and what makes you happy and what brings you joy, but also what fulfills you and how you can find the right career for you. Rather than thinking about, this is what I should be doing.

Be courageous in everything you do

25:42: Courage is contagious. So the courage that you have, and hopefully the courage that I have had, is contagious. And make sure you're leaning into that. Make sure you're finding ways to be courageous in your career, in your group projects, and in the ways that you move in the world so that you can continue to make an impact.

Show Links:

• Army of Survivors 

How do you get to be the second most subscribed YouTube channel of all time with a viewer count larger than some countries? By being bad at it for a long time. 

Marc Hustvedt is the President of MrBeast, a YouTube channel created by Jimmy Donaldson – who Hustvedt calls the “Kobe Bryant of YouTube.” But before the MrBeast team was racking up over 220 million subscribers, it was a lot of shooting free throws and hoping for the best. 

Hustvedt took his Michigan Ross education to Hollywood when the YouTube craze was just starting to bubble up. He’s watched an industry take shape over the years and has disrupted and revolutionized how content is created. 

He joins Breaking Schemas hosts Marcus Collins and John Branch to chat about the early years of YouTube and digital first content, MrBeast’s meteoric rise to superstardom, and why the secret to success may be failing a lot first. 

*Breaking Schemas is a production of the Yaffe Digital Media Initiative at Michigan Ross and is produced by University FM.*

Episode Quotes:

Content is a fundamental building block of business

29:56: If you press me, I could find ways in which content is going to impact every single industry. Don't look at it as something to dismiss and say, "Oh, that's just what the kids do." Or, "that's just what YouTubers do or influencers do." It's a fundamental building block of business.

Marc's advice for industry disruptors

28:56: Study content, how it's made, how it's distributed, and obsess over what's the best content that is on the internet, and I mean that not because everybody has to work on YouTube. I think it's disrupting way more than the media now. We've seen it.

Why start creating content now?

25:42: This wasn't a linear journey in this industry. In fact, I'd argue the time is actually really good for anybody now to jump in because a lot of the hard work has been to get advertisers more comfortable to creatively partner on content and allow creative control of the creators in ways they would have never been comfortable before. The entire streaming and TV industry is desperate to figure out how we can tap into some of that magic because they don't have that monopoly over attention due to fixed distribution channels. It's easier in some ways now.

Show Links:

• MrBeast YouTube channel
• Marc’s LinkedIn

The first step in breaking from the pack and disrupting the status quo is having the agency to do so. 

Mike Muse has made a career of doing just that at the intersection of politics and pop culture. He’s the co-founder of the record label, Muse Recordings, the founder and CEO of LawChamps, a TV personality and ABC News correspondent, and the host of the Mike Muse Show on Sirius Radio. 

Breaking Schemas hosts Marcus Collins and John Branch chat with Muse about his unique and accessible approach to talking about policy, how he ended up at the intersection of politics and pop culture, and why “find your passion” was the worst advice he ever got. 

*Breaking Schemas is a production of the Yaffe Digital Media Initiative at Michigan Ross and is produced by University FM.*

Episode Quotes:

On the idea of knowing your audience

18:45: For me, it's all about knowing your audience and knowing who this audience is and how I can deliver the same message that will gravitate towards them, but without changing anything. I'm very anti-that narrative of dumbing things down or making things overly simplified. I don't do that. I always believe that the audience can rise to the occasion. It's just a matter of the particular word choice. How do you say it?

On thesis of intersection the muse

2:46: I believe that many individuals don't participate in our democracy because they don't feel they have a place in it. They don't feel like they have a voice. They always believe that it's for them, those, and others who work for some fancy law firm, possibly work on Wall Street, or work in academia. And so they feel like it's for them. But what I love about having the conversation is to introduce them to how policy is really the agitator of everything that they love.

Following your curiosity beats following your passion

34:02: If you just give me politics, I'm not going to be happy. I'm not going to enjoy it. If you just give me culture, I'm not going to enjoy it. I'm not going to be happy. I have to be intersecting at the same time in order to make me happy. And so from there, that is how I found my passion. But it was really just following my curiosity. And I feel like we don't tell our students, our youth, and our children; just follow your curiosity, and eventually you'll find the thing that works for you.

Show Links:

• Mike’s website
• LawChamps

The only constant in life is change. In some instances, this change is evolutionary, with incremental, almost undetectable steps. But oftentimes, change is revolutionary, causing disruption of the status quo, and those who are able to navigate these changes typically win, while those who are unprepared and unaware, well, they typically don't fare so well. And that's why we created this podcast, Breaking Schemes—to talk with change makers, category challengers, and idea generators who have not only navigated change but, in many ways, have rewritten the rules of the game. Now, in each episode, we'll uncover the decisions they made along their journey to catapult them to the status of disruptor and create tailwinds that propel the success of their career. We'll discuss decisions that they made, their victories, their failures—because we all have failures, the people that helped them along the way, and some of the biggest lessons they learned that got them to where they are today to help prepare future business leaders for tomorrow. I'll be your host, Marcus Collins, Marketing Professor here at the Ross School of the Business University of Michigan, along with my co-conspirator, Professor John Branch. Tune in to see what's next.