Ryan Millsap Talks Money with City National's Star - Josh Harris, VP of Entertainment - PART 1

Ryan Millsap, Chairman & CEO of Atlanta-based Blackhall Studios, is one of today’s top entertainment executives! With a vision for Blackhall that’s ambitious, energizing, and boundless, Millsap is blazing a trail through the heart of the South – and setting his sights on the future of entertainment. Listen and learn as Ryan Millsap journeys through the myriad industries, people, and landscapes that traverse the complex and dynamic world of film production.

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Ryan: Welcome to the Blackhall Studios Podcast. We here at the podcast are just as happy as you are that 2020 is in the rearview mirror. The studio was a ghost town for six months, and I'm happy to say we're filming multiple projects now. Along the way, we had to re-engineer our entire HVAC system to provide for the safety of our movie crews. Yeah, I'm looking forward to 2021 bringing us all a little more prosperity. We begin our second year of this podcast, and I'm as excited today as I was in the beginning. Thank you for listening in, and know that we definitely appreciate you being here with us.

On the podcast today, I have Atlanta money-man Josh Harris. Josh is a finance executive with over two decades of experience in film production and project finance. As senior vice president of City National Bank's entertainment banking team, Harris is an expert in financial services for the entertainment, commercial, and middle market companies in the region, as well as high-net-worth entrepreneurs. With a focus in studio, television, film, and music production. Harris is a rising star in the entertainment industry in Atlanta, and is a strong advocate for building a sustainable, entertainment-friendly ecosystem throughout Georgia. We'll dig deeper into that, and we'll talk about the pinnacle driver for anyone with a passion for working in the entertainment business: money. Listen up for a cool conversation with Josh Harris.

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Ryan: Hi, this is Ryan Millsap. Welcome to the Blackhall Studios Podcast. Today on the podcast, we have Josh Harris, who is the senior vice president at City National Bank. Josh, welcome to the program.

Josh: Thank you, Ryan. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Ryan: What did you guys do during the ‘stay at home’ part of the pandemic? Were you just hanging out, doing nothing too?

Josh: I wish that was the case, but I'll tell you: we actually had our hands full. We were busier during the whole shutdown than we are not shut down. And the reason for that is very clear and very easy to understand. It's PPP. So, as you know, the entertainment industry was adversely affected by the pandemic and the shutdown. And almost all of our portfolio consists of the entertainment industry here in Atlanta, specifically.

So, we were kicking out hundreds of PPP loan applications, trying to get the PPP loan process done for our clientele. We were working nonstop, around the clock. A whole team of us here in Atlanta – all focused on the effort of getting PPP loans out to our clients.

Ryan: Now, were those going to just operating companies, or were entertainment productions actually getting PPP?

Josh: Yeah. So, production companies; all of the ancillary businesses that touch entertainment. Really, it didn't have to be entertainment only to apply for PPP. It's all companies across the footprint that were eligible. As long as you have a payroll, you're eligible for the PPP process.

We were very focused on getting out the money as quickly as we can. And the first round of PPP – we're now neck-deep in round two, as you know. So, it's been an interesting couple of weeks for us, after the SBA approved round two. But during the pandemic shutdown, specifically, we were very focused on getting applications in as fast as possible, because we were very concerned that the money would run out, as you know. And it did. So, we were working diligently to make sure all of our clients across the board – not just the entertainment clients, but also the commercial clients and other clients that we work with here in Atlanta – making sure that they can take advantage of the program.

Ryan: Well, those of you that are listening that are in the entertainment industry already know City National is one of the biggest players in the space, if not the biggest. I think you said earlier that you guys are the Bank of Hollywood and Broadway.

Josh: Yes. We have earned a couple of different reputations in our tenure here. Bank of the Stars, Bank of Hollywood, Bank of Broadway. ‘Bank of Entertainment’ is the most recent one that I've heard out there. So, it's synonymous, really, with the entertainment brand. Our company, 65 years ago, was founded for the purpose of helping this industry and entrepreneurs. And, to this day – fast forward 65 years later – we're still out there doing that in a very big way.

Ryan: What areas do you finance in the entertainment industry? Walk me through a little bit on the production side, or on the operating side. What does that look like?

Josh: It covers everything, Ryan. And I know that's a vague and general answer, but really, our production services out in LA can do anything from film finance to production accounts, and so on and so forth. All the way to here locally, where we're handling a lot of the production accounts for productions that come into Atlanta and need to set up wire accounts, and all these different ancillary accounts that are needed during production. We handle all of that.

We handle a lot of the major talent agencies out in LA – and here in Atlanta as well; the big one here in Atlanta being one of our clients. We handle a lot of their talent, so it's not just the commercial and production level. It's drilled down all the way into the local individual level. The talent often banks with us, and we'll handle their personal and business banking needs.

And then, also within the entertainment umbrella, there's all of the different financial options for borrowing money. So, like I said, the film finance piece – which is handled mostly in LA. But also all these ancillary companies; the movie studios like yours, and others in the city that have borrowing needs. We're out there addressing those needs as well.

Ryan: Do you guys loan on equipment?

Josh: We do. Yeah, we have equipment services. We are partnered with a company called First American, which has a huge entertainment division based out of Manhattan. And we do all kinds of great production equipment. I actually just did one for our local production house here in Midtown. I looked them up what's called a guidance facility, Ryan.

So, basically, anytime they want to go out and buy a piece of equipment for production, they don't have to prescreen that through me anymore. They have what's called this guidance facility. It's kind of like a blanket line of credit. They go out and give me the invoice, and we cut them a check. It's pretty easy.

Ryan: Let's talk about that after this.

Josh: Yeah, I'm sure there's some need there.

Ryan: We're growing like crazy. I mean, as you probably have seen post September, right? August kind of got started a little bit, but then September, everything took off and hasn't really looked back. And the entertainment industry all across the English-speaking world is ripping. Absolutely ripping.

Josh: We're very fortunate to be in what I would call the heyday of content creation, and really focused here in Atlanta in a very big way. Lots of new content creators are flocking to the city to do their projects – not just for the tax credit reasons, but also the infrastructure, the workforce development, which we'll talk about – all of these different things that Georgia brings to the table that other geographies just don't offer, and we do here. So, we’re very supportive of that of that piece of it. And City National is at the forefront of offering the services financially to those companies and those individuals who are flocking to our city to be part of this great ecosystem.

Ryan: Did you grow up in LA?

Josh: I did not. I'm from Georgia.

Ryan: Oh, you grew up in Georgia?

Josh: Yes. Everybody always asks me, “Are you from LA?” And I always say, “You can't tell from the accent?” I guess I've maybe lost a little bit of the accent, but I am from the Deep South, as far south as you can get in Georgia.

Ryan: You definitely have lost that accent.

Josh: Okay, good.

Ryan: We have to remember; Californians have such a flat accent, nondescript. And then there's people from all over the country. They end up in LA, and they start to flatten their accents. And so, then, the same thing happens to Californians. I'm a Californian, right? People from California would recognize my accent. But then, I've lived in the South now for seven years, and every once in a while, I'll catch myself. “Wait. I think that sounded kind of Southern, right?”

Josh: I'm kind of like Johnny Depp or Madonna. I take on the accent of where I'm at at the time. So, if I go to UK and spend a little bit of time, I'm going to come out speaking British. It’s just inevitable, you know?

Ryan: Yeah, well, you absorb who you're around. So then, did you leave Georgia for college?

Josh: I stayed in Georgia. I've been in Atlanta, really, my entire life; the metro area, most of my life. I moved away twice – once with our parent company. City National is owned by the Royal Bank of Canada. And I have a deep, rich history with RBC. I moved away once with them to North Carolina, where, once upon a time, that's where their domestic headquarters was located. Now, of course, their domestic headquarters is in Los Angeles, where City National is based.

But I did move to North Carolina one time. My wife hated it. She was like, “This is too, kind of, slow for us.” We've been big city people for a while, so we ended up moving back to Georgia, and then I moved. I had kind of a wild-hair in me, and I moved to Hawaii for a while. I worked as a senior credit officer at the Bank of Hawaii, over their commercial credit division.

Ryan: Well, that's really slow. That's island time.

Josh: Yeah, right. I said, “I've always wanted to live in a place like Hawaii.” And it was the weirdest time of my life to do it, because I just had a newborn baby. She was born here in Atlanta. She's an actress, by the way. She's ten now. So, that tells you how long ago this was.

But we had a three-month-old baby. And I tell my wife, “Hey, I've accepted this executive role for the Bank of Hawaii, and we're moving in Honolulu.” Most people, you’d think, would be like, “Awesome. It's a paradise.” My wife is like, “Okay, where's my support system?” And rightfully so. She had just left her job of being a full-time, brilliant banker in capital markets herself. And now she's a full-time stay at home mom with a brand-new baby and no support structure, in the most isolated large metropolitan area in the world, which is Honolulu.

And so, it was a lot. But we stayed for a little over a year until... I love telling this story. I came home from a business trip one time, and we had a beautiful condo – a modern condo, right on the Pacific Ocean. I thought I had set this family up for life, right? I come home from a business trip. My wife is standing in the kitchen with our baby in her arm and her suitcase in the other room. She says, “Honey, we're moving back to Atlanta. You can come, or you can stay. We don't care, but we're going home.”

Ryan: Wow.

Josh: I said, “Okay, sweetie, give me a just a few weeks to tie things up, and we'll be back.” So we did.

Ryan: She’s like, “I'll see you in a few weeks. Our plane leaves in three hours.”

Josh: She's like, “You don't have three weeks, but okay.” So, yeah – we moved back to Georgia. But to answer your question, Ryan, I'm about as native as they come here.

Ryan: So, how did you find your way through the finance world into entertainment?

Josh: What I think is an inevitable push in this direction for me – it's funny. I've grown up close to this industry; the entertainment industry. Not intentionally so. It’s a funny backstory here. Coincidentally, the church that I grew up in, was baptized in, and my family still attends, is known as the ‘Movie Church.’ And so, for a long time...

Ryan: Which church is that?

Josh: It's Sherwood, down in Albany, Georgia. They've put together a slate of projects over the last ten years. They've grossed over 100 million domestic box office in those films.

Ryan: Amazing.

Josh: Yeah. We're talking a low seven-figure budget, all in, for all five pictures. So, it's just an amazing thing, what they've done. And the Kendrick brothers are to be commended for turning around that city in a way that wouldn't have happened without film. So, I'm glad that you brought that up, because it's a perfect example of what this industry can do for even a small community like Albany, and a church.

But to answer your question, the point is, I've kind of grown up near the industry, but not directly related to the industry. And all the way to when I moved to Atlanta, I had some friends that were in the music industry, and there were some connections there. Then, my next door neighbor was on a reality TV show for many years. It just really was indirectly knocking on my door without me even realizing it.

Well, fast forward, I guess, about 15 years into my banking career – and I'm 22 years now in banking, if you can believe that. So, 15 years or so into the banking career, I start to get calls about movie studios popping up. And I was very much a commercial real estate guy, as you're very familiar with. And I started getting deals sent to me about, “Can you build a soundstage? Can you do this? Can you do that?” To me, it was very real-estate-centric. It didn't feel like rocket science. It was just a matter of understanding the dynamics of it. Right?

Ryan: That’s the truth. That's the ‘picks and shovels’ side of the business.

Josh: It is. It really is. And I think that's where people kind of get lost in it – they don't follow through to understand the intricacies of it. And so, there's this perception that it's more difficult to obtain than it is. But, if you push through it, and you really kind of try to understand the dynamics of it and the cash flow of it, then it makes sense on paper – and it's real estate, right? So, at the end of the day, it's a very secure form of collateral, as you know, Ryan.

And so, yeah – I did a couple of those transactions, and before you knew it, I was getting calls about other movie studios in town, and then just the circle of... Again, it kind of falls back into that inevitability. It's the circle of people that I was surrounding myself with, really growing up in the commercial real estate area in Atlanta, and the private wealth space in Atlanta. Growing up, I say, in my career, is what I mean. It was inevitable that these are the players here, right? This is the industry here. You and I have talked about this before on a panel we sat on, gosh, maybe 2 or 3 years ago. And the industry here looks very different than the industry, say, in Los Angeles, or New York, or wherever – because here, it's people like you and I. It's people who maybe have not grown up in the space, and didn't have a purpose-built career path in the space. But we found ourselves in the right place at the right time, doing the right things and saying the right things.

And now, fast forward seven, eight years later; ten years later, and some of us, even longer – we are now the authority. We are now the resources here in Georgia that are so important to creating this ecosystem that’s supportive of each other. And so, me in a nutshell is, it was an unintentional move, Ryan. I never said, “Hey, I want to grow up to be an entertainment banker.” That was never on the radar. But when you start doing a couple of deals, and you know the right people, and there's inevitability about it, and you naturally have relationships in that space? It creates and nurtures this interest; fosters this interest. And I have to tell you – entertainment banking is much sexier than commercial real estate.

Ryan: Well, building a movie studio is much sexier than lots of apartments, too. But it's the same thing, really. It's just, if you're not on the inside of that, it sounds a lot sexier.

Josh: Yeah, exactly. And, you know, for me, at the end of the day, it was really more of a calling than it was an intent. That's probably not what most people want to hear from an entertainment banker. They want to say, “This is your life. This is your mission in life.” But really...

Ryan: Bankers can bank anything.

Josh: Yeah. It's such a transferable skill set, Ryan. It's all about relationship building, and that's what we're very focused on at City National – understanding the dynamics of a relationship. First and foremost, it's a people business. People bank people.

Ryan: People with good credit.

Josh: Exactly. That helps. It certainly does help.

Ryan: It's a relational business for those that have good credit.