Adult Site Broker Talk Episode 35 with Tim Valenti of Naked Sword

0 (8s):
This is Bruce Friedman of Adult Site Broker, and welcome to Adult Site Broker Talk, where every week we interview one of the movers and shakers of the adult industry, and we discuss what's going on in our business. Plus we give you a tip on buying and selling websites. This week we'll be talking to Tim Valenti of Naked Sword and Falcon Studio Group.

1 (35s):
Adult Site Broker is proud to announce ASB Cash, the first affiliate program for an adult website brokerage. With ASB cash you'll have the chance to earn as much as 20% of our broker commission referring sellers and buyers to us at Adult Site Broker. Check our website at asbcash dot com. For more details. First of all, today let's cover some of the news going on in our industry, in what several adult industry figures and sex worker advocates are calling an apparent ongoing crackdown on sex related accounts on Twitter this past weekend, the social network suspended the accounts of two prominent adult platforms, fans, Centro, and clips for sale attempts to access their Twitter accounts lead to blank pages that read account suspended followed by a statement that I quote Twitter suspends accounts, which violate the Twitter rules.

1 (1m 33s):
The suspensions have generated a wave of fear among the sex worker community on Twitter, which relies on the platform for promotional purposes and to communicate with each other. Unlike Facebook and Instagram, Twitter tolerated adult content, although it has a documented history of shadow, banning sex related accounts were incredibly frustrated by Twitter's increasingly arbitrary removal of adult content models. Centro's cat said we've had no communication at all from Twitter. They provided no warning, nor did they give us any reason why the accounts were shut down. There's no way to appeal, restart the accounts or even know what others can do to prevent this.

1 (2m 18s):
She added that this should frighten everyone and adult, no matter what the platform we've erred on the side of caution with our social media content, these accounts were used to communicate with models and to promote their work. As with most corporate censorship measures against the adult industry, companies were Vanga pointed out. The real victims are the models and sex workers. The people most affected by this are those who use our platforms to build business and communicate with fans. It's not fair to our industry, and it's certainly not fair to sex workers, Utah politicians continue their periodic attempts to pass hard to enforce state bills, allegedly to protect from a made up public health crises around porn with a new bill introduced to the legislature this week requiring new electronic devices to have porn filters turned on by default.

1 (3m 12s):
The most recent example of Utah politicians single-minded obsession with pornography comes courtesy of representative Susan Pulsifer her house bill 72 mandating porn filters would go do effect in 2022. The local CBS affiliate reported adding that international manufacturers of phones and computers like Apple or Google may face civil liability. If they don't comply. If a user does not want the filter, they would need to turn it off manually. You tell legislators spend much time in the Western States, limited resources, introducing debating and occasionally passing bills to crying the scores of pornography.

1 (3m 55s):
Last year, the legislature passed a bill mandating that all adult content on the internet carry a specific warning label under penalty of state fines. This theatrical almost impossible to enforce bill was not signed by governor Herbert who let it die by exercising his pocket. VI Vito prerogative. Herbert showed some practical restraint in contrast with his 2016 signing of resolution by drafted by religious anti-porn group morality in media declaring the existence of a dubious public health crisis around porn and recommended that public health resources be spent training healthcare workers on how to combat it represented a pulse suffers original draft of the bill she introduced had been criticized by other state lawmakers back in October, her proposal to require smartphones and computers to have pre-installed porn blocking software, and to have an activated as a, as the default auction, when sold to Utahns was squashed during a committee hearing at the state's business and labor interim committee, according to a report by desert news.

1 (5m 6s):
At the time Pulsifer said the goal of our effort was to create another wall of defense to help protect children from the damaging impact of pornography and empower parents and legal guardians to limit a miner's exposure to such online harmful material, several members of the Utah business and labor interim committee noted that it would be extremely difficult to identify which entity in the consumer electronic supply chain should be held liable for ensuring that software was activated theater, Wilfred guy, one of two girls do porn cameraman accused by the FBI and their probe of the shuttered adult website has pleaded guilty to conspiring with the operators of the adult websites.

1 (5m 52s):
Girls do porn and girls do toys to fraudulent. Littley coerced young women to appearance sex videos. According to the DOJ guy pleaded guilty before us magnet magnet straight judge Jill L Burkhart to conspiracy to commit sex trafficking by force fraud and coercion Gaia. According to a DOJ press release admitted in his plea agreement that at the start of his employment, he was instructed by Matthew Wolf that if any of the young female models asked you should tell them that the videos would not be posted on the internet. The release also States that guy admitted that over the course of his employment, he became aware that Matthew Wolf and Michael Pratt were posting many of the sex videos that he filmed on.

1 (6m 39s):
Girls do porn and girls do toys where they were publicly available to all willing purchasers. Nonetheless guy continued to lie and personally assured the young women, he filmed the videos would not be posted publicly. The statement continues guys, plea follows that of girls do porn recruiter and male talent. Ruben, Andre Dre, Garcia, who last month pleaded guilty to two of the seven charges against him. Guy was not originally mentioned by name in the FBI investigation, which was dramatically unveiled in the middle of the civil trial where 22 Jane DOE models sued Pratt and his girls do porn associates for damages Wolf served as the main videographer for the operation and the gears in question and set on the stand during the civil trial that he had filmed over a hundred adult videos for girls do porn.

1 (7m 32s):
A sentencing hearing for Gaia has been scheduled for April 9th. Now let's feature our property the week that's for sale at adult site broker, we're proud to offer for sale a daily pay virtual webcam studio and recruitment site. The site is well-written. And as a conversion rate of over 10%, this provides a constant stream of new models for the studio. And it's what has generated massive year over year growth. The business offers daily payments to webcam models and return for a percentage of their earnings revenues are doubling year over year. Growth has been consistent since the business was started and is projected to continue growing at the same consistent rate.

1 (8m 16s):
The models are mostly located in the USA and UK with a handful from other English speaking countries like Australia and Canada. So they are higher earners providing a great profit to the studio. The time needed to operate the studio is minimal and could be cheaply and easily outsourced. The owner spends about two hours each weekday on it. The site generates about 1500 leads per week made up about equally through organic search traffic and Google ad words. The company is owned by a UK limited corporation and makes a 35% gross profit on all sales. There are 830 approved models currently, and that number grows every day.

1 (8m 60s):
There is a mailing list of over 21,000 interested models. All of whom have signed up on the site. No remarketing has yet been done, which is a great area of opportunity for the business to grow further. All this for only $475,000. Now time for this week's interview.

2 (9m 20s):
Well, I guess today on adults, I broker talk is Tim Valenti co-founder and CEO of naked sword and president of Falcon studio group. Tim, thanks for being with us today on adult side, broker talk, glad to be here. Glad to have you here. Thank you for the song. Now, Tim Valenti is a pioneering figure in online video distribution after nearly a decade of experience, Valenti engineered a game-changing merger between naked sword and AA BN in 2007. And in 2015, he was named president of Falcon studio group, where he now oversees operations for Falcon studios, raging stallion, and hot house entertainment, as well as the naked sword network over the years, Valenti has become one of the industry's most respected and innovative thinkers known for blurring the line between adult and mainstream entertainment.

2 (10m 13s):
Tim has appeared at as an, as an op ed blogger in the Huffington post and produced both adult and independent films, including the award-winning indie feature. I want your love Valenti has sat on many boards over the years. Most recently, as president of the board of the free speech coalition. Now Falcon naked sword is the most prolific producer of gay adult entertainment operating in the world today, home of the iconic Falcon studios, the acclaim naked sword originals, as well as successful and long running raging stallion on hothouse studios, Falcon naked sword has been releasing award-winning content for over 50 years.

2 (10m 53s):
That's amazing. The porn powerhouse also operates various other specialty fetish lines, Falcon naked sword broadcasts their popular content via a number of highly visited membership sites, including the Netflix. That'd be Netflix as opposed to Netflix of gay porn naked swore negative sword.com, Falcon studios.com and raging stallion.com. In addition to their flagship membership sites, Falcon naked sword maintains a robust DVD retail and wholesale distribution business, as well as multiple video on demand and broadcast licensing channels. Falcon naked sword also operates several media outlets focused on the gay lifestyle and sex, including the soar.com hunt e-sign dot com and blog dot Falcon, studios.com, Falcon naked, sword, media outlets, and membership sites reach millions of gay consumers every year.

2 (11m 53s):
Well, that's all we have time for today.

3 (11m 56s):
Thank God I retire During all that. I mean,

2 (12m 5s):
Well, I do all that. Okay. So let's start out with the most important question. How do you think are a beloved San Francisco giants are going to do this year?

3 (12m 14s):
You know, I'm a diehard giant. So I always have they, you know, always no matter what year. And so we're going to do great this year. How's that?

2 (12m 24s):
All right. We're going all the way. We're going all the way. There you go. You heard it from Tim first. Okay. Yep. So Tim, you and I are Facebook friends as we see each other's posts primarily political, of course. Now just how happy are you that this election is in the rear view mirror?

3 (12m 41s):
You know, I think we we'd pass the, you know, I'm happy, I'm happy that a Democrat won. I'm happy that, you know, Biden won. I, I think he's a good guy. I don't think it's over yet. I mean, I don't think it's going to be over for a long time in terms of, you know, how we, how we all see our country in different ways obviously. But I think that this election in Georgia really will determine whether or not, you know, we can actually make change or just have more of the same in terms of nothing really ever getting done in the Congress. I mean, there'll be a new attitude. I think there'll be obviously a lot of, much more qualified people in government, you know?

3 (13m 27s):
And yeah. And so, I mean, I think the trains will start to run on time or run better. I just don't think any meaningful legislation to I'd say in, in my opinion, you know, make our unions stronger because I think that there's a lot of ways to make the union stronger aside from having, you know, a garage full of guns and, you know, an armed with the I I'm three to do anything in the world. I want, fuck you, because I'm American. Yeah.

2 (13m 57s):
Any including infect everybody. And I should have probably told you this is going to drop in late January. So by then, we're going to know what the Georgia election results were. And we'll have, we'll have seen Joe Biden be inaugurated without Donald Trump attending. So that'll be a beautiful thing. Now I've seen the transformation in the gay space of our industry in the years since I joined it now, besides all the other obvious changes, I find the gay side of the business, which used to be kind of separate kind of off to the side is now part of the mainstream of our business as it should be. Now, we go to the same parties and we go to the same trade shows. How do you feel that developed?

3 (14m 37s):
Well, it's interesting because I was there, you know, and in 2000, let's just pick 2000 as sort of a year where things were really starting to swing in terms of, you know, streaming online with, you know, just the whole line industry and the sort of coming together of sort of gay and straight. And I just think that, you know, there were a lot of very smart entrepreneurial gay business folks around and they made friends with, I think a lot of very fun and open-minded and smart, cool entrepreneurial straight folks in the, at these parties like ex biz or cyber socket AVN gave you an et cetera.

3 (15m 21s):
And I think a lot of bonds were formed and I think there was it really, there was some harmony there. I, I think that that's kind of changed now. I don't think it says harmonious. I think that there's gay is integrated definitely into, you know, into the big porn adult conglomerates, like, like PornHub gamma, you know, even AVN. But I, you know, I think there's still a very strong, very independent gay community, which included a lot, most of the leading sites from a cocky boys to a Bellamy, he likes naked soar, Falcon, et cetera, that really does not want, it does not have that much unity with the straight side of the business.

3 (16m 11s):
Quite frankly. I think that a lot of those folks that were really open and excited to forge new territory were, you know, much more, I think, open liberal thinkers. And I think a lot of them have made their, made their Mark made their money and are sitting back. And I think that, I don't know, I, I find that in the last few years, going to the shows there just isn't that kind of, you know, Cromer rock comradery between, you know, the younger, the younger crowd of straight folks and the folks that are on the gay side. I just, don't,

2 (16m 50s):
It's hard, hard for me to relate being a native San Franciscan and never, never thinking twice about it. And always, I remember going to my first Phoenix forum and going, Oh yeah, they also have the gay Phoenix forum. Well, why are those separate? And then pretty soon they weren't. And I think one of the people that had the most to do with bringing the two sites together, well, it was a Morgan was cyber socket with his parties, inviting everybody.

3 (17m 16s):
Absolutely. Without question, you know, Morgan and Tim were truly pint the pioneers on, on, particularly on the gay side, you know, did a lot of, did a lot to help me personally building, you know, supporting naked sword and building the brand naked sword and, and introducing me to all types of folks there, isn't a question about Morgan and Tim and cyber socket in that, with that regard. You're right. And if you haven't listened there, isn't a Morgan right now. No,

2 (17m 52s):
That's true. Because even Morgan isn't Morgan, he's, he's pretty much pulled back and he's enjoying Kansas. God, God knows for whatever fucking strange reason he's enjoying Kansas.

3 (18m 4s):
You know what he meditates a lot and he's turned me into a meditator.

2 (18m 11s):
Good. That's really, that's, that's really good. And yes. Yes. And if you haven't, if you haven't heard the podcast interview I did with him, it's on our website and it's, as you can imagine. Excellent.

3 (18m 28s):
Of course. Yes.

2 (18m 30s):
Naked sword is celebrating 20 years in the industry. First of all, congratulations, my friend.

3 (18m 37s):
Thank you. Yeah, we had a, we had a live 20th anniversary party. Sunday afternoon was crazy. I mean, we had testimonial a little guest appearances from Kathy Griffin, Mark Richo reus phalange, Jake sheers, the scissor sisters, you know, every major drag personality, Chad, Angela, everybody. It was, it was pretty cool. There was a lot of fun.

2 (19m 6s):
I got to watch the stream for sure. I meant to watch it now that says a lot about what you've done in this industry 20 years now, as I mentioned, we're recording in, in December and well, tell me more about what, tell me more about what the anniversary means to you.

3 (19m 24s):
Well, obviously I'm, you know, I I'm really happy for, for a lot of folks that have stayed with me and worked with me over the years, that we all have this kind of achievement together that, you know, all the things that we believed in and all of the long, long nights and days and weekends and nights and days and weekends and nights and days and weekends, you know, to, to make things right. Whether, you know, technically in our streaming capabilities or, or in what we're producing or what we're licensing to, to PR to show, to, to present, I mean, we've done incredible amount of work and everybody has put their heart and soul into it.

3 (20m 10s):
And, you know, it's a good feeling that, you know, you have, we've achieved such, you know, an amazing status I think for, for us. And, but it's, you know, we, we deserve it quite frankly. I mean, the stuff that we've done, you know, I was watching a lot of the tape from just different, you know, Tim and Roma's shows for example, or, you know, like movies we've shot all around the world, you know, and just again, you know, the people who are, you know, great friends of, of what we've done, Kathy Griffin, you know, I mean, she we're, you know, we're part of the FBI and the Homeland security investigation, because we're the ones who made her swordsman and, you know, they didn't like her having a sword.

2 (20m 59s):
Yeah, I do. I do recall the incident. Yes.

3 (21m 3s):
Yeah. I mean, we've read I, what it means to me is I just, how awesome for me and for all the folks that have, you know, are part of my family at naked sword that, you know, we're all really happy where we are right now. And we're really proud of what we've done. I know, you know, there's, that's sort of the, you know, the, the American dream right. Is to be happy and at what you've done and, and, and feel, you know, that you've really succeeded in what your goals were and beyond them. So, you know, that's number one for sure. You're still there.

2 (21m 41s):
Sorry about that. That's what happens when you put mute on. Okay. So, so I start to, I start to talk and you're saying, are you still there? So, so Tim, after, after 20 years in the adult industry, what changes have you seen, especially in the gay space

3 (21m 58s):
From the biggest one when I started was that we did not do any kind of condomless production or a narrative. And obviously, you know, because of the great advances in science, science, we are able to protect ourselves from HIV and infection AIDS by, through science and medication, and, you know, many years of, of education in terms of safe sex practices. But so now we have, you know, we do condomless form bareback porn.

3 (22m 38s):
I mean, that's, that was a major game changer in a lot of ways, you know, just in terms of who you could work with, you know, the, the, the types of the types of productions that you could do. I mean, and I also, you know, we're like the only studio probably, or not, probably not the only one, but I know that we were the first to really, you know, have all the procedures and all the policies in place to protect all of our performers regardless of status. And, and so, you know, that's a huge achievement, whereas, you know, you either produce condom porn or you, you, you know, you went against what was a standard for the gay side, which was, you know, not to produce bareback you now, you know, now we can do either.

3 (23m 30s):
And, but we get to work with a much, you know, much bigger, you know, variety of folks and can do so many more things. I mean, that's a, that's a major, major change again, you know, I think what's ha I feel like I'm in like a third wave now of, of gay content producers, et cetera, because, you know, people that have visions for what they should be producing, I was sort of in the second group or the begin end of the first crossing over from this condom into a non condom types of production, and then also, you know, positioning and building our brand so that it was more than just hardcore porn.

3 (24m 13s):
Like you mentioned earlier, you know, doing independent movie-making we had a hit with, I want you to love, we were the first to do a gay porn adult soap opera, which was really successful in other, something like that was called golden gate, which was set all in San Francisco, very successful type of, of work. I just, I kind of feel like, you know, again, where I came in and there was a lot more unity built with the straight companies, and that was good because, you know, you learned a lot of things together and, and it wasn't there wasn't too much of a, I don't know, a wall between us.

3 (24m 53s):
I don't, again, I don't feel like it's necessarily that way so much, any longer. I think the, the gay producers, the successful ones who can do it on their own without, you know, the, either going out of business or, you know, selling their brand Saito like a gamma or something are not necessarily, you know, I mean, we're, you know, that there it's pretty independent streak.

2 (25m 17s):
Sure. Now, in mainstream America, despite the obvious homophobia, that's still out there, there's a general acceptance of the gay lifestyle. And all you have to do is watch TV and TV commercials, and you see same-sex people and couples not only represented, but celebrated now. I think people realize what great consumers gay people are at long last, how has this carried over into gay porn?

3 (25m 42s):
You know, I'd say that we carried gay porn into mainstream. And if you, I mean, you, you know, you talk about Falcon and Falcon is, is the brand, the company that is 50 years old. And obviously I wasn't around a part of that. I was, you know, a 10 year old, want to be surfer boy, but not thinking running a gay porn empire or gay entertainment, empire ish, ish. But you know, if you look at like what Falcon did in the, in the late seventies, early eighties with being bold and going out and actually producing, not like backroom types of movies, but actually produce trying to produce a, a porn, like a narrative type of movie, how limited, you know, the talent they may have had at the time to be able to do it, they still went out and do it, did it.

3 (26m 43s):
And what that did was it, you know, it caught the attention of other folks in media. And then also, you know, we, it made things a little bit more like, Oh, okay, this is an actual real product. It happened that, you know, the, the, just sort of the social circles that Chuck Holmes who started Falcon was in, like, he was like, I guess, an ultimate aimless gay guy in those days, you know, he became friends with Calvin Klein and the whole idea of the, you know, the white briefs on Calvin kind of Calvin Klein models became Falcons, you know, signature.

3 (27m 27s):
And that was all developed with, with in, and this is sort of like the big secret, but, you know, with Calvin Klein, because he was friends and they, I mean, he was gay even though he wasn't gay at the time.

2 (27m 43s):
Yeah. It's like, it's like rock Hudson, wasn't gay at the time, you know, but

3 (27m 47s):
These were out, I mean, he wasn't an outman, but, but Chuck certainly was. And what was happening in terms of, you know, just gay culture or subculture, you want to call it that at the time a subculture was what was influencing mainstream. So it's in a way, and I think it's been my experience in life since, you know, I'm 60 and I was born in 1960 and, you know, I benefited from all of those, all of the gay men and women who stood up for themselves and, and weren't, you know, taken down and, and, and try and folks, you know, dismissing them or telling them they were wrong or not to believe in themselves.

3 (28m 33s):
And so I think by the time that, you know, the eighties rolled around, I think gay culture was influencing mainstream mainstream, not the other way around.

2 (28m 43s):
Yeah. I think it's all, I think it's always influenced style for sure.

3 (28m 46s):
Yeah. I mean, I think that it certainly has. I think it's also, you know, it's, it's, it's, I think it's also influenced a lot of, you know, more progressive thinking for sure, not just gay, gay subject matter, but a lot of things. And that's what, that's what makes this whole political situation. So, you know, disappointing and depressing it's that, you know, it just seems that the alternative that, or the opposition wants very narrow, it's a very narrow view of anything in the future.

2 (29m 23s):
Look at the . I can't even say it Neanderthals on the, on the Supreme court. They put in who, you know, and, and their, and their feelings, their, their feelings about gay people and their rights. So that, that just,

3 (29m 38s):
No, yeah, I don't, I mean, it's, it's unfortunate, but, you know, you got to help them in part, the whole part of the country, this country is so many things, you know, go on, you know, are done by tradition and, you know, respect for, you know, w we started our country because we wanted to be free from oppression. Right. So, you know, that's, so we have all of these standards in these ways that we sort of silently agree, silent handshake to do things and try and be as respectful as possible. I, you know, I just feel that a lot of this, this conservative movement is, is exactly what we ran away from, or, you know, Europeans ran away from to come here.

3 (30m 24s):
I mean, not that you know, so, and here we are just that's, you know, anyway.

2 (30m 32s):
Yeah. It's definitely going backwards. It's certainly not going forward. So hopefully the next four years, we can start moving forwards again and maybe reach where we were when Obama left. I think that's probably the best we can hope for now. I got to ask the proverbial COVID question. Sorry. How has the pandemic effected your business and your operation?

3 (30m 54s):
I actually, you know, when all this came down and it came down for us in a very interesting and short period of time, I had, we were shooting a really big movie in Austria for Falcon naked sword. And I had literally like a dozen people there plus, you know, folks from Europe and soon as president Trump went on the TV and he said, I'm just canceling all flights to your, I mean, it was like, I was, I just remember, I think it was like folding my sped sheets or something. And I was like, Oh fuck. And I, you know, basically called a Pam, Mr.

3 (31m 35s):
Pam, who was directing the movie at two in the morning there three in the morning. And I say, get everybody up, get everybody packed, get everybody to Munich airport. And I will make sure you guys are on then, you know, the mid day, afternoon flight, everybody. And I spent the next two hours working with our travel agent to get that done. So, boom, you know, all, I just remember it all like happening in one week that happened. I decided that, you know, we weren't gonna take any kinds of chances. We were going to go full board on with whatever, you know, we were recommended to do mandated to do. And so, you know, ABN, which is a great company to be a part of.

3 (32m 19s):
And they, you know, they're, they're very, you know, hands-off, they, you know, we run an excellent part of their business and they're very proud of it. And it does really well for them. So it's, you know, they don't, we, we don't necessarily always have the same, you know, ideas of what we should have off and what we should be doing close, but I, you know, went ahead and just implemented, stay at home, work from home, shut down all productions council productions for, I think 45 days until we figured out stuff. And we figured out that we weren't going to be producing for some time and that we were going to all be working from home. We were all very connected.

3 (33m 1s):
We have great communication, but in the meantime I thought it, this is a really great time to talk about all those things we wanted to either talk out and, and put together roadmaps for, for new businesses or productions that we'd like to do. And how can we be smart about using the talent from their places at home? I mean, of course we did lots of, you know, solo types of scenes. We also did, you know, models that were locked down with each other. We were able to do that, but we were able to, you know, come up with a lot of different, fun, cool ideas that we actually produced in gateway three to nice art.

3 (33m 44s):
Yeah. To folks that came to our tour, we did, you know, all kinds of public service stuff around wearing masks. We did a lot of pride types of programming and pride stories. We did. The miss pineapple pageant was a huge hit gay porn stars who do drag and competed in a, in a, in a live show, which we did. We've done the Mr. Man naked soar, top 20 countdown. We've done cookie shows. We've done all kinds of fun things, including. Yeah. You know, so what we did was during the time where we weren't back to full production, you know, we, we really were very creative and have the time to, to do that in some of what we thought about in 2020, we'll start appearing as products at the end.

3 (34m 29s):
You know, the second half of 2021, we are in production, or we're basically not, I shut down production on Friday only, you know, because of what's going on, but in between the, you know, the time I think we started shooting in August and we've done a lot in August, September, October, November. And so we have a, you know, a lot of content ready to go, you know, not as big of narrative types of features that we do, but a lot of really beautiful, very styled, beautifully lit gorgeous models. We've, I've just, I'm secretly signing a whole new team of exclusive will by 2021, we'll have eight new exclusives to adding to our already, you know, wonderful group of guys.

3 (35m 19s):
So, yeah, I mean, I, you know, it's been a TA, I thought it was gonna be, you know, I thought, Oh, who knows what to expect, but we've done really well. You know, we've been really creative. We were the, we took the lead in, in developing policies, guidelines, procedures, everything. We worked hard with the FSC and we took the lead, our production director, Adam Robinson was phenomenal. And we literally wrote the book and a lot of those companies are following what we, you know, worked hard to put together for shooting. And so, you know, we're, we're done now for their year and we will, I've counseled all production for January.

3 (36m 3s):
And again, we'll assess in January as to what we might be able to do in February. And if not, we won't, but we've got, we're no short of ideas, plans and projects. And there, a lot of them are on paper. So it's not just sort of like, I hope we do this. We're gonna,

2 (36m 22s):
That's funny. Well, you, you did the, you did the classic turning lemons into lemonade. And another thing that it, that you most certainly did from marketing standpoint, you know, putting my marketing hat on, which I'm always doing, you certainly sealed in, you know, your brands in the minds of the people. And of course your brands are the ones that they're going to go to first in the future. So

3 (36m 52s):
We got a lot of new unique traffic and a lot, you know, a good majority of it was from all this free content. We would, you know, we, we, we do, you know, produce piece like a whole thing on, you know, all, you know, 20 models wearing masks, you know, just that PSA type of thing. I love it. We do drive in movies, you know, for free. Then we do Ms. Pineapple pageant. And then we do, we had this, we did five and they were just fucking classics there. It's called play. And it was live game shows where we had, you know, six different famous gay porn performers and Mark McNamara, as, you know, the, you know, the MC I mean, riotous hysterical stuff that we're going to continue to produce next year as well.

3 (37m 44s):
That, that hell even mind he tried to copy it. I mean, it's, it was funny.

2 (37m 51s):
That's the greatest form of flattery. There's no two ways about it. So how about you personally? I know you spent some time at your, at your retreat. I know I certainly miss traveling to the shows and seeing our friends, or I should say family in this business. And how about you?

3 (38m 8s):
I mean, I, I think that for me personally, I think this was, I lucked out in that this is the year that all this would happen and I wouldn't be traveling, or I wouldn't be able to travel because I think I needed a break. And, you know, sometimes you, you know, the year started out, you know, crazily with so much to do and so many things to do and projects going on. And then, you know, I got, I was very fortunate to be honored by ABN, gave Viet and put in the hall of fame. So that was a huge thing in Vegas. And there was all kinds of, it was just so well, thank you. But I, it was just like, it just seemed like I w it was, I could feel my body buzzing, you know, just from so much going on.

3 (38m 55s):
And then when this all came down, it was almost like, Oh, wow. I don't have to worry about leaving in three weeks. I don't have to worry about this or going in a way. Yeah. It kind of was. And then I did something I've never done in my entire life. And, you know, we have a really cute little farmy, farm, little ranch in New Mexico, and it's just so beautiful and quiet there, but, and we have a pool. So, you know, we, we go there for like a week in the summer to my in-laws, we built a Caseta on the property and they live there all year round, but we never get to spend as much time there.

3 (39m 37s):
And I was like, we, we just drove out in June and we literally stayed all summer. And I just worked every day from different locations around my Adobe home.

2 (39m 47s):
Nice. How long of a drive? How long of a drive is that?

3 (39m 50s):
16 hours straight. Yeah, but you know, by the time you hit New Mexico, the border of Arizona, New Mexico, it's like you made you're on the road for 12 hours, or, you know, like 13, 14 hours. You're like only two and a half more to go. We do it. I love it.

2 (40m 11s):
Now you live in the San Francisco Bay area, my birthplace and former home. And before I left the country, of course, thank God. Talk a bit about the Bay area and what you like about it.

3 (40m 25s):
That's so funny, you know, now that we ha you know, I'm from Hawaii and I born and raised, and, you know, Hawaii to me is always in my heart. I'm Hawaiian boy at heart, but I've lived in San Francisco for most of my adult life. And at Berkeley in the last 20 years, we're right on the North edge of campus. And now we have this great place in New Mexico. And I'm like, you know, how, how much time do you want to spend anywhere? And, you know, you've been here for so long. You want to, you know, spend more time there cause you can. Yeah, but I just love being here. It's so a lot, I mean, we were in the best place because we live in the North Berkeley Hills and we can look out and you know, our front window and decks look into the city and the golden gate.

3 (41m 13s):
That's a wonderful,

2 (41m 15s):
Wonderful view. It looks beautiful. Take a picture for me to remind me and send it to me. We I'm serious.

3 (41m 22s):
I mean, I don't mean to be, I'm not bragging or anything. I'm just saying, I mean, it's not like, you know, it's just really cool. And we're like right on the edge of campus. And so, you know, we live in a very useful place and there's always a lot of energy and we're both into my husband and I are both into sports and we go to a lot of fair games. He's a duck, I'm a bear. And we got a, you know,

2 (41m 47s):
Yeah, you got the dog, you got a duck on your Skype. I was going to ask you about that.

3 (41m 51s):
Yeah. We got a Memorial stadium and we watched, you know, football games and we'd go and watch tennis a lot, especially girl tennis, we have our favorites and then some bait baseball. We went to basket. We went to the last basketball girl's basketball game, played at in the gym in spraying. We were there the last night that, and then everything shut down. So that was actually the last live sports event I went to. Oh, wow.

2 (42m 20s):
Well, both you and I will both be at Oracle park soon. In fact, when I come back to visit you, we're going to have to go to a game together with our significant others. That would be

3 (42m 30s):
Totally down we're down.

2 (42m 32s):
Well, man, it's coming. So is the vaccine. So it's a beautiful thing. Now in 2007, your company merged with adult giant ABN. I can't believe it's been 13 years. My God, almost 14. So I remember like it was yesterday now, how has that changed your professional life

3 (42m 51s):
To, just to be, you know, straight up, I feel like we brought a lot to them and, you know, we, and, and like I said, that they've been, you know, the most amazing parent group. I mean, we're merged, but they are, you know, they're, they're the bigger company that, that, you know, we merged with and they're our daddy, but, you know, they leave us really alone. I mean, and I mean, I appreciate and always try and find ways where we can integrate, you know, for the good of the entire company. And plus times we do that on the tech side, you know, their, their product is much different than ours in terms of what we offer and how we offer it.

3 (43m 33s):
So, but we do, you know, we have combined products, we have a time theater that that's their main product. You know, we have a whole stable of white labels of naked sword that are branded for individual type studios. And we, you know, we do that kind of technology with them as well. So, you know, I mean, we find the ways to work together professionally for me, I just, you know, I think, you know, I made the really right and smart move. I think at the time, you know, based on what I saw, I'd been, you know, doing this for about seven years at the time, in terms of just straight adult streaming. Cause we still at cubic media that I was running, which was a development company, web development.

3 (44m 20s):
Yeah. That's how we started naked sword. I mean, we were one of the original, small developer firms that Mike Macromedia chose to learn how stream li learn streaming technology. So we've got a little jump on that in the mid nineties and

2 (44m 38s):
I never, I never would have taken you as a tech geek, Tim. I'm not. Oh, okay. Okay. I'm glad to hear it.

3 (44m 45s):
I really not. I, I, it's funny cause I, my, I got a job at 30 in San Francisco and I decided to move back there and I wanted to work in an ad agency and I was a creative, you know, I was like a creative director.

2 (44m 60s):
That sounds like you. Yes that's. Yeah,

3 (45m 3s):
Totally. But I interviewed at this agency that was a quote high-tech agency, which I'm like, I don't know what the fuck that is. It was like 1989 90. I wasn't that savvy. And, but all their clients were like wired magazine and Hitachi. And I mean, they had all these, you know, and I was like, Oh, I'm never going to get a job here. I don't know anything about technology, but they liked me a lot and hire me. And I ended up, you know, working there for five years, you know, a creative director, an art director, even, you know, then eventually managing the bigger accounts. And then when we went digital in terms of building web sites for our, in those days, websites were glorious, you know, online brochures for our client.

3 (45m 51s):
I ran that division and then started cubic in 90 or 96. And we launched the first version of naked sword in 1999, but it was a failure and I pulled it off the web and we realized that six months later and who knew it was going to happen

2 (46m 8s):
Well. And as they say, the rest is history. Now you became the president of Falcon in 2015. Same question. How has this changed things?

3 (46m 17s):
It's changed things for both the brands, Falcon and naked sword. I think it's really sort of like given a shot in the arm to Falcon. Cause we do a lot of things together, like naked swords, sort of the more progressive, not so rigid brand. And so we're happy, you know, we're, we're, you know, my sort of philosophy is I w I'm not a formula guy and I never have been. And so that was a very difficult thing for, you know, the, the Falcon team to understand or even want to. And so it was a little hard going the first couple years, but we found our way and I think, you know, naked sword is energized Falcon and Falcon has given a little bit of a sort of old world Brava toss to naked sword.

3 (47m 5s):
I mean, you've got two really interesting brands that are, you know, together, and I think they're very powerful together and we're going to cover a lot of ground in the next couple, three, four years in terms of, you know, repositioning ourselves as, you know, number one in hardcore male erotica, but getting there in other areas of entertainment in terms of more mainstreaming crossover. Okay.

2 (47m 30s):
So what's ahead for Falcon naked sword, any exciting things coming up for your company?

3 (47m 35s):
Well, like I said, we had a lot of time to talk about things we wanted to do, but never had the time to do, you know, one of the things that we were working on and we're finished now and we'll be launching in April is an entire new platform, a technology platform for naked soar. And then all of our partner or our, all of our clients, white label clients, studios that, you know, we provide streaming for. So that's a big thing. We've got a mainstream more mainstream streaming product that we're going to be relaunching called that we had a really good first run with just sort of independent gay cinema.

3 (48m 21s):
We partnered with breaking glass. They've had a little bit of a change there and, you know, not being able to supply as much content. So we're reworking what that site is and what that brand is. And then, you know, I think it's going to be really exciting when we relaunch it, probably the beginning, January, 2022, but it will be ready in the fall for us to all test and play with. So there's that? Yeah, we're doing a, I think we're going to do a real big collaboration once we can start shooting again with, with our partner gamma studio gamut, we have really great relationship with gamma and their brand. Next door studios has undergone some really great changes and we're planning a very big co-production together that will be worn.

3 (49m 7s):
That's more in the, yeah, more in the world of series ongoing sort of series than just a one-off production. So I'm very excited about that. I mean, a lot of new content, a couple of new products, you know, very slick upgraded technology on our new platform, ways we can, you know, repackage content and sell it to a wider audience.

2 (49m 33s):
Okay. Now you're obviously a pretty busy guy, har har har, besides going to a sporting events. What else do you like to do in your spare time? Spare time in quotation marks?

3 (49m 48s):
Yeah. Well, it's fine. It depends on the time of the year. Right now I'm getting, you know, hungered in for watching a lot of new R Scandinavian war, you know, serial killer detective type shows. I love European TV. I don't know why, except for the French TV it's the actors are awful. They're way too melodramatic. I'm doing that. I'm actually starting to get back into my, I want to get, to be able to run two or three miles a day in New Mexico on the, you have the ditch trails that go all through our village of where we are past farms and ranches and horse pastures.

3 (50m 35s):
It's so cool. And I want to be able to do it. And you know, I am 60 and I have gained a few pounds over like 10, 15 pounds since March, but I've started to lose it. I've been walking three days and I'm starting to jog and I will be running by the time I'm there. So I'm excited about that. I love to swim every time I go home. I'm, you know, you have to drag me out of the ocean, either body surfing or surfing, although surfing only with a huge board, cause I'm old swimming anywhere there there's water. I'm going to be in it. I don't care where we are. I love to travel and you know, we don't get enough to do my husband and I together.

3 (51m 20s):
But when we do it so much fun, we went to Iceland. We were in Iceland two years ago for Thanksgiving with, with Andy and his husband. Rob, that sounds cool. Oh, it was so fun. Glacier. We went, we did it all. It was amazing.

2 (51m 39s):
You said you like water, you said you like water and you like to travel. You should come out here. We have

3 (51m 48s):
All, yeah, we'll make it there. You know, Ty, you know, he's a big tie from queer me now, are you familiar with Thai? From Thailand? Thai from Thailand, dude. I know. Right? Cheesy. But that's what he says. He's, you know, he's local and I definitely have friends in Thailand to, to, to go. Yeah. Like you like hi, like Thai, like Thai from Thailand, from Thailand.

2 (52m 20s):
Well, Tim, I'd really like to thank you for being our guests, Dan adult side broker talk. And I hope we'll get a chance to do this again really soon. My broker tip today is part six of what to do to make your site more valuable for when you decide to sell it later, here's more information on what to give a potential buyer. Tell them how well has your content been protected from piracy and what steps have you taken to protect your content? Are you using a piracy, takedown or monitoring service? These are important facts to know what promotional tools do you offer to your affiliates? The more tools you offer, the more successful your affiliates will be. What is your traffic breakdown by country tier one countries like the USA, Canada, the UK, Germany and Australia are the most preferred adding.

2 (53m 10s):
Anything else that will add value to the sale of your property that you can think of such as what custom scripts do you use? What content management system software is on your site. Do you use billing or affiliate software like gnats or MPA three? What is your retention

1 (53m 26s):
Rate? How you retain your members is of the utmost importance. How many joins and rebuilds do you have per day? Do you buy advertising? And if so, what kind can your content make more money in the DVD or VOD markets? Or have you already taken advantage of this opportunity? How much did you spend a producer by the content that's on your site? What do you believe the content is worth now what's special or different about your website? How is it unique? Make sure and include a list of all the websites you're selling. In addition to any domains that come along with the sale. Is there anything that adds value to the sale? Provide them with any additional information upon request before giving a buyer, any information, have them sign a nondisclosure agreement.

1 (54m 14s):
If you use a broker, the NDA will be provided for you. Good brokers. Let me think here, like, Oh, I don't know. Adult Site Broker, have a large resource of potential buyers that are looking for properties just like yours and they know how to deal with potential buyers. They'll also negotiate the terms of the sale, such as price and any payment terms before closing the sale and find a good escrow service to make sure that both the buyer and seller are protected. We have those resources of course. We'll talk about this subject more next week. And next week we'll be talking to Anna Lee of 2049 Entertainment.

0 (54m 58s):
And that's it for this week's Adult Site Broker Talk. I'd once again, like to thank my guest, Tim Valenti, talk to you again next week on Adult Site Broker Talk. I'm Bruce Friedman.