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John Boccacino: Hello, and welcome back to the 'Cuse Conversations Podcast. My name is John Boccacino, the communication specialist in Syracuse University's Office of Alumni Engagement. I'm also a 2003 graduate of the SI New House School of Public Communications, with a degree in broadcast journalism. I am so glad you found our podcast.

From an early age, Doug Robinson envisioned a career in the entertainment industry, preferably as a producer. After graduating with degrees in marketing management and television radio and film from Syracuse University, Robinson set about accomplishing his career goals, but it was not easy.

Robinson worked his way up from the Creative Artists Agency mailroom to become an agent, and eventually he was a partner and cofounder of the talent division at Endeavor Talent Agency. There, he represented talent like Adam Sandler, Chris Farley, Will Smith, Jennifer Garner, Wesley Snipes and Ashton Kutcher.

After these successes, Robinson reinvented himself as a television producer, and his executive producer credits include Rules of Engagement, The Goldbergs, and Schooled. Robinson's latest television project, For Life, is a fictionalized legal drama telling the story of a prisoner who becomes a lawyer and fights to overturn his life sentence for a crime he did not commit.

Late last summer, we caught up with Robinson in his Los Angeles office on the Sony Picture Studios lot to discuss how he went from the mailroom to a career as a decorated Hollywood agent and producer. We also discussed how Syracuse University taught Robinson to create his own personal narrative, and why he chose to help start the Syracuse University Los Angeles semester program.

Great to have you here on the podcast. I want to take you back a little bit through a time machine. If you could give our listeners some insight into your background and why you chose Syracuse, why was that the school you chose to attend?

Doug Robinson: The real reason? Sure. Because I desperately wanted to go to Penn State where my mother had gone, and they told me at the time that I would've had to start school in June, right after I graduated high school to get an English class out of the way. And I wasn't prepared to do that. And then I went and looked at Syracuse, and a friend of mine who was a few years older from where I grew up took me around and I had a great time with him, and thought this would be a great place to go to school.

John Boccacino: You combined two degrees, a marketing management degree out of Whitman and television radio film out of New House. What were your aspirations for yourself as a student? Why did you choose those two degrees to kind of blend together?

Doug Robinson: Well, I wouldn't say it was my aspirations as a student. It was more of what my professional aspirations were going to be. And I knew that this is what I wanted to do. I knew I wanted to work in the entertainment industry. And in the back of my

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head, although I probably didn't know exactly what it was, I was like, I'm going to be a producer. But I knew that in producing, you had to have a business background. And I honestly didn't get into New House out of high school. I can't even remember if I applied, but I know when I went, I was only in management. And then when I went to school, you needed a 3.75 and an A and a B in a New House class in order to get into New House. And I had the grades and I thought, why not get two degrees if I could, one that would give me a business background, which I knew would always be useful, and one that would give me an area of expertise that I wanted to point towards my professional career.

John Boccacino: I'm glad you brought up the experience of transferring in to New House after you had already been a student at Syracuse. What lesson did that teach you about any sort of work ethic or drive, having that carrot of wanting to get into New House, and you had to apply once you're on campus, right? How did that influence you?

Doug Robinson: It gave me a goal, and it gave me a numerical goal. You must hit a 3.75, and you must have an A and a B. So I was going to get a 3.75, and an A and a B. And that's what I did, because I wanted that New House degree. So I've always been goal oriented. Even in my career, it's all about what's next, and that started when I was at Syracuse. And the fact that there was a quantitative measure of what got you in gave me a goal that I could hit.

John Boccacino: We're talking here with Doug Robinson, a media executive and producer. When you talk about your career, you mentioned you always wanted to work in entertainment. What was it about that arena that really appealed to you?

Doug Robinson: Well, more than anything else, I was a fan. And when I sit with students, the question that I'll ask them, there are a lot of people who want to get into entertainment because they think it's glamorous, or they think that they want to live in Los Angeles and make movies. But I was a fan of the product. I love movies. I love TV shows. I love pop culture. Those are the things that excited me growing up. And when I actually learned you could make a living and there was a business that allowed you to do this, that's where I wanted to be.

John Boccacino: How did you go about embarking on this career?

Doug Robinson: Two weeks after I graduated from Syracuse, I started in the mail room at CAA. And for people who don't know what the mail room is, the mail room is really a training program to become an agent. And if you look through the history of Hollywood, so many people have started in the William Morris mail room, in the CAA mail room, agents, producers, managers, lawyers. It is ground zero and the best place to get your foot in the door, and get the best well rounded education in the entertainment industry. It's grad school. And that's where I was lucky enough to go.

John Boccacino: What was that experience like starting off at the very beginning, very entry level, especially now looking back where you are at the accolades you've had, the success you've had? It must have been a little bit humbling coming out here and starting at

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that level.

Doug Robinson: Well, that's the word, is that it's literally the most humbling experience of your life. I grew up in a house where I didn't make my bed. Or maybe I did, but I didn't do it well. And when you're in the mail room, you have to do whatever is asked of you. So I would be up at five in the morning, I lived an hour away from the office and you had to pick up bagels. And then somebody told you clean a spot off the carpet. You literally had to get on your hands and knees and clean the spot off the carpet. Whatever was asked of you is what you had to do. And there was nothing that was really mentally stimulating. You weren't changing anything. You weren't solving any problems. You weren't dealing with any issues. You were doing what was ever asked you. And the only way to get through the mountain was with a good attitude and work hard, and then absorb whatever information you can.

So back in those days, you literally had to stand over a script, over a copy machine and copy a script, physically copy it. Now you push a button to email to somebody as a PDF. So if I was copying the same script 30 times that they were doing as a submission, I would take the script home and I would read it. There was a client list and I didn't know who all the clients were, so I would take the client list home and I'd familiarize myself with all the clients. And if I didn't know their work, I would go out and watch their work, whether it was a movie or TV show. And I'd go to the video store, this is really sounding archaic. And I'd go rent a movie and watch a movie of a client whose work I didn't know. So any education you were going to get was because you put in the extra time to get that education yourself.

John Boccacino: How, then, did you go from being the mailroom assistant? I've heard that you landed a job as an agent fairly quickly after making good impressions, but how do you go from having that hunger and that drive to actually getting into the profession as an agent?

Doug Robinson: You become an assistant. There's a natural progression, which is different today than it was when I was there. Now I think you start out as somebody's assistant, then you go into the mailroom, and each agency does it a little different. But back when I did it, you started in the mail room, and graduating from the mail room meant you got the glamorous job of being somebody's assistant, which is a really fancy Hollywood term for secretary. Which means that you answer the phone, keep track of their phone calls, make lunch or reservations, type letters, send out correspondence, whatever needs to be done for the agent you're working for and the clients that they represent. Schedule appointments, really heady graduate stuff that four years of college more than prepare you for.

John Boccacino: Did you ever have a moment when you were going through the process where, not that you thought about giving up, but that was a challenging moment or you had your aha moment where it's like, you know what, we're not going to give up. We're going to keep fighting through, because it must be hard to maintain that focus when you graduate from Syracuse thinking you're going to change the world. And then you're getting humbled.

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Doug Robinson: The answer to that is no, because there were so many people that had done it before me that the path was clear. I knew that if I did this, I could become that. So there was never a moment, I mean the job was hard, and you were asked to do ridiculous things. I mean, things that you look back on and you go, I can't believe I did that.

There was a story that, there's a book called The Mailroom. And it's a story that I've told in that book, which was I'd been out of here for about six weeks, maybe two months. And I was miserable. I didn't really have any friends. I was working from six in the morning till, if I've had to stand and close the office, which meant that I had to make sure that all the copying for that night was done, sometimes I'd leave the office at 1:00 AM. And that was in the days before they paid you overtime. So all for the glamorous price of $900 a month.

It was a Friday night. And my friends from Syracuse were coming out to LA because, I forget what they were doing out here, but they had something that they were going to be doing. And I had plans with them that Friday night, I wasn't going to close the office. I was going to be able to get out at eight o'clock or a reasonable hour. And I was told that I had to go deliver an inflatable raft with a giant palm tree on it, inflated, to a home at the top of Nichols Canyon, which was at the time, one of the presidents of Warner Brothers was living there, and he was having a party for a bunch of agents and executives and other people. So how am I going to get this stupid inflated raft up to the top of Nichols Canyon? So there's a Chevron station at the bottom of the Canyon and we fill up the raft and it's enormous. And it's like, it's not fitting in anybody's car, let alone a truck.

So I literally sat on the edge of the window, on the outside of the car, leaning over the roof, holding this thing down, which we had gone through a hardware store and tied to the top of the roof. And you're like, I graduated four years of college, I have two degrees for this? But that's what you do. And then you go in and you're sweaty and disgusting. And there are movie stars there that you recognize and you feel about as small as you possibly can imagine. But that's the job. And what keeps you going is knowing that, Oh, see that guy there? He started in the mail room. And that guy there, he started in the mail room. So there was a path and a means to an end, and I was willing to go down that path.

John Boccacino: What then was it that led Doug to that break of getting you out of the mail room and landing a position where you could, because you formed Endeavor Talent Agency, now known as the WME, as a partner and co-founder of the talent division, but that didn't happen overnight. So what was the break that got you to that?

Doug Robinson: Well, the break is when you get promoted and somebody says, you're an agent. And that's the big break. And I was fortunate enough to do that fairly quickly. It took me less than three years to become an agent, which today, from what I understand is probably closer to a five year process for people to get that. Back then it was probably somewhere three to four, not because I was fantastic, but

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because of a confluence of events of people leaving the agency, I was able to do it in two and a half years.

And the way that I did it, and I tell this to anyone, any students who I'm meeting who's starting out, which is, short of something morally corrupt, the word "No" is not in your vocabulary. Like it's just not. It's not about how much money you're going to make. It's not about, Oh my God, they're working me so hard and they should be paying me overtime. It's not about, that's beneath me. I said yes to whatever was asked of me to do. And I did it all with a good attitude. And the entertainment industry has a lot of unreasonable people, and I would find a way to get people whatever they needed.

An example is that the agent I worked for had a client named James Woods who I happened to become friendly with. And he would call like, Hey, the Rolling Stones are playing in Boston at eight o'clock tonight. Can you get me and my brother tickets? Well, that's five o'clock, and it's three o'clock in LA. The concert starts in two hours. How am I going to do it? I would figure out how to do it. I just would. I'd go to somebody in the music department and I would say, Hey, do you have a relationship with a promoter in Boston? Can you get two tickets for Jimmy Woods? I don't want to do that. I'm too busy. I'll tell you what, you want to go to that premiere? I can get you tickets to this movie, premier. And whatever it was, I would find a way to do it.

And so then Jimmy Woods was in the elevator with Mike Ovitz who ran CAA at the time. And some people had just left the agency, and they're probably short a couple of agents, or there was an opportunity to move up. And he said to Mike Ovitz, not knowing that there was an opportunity to move up, said, do you know Doug Robinson, he's fantastic. And all the stars aligned right, and I got promoted. And part of the reason I got promoted was because a guy who was a client of the agency and Academy Award nominee at the time, I had befriended and made sure that whatever he needed was going to get done.

John Boccacino: That desire to go above and beyond, to help people out, to accomplish those goals. It's something that I'm sure you can learn, but it must've been instilled along you, a good work ethic along the way. Where did you get that sense of work ethic and drive from?

Doug Robinson: My father. He was an example of, just went to work every day and worked hard and was there. And also when you're in a place like CAA back in those days, you just wanted to work hard. You just saw that anything was possible. It was a time where...

There was an agent named Stan [Cayman 00:00:13:46], who was at William Morris. And I think he had passed away maybe. And he had represented so many movie stars like Robert de Niro and Barbara Streisand and Sean Connery, I think. And just when he passed away, every day there was a new memo, like so-and-so is now a client. So-and-so is now a client. And you just felt the sort of momentum that this

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company was building at the time, and that work ethic, you looked around and anyone who was successful had that work ethic. For me, it was a great environment for me to learn from, coupled with the education I got at Syracuse, and what it took to get into New House and succeed there, as well as the examples I had growing up.

John Boccacino: What are some of the lessons, the biggest lessons that stand out to you from what your faculty at Whitman and New House imparted upon you, when you were a student?

Doug Robinson: That's a good question. And I'm not sure that any of them stand out. But what I learned at Syracuse, more than anything else, I can't point to a class and say, Oh, that class taught me this. And that's a standout. But what it really taught me was a sense of maturity. It taught me how to communicate with people. It taught me about creating a narrative, which I'm a big believer in.

When I'm sitting across from a potential employee, somebody who's looking for a job, what are they telling me that's different than anyone else? What's their narrative? How are they weaving that into a story? Because at the end of the day, we're sort of all storytellers. That's our job, is to create stories, create content, create shows that hopefully strike a chord with the public. Represent people, if you're an agent, that have the talent to be in that position where they can affect pop culture.

So what Syracuse did was it really did teach me how to create my own personal narrative, so that when I went out into the world and was ready to get that first job, to be able to use my narrative to set me apart from anybody else.

John Boccacino: Now you get the break, you work at the company, you're an agent representing some pretty high up talented actors and actresses. Who are some of the people that you look back on that maybe you had really strong relationships with, that you represented as an agent? And what was that like working and hobnobbing with a lot of people that are producing great works in film and television?

Doug Robinson: There are a lot of them. The first one that comes to mind is Adam Sandler, because I wouldn't be a TV producer if it wasn't for him. Adam was somebody that I signed in his first year on Saturday Night Live. I saw it and I thought he was great. And I ended up already representing Chris Farley. And I don't think I represented Spade at the time, David came afterwards, but I loved Saturday Night Live as a kid. And that's the kind of talent that I was always drawn to. And there are not enough good words that you could say about Adam Sandler. When I was leaving the agency business, he was like, why don't you come work with me? And we were partners for years. I represented Adam and Will Smith and Chris Farley and Wesley Snipes and Ashton Kutcher, a lot of people that I was close with then, some who I'm not, and some who are still my friends.

John Boccacino: And you mentioned your relationship with Adam Sandler. You guys created Happy

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Madison Television together. What was that venture like? Adam seems so creative and so high energy. What was that like forming that project with Adam?

Doug Robinson: It was the greatest thing in the world because of our relationship before, and the fact that he's off doing his giant movies and he does everything on his movies. He writes his movies. He edits his movies. Everything is because of him and his creative force, that that's where really all his energy went. And the TV business was really just something I got to do on my own. I often joke about it, like the only time we ever talked about TV was when I said, I want to form a TV company. He said, why don't you come do it with me? And if it weren't for him and the relationship we had and the trust he had in me, I would never have been able to do that. And it's such a different career going from agent to producer. One is really transactional, and the other one is far more creative.

John Boccacino: What was it, Doug, that led you to want to make that change, to go from being an agent to working as a producer in television?

Doug Robinson: Yeah, when I started Endeavor or when Endeavor was starting and I came over after about six months afterwards, or however long, maybe it was a year, and started the talent department with a friend of mine named Adam Bennett, it was great and it was fun, but there were people at that company who had an incredible vision of what that company should be. And now Endeavor became WME and they bought the UFC for $4 billion. And it's really a testament to Ari Emanuel and his vision for that company.

And it wasn't a vision that I share, to be honest with you. I didn't get into the business to own the world, I got in the business because I liked the one-on-one connection with artists when I was an agent. I liked being a storyteller as a producer, it's a much smaller, more personal business. And he had a vision that I just didn't share. And when that company was going in that direction, I wasn't happy doing it anymore. And it was time for me to pivot and do something else.

John Boccacino: And so then a common link, it seems like with a lot of people, you've both represented at a lot of the shows that you've produced. Like the Goldbergs is a comedy sense, a comedy genre. What is it about comedy that has really appealed to you and resonated with you?

Doug Robinson: What's better than laughing? Honestly, if you can sit in a room all day with a bunch of people and laugh and have a good time, and then you can sell that vision to the masses, and millions of people watch your show every week, it's great. It's fun. We shot an episode last week, or two weeks ago at Disneyland. And we never really shoot in a location that's that crowded. And so we were here, on the Sony Latin stage where we shoot The Goldbergs is right there, right outside this window. And you kind of don't get any feedback. You don't really ever see... People will be like, Oh, you produce The Goldbergs. That's great, it's one of my favorite shows, whatever that is, but to be out at Disneyland where we were with the cast and Wendi McLendon-Covey who plays Beverly is in the wig, and to see people's

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reaction to seeing the cast at Disneyland, it's fun. Comedy makes people happy.

It's not all I want to do. Part of the thing that I love being an agent is representing people like Will Smith, and seeing him do a smaller movie, like Six Degrees of Separation, or seeing people stretch beyond their limits. When Adam Sandler and I split up, because all he does is movies for Netflix now, and all the TV shows I make are Sony, one of the things I really wanted to do was do more drama, because it's really where my tastes lie. If I'm watching TV, sure, I may glance at Modern Family or go look at an episode of another comedy, but what am I watching? I'm watching Game of Thrones. I'm watching Handmaid's Tale. I'm watching Succession. I'm watching the things that a lot of people are watching. And those are the shows that I also want to make in addition to comedy.

So when I was partnered with Adam, one of the things I was smart enough to be able to do was figure out how to take the brand here I had already created and to expand that brand into TV. But it wasn't a brand that always reflected my tastes. I love his movies, but I wanted to do more. And now that I'm on my own for the last couple of years, I've been able to do that.

I have a new show coming out called For Life, which is a great prison drama based on a real story of a guy named Isaac Wright, who was charged with being a drug kingpin in New Jersey. And he was sentenced to life plus 70 years, as he tweeted out the other day, he got 40 years more than El Chapo. And he wasn't a drug kingpin, but the system was rigged to, he wouldn't accept the plea deal. And he had no college degree when he went to prison, he got his college degree, he got his law degree, sued the state of New Jersey in a civil case, won that case actually, used this piece of paper that he found to get a cop on the stand, admitted he was corrupt, the judge was corrupt, the DA was corrupt, and it took him four years after he got out of prison. So 11, you got out of prison seven years after he was sentenced. Four years after that, he was able to pass the bar, the morality test for the bar. And he's now a practicing attorney.

So to be able to tell stories like that, that aren't just comedy, is really something that I'm looking forward to and keeps me excited moving forward.

John Boccacino: What about your transition again, going back to being an agent, to getting into the producing side of it? You seem like you're again, extremely driven, extremely motivated. You'll tackle a challenge head on. But how was it going from, again, the one side of the equation being an agent, to a producer? How did you work through those building blocks and hurdles to building up that second part of your career?

Doug Robinson: First of all, I was lucky that I had Adam Sandler standing behind me and endorsing me to do it. So because of that, we were able to make a deal at Sony. So it's not like I was not funded to go buy projects. I was able to do a lot right out of the gate. And once again, all because of him endorsing me as a producer, because honestly, what did I know about producing?

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So it was challenging, because your commerce is so different as an agent than it is as a producer. When you're an agent, you have all these clients and your phone is constantly ringing. And when you're, say I'm the producer now, nothing happens until you go out and make it happen. So I had to meet with writers and hear pitches and figure out, okay, is that a show? Can we sell that? Or here's an idea that I have, and work with writers, maybe to develop that.

And I got lucky, a pilot that an idea that I had worked with a writer on got shot that first year. And then we shot the pilot and the writer said to me, he lived in New York, I'm going back to New York. Now you edit the pilot. And I knew nothing, nothing about editing. Closest I ever sat in an edit bay was visiting a client, director clients who were editing. But I didn't know the first thing about it, but I figured it out. I don't know how, I don't know why. And I don't know where I had this whole other brain that I had not been using before, but I figured out how to do it.

Now, half the students can do it because they're all probably better editors than a lot of the editors we use. I don't know how to push the buttons when I'm editing, but I know the cuts to make that are going to make a show tight and right, and find the comedy or find the emotion of the drama. And I just knew how to do it somehow. And from then on, I've been lucky and I've been doing this for 15 years now. I've had at least one show on the air for the last 14.

John Boccacino: It might be a tough question to ask, Doug, because again of the passion you put into your work, but when you look at some of the TV shows you've been affiliated with, what stands out to you as maybe some of your most proud moments, or shows that you got to work on, talent you got to work with?

Doug Robinson: Different ones for different reasons. Rules of Engagement was a really fun show to make. And then I knew David Spade, for I was his agent before then. So to have the opportunity to work with David in a different capacity was really fun, to be making something creatively with him and prove myself creatively, and having the opportunity to direct episodes of that show and direct David, which when I was an agent was never even something that was imaginable. That show was really, it had its own challenges because it never took off. And every year we had to figure out ways to convince the network to pick it up for another season. But it was a really fun show to make.

The Goldbergs is a tough show to make, because there are so many elements to that show, all the clips that we have to clear every week of movies and references. And it's a difficult show that just takes a lot of time, but obviously the end result has been great and people seem to love it, and something that we're all really proud of.

So each show has its own special place for different reasons. I did a show that probably no one ever heard of called Imaginary Mary, that only lasted 10 episodes, but what was great about that was it was part live action and part CG animation. And it was really challenging show to make. And I got to work with really great

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animators and learn a different part of the business. So every show has its own special thing. When you make it, they all kind of become your babies.

John Boccacino: What about, you mentioned some future projects, working on some more drama type side productions. What other challenges do you want to take on for yourself, moving forward with your career?

Doug Robinson: Well, I want an Emmy. That's kind of my goal, but in a world of 500 some odd scripted shows it's really hard to do. But that's something that I would love to do, a show that has that kind of impact on people, or one of those shows that is just a critical darling, because I've made shows that have been big commercial successes, but I haven't had that big critical hit, which I would love to have.

John Boccacino: Any certain topics you want to address when it comes to maybe future projects?

Doug Robinson: I want to continue to do more drama. I really enjoy it. It's challenging. It gets to redefine who I am because I think I've been so associated with comedy in my career. So the ability to continue to redefine myself, as I did when I was an agent and became a producer and then got to redefine myself as a creative person. And now I want to take that and change the perception of just doing someone who just does comedies, and make it more about drama. So I've been able to do that with one show, and hopefully I'll be doing more.

John Boccacino: In 2017, you launched your own company, Doug Robinson Productions. What made that the right time to go out on your own and launch the company? And then tell us about your company's goals and objectives.

Doug Robinson: I really would have worked with Adam Sandler for the rest of my life. He's my friend. And he's, like I said, one of the greatest people that I know. But he made a deal where he was exclusive to Netflix for him and his company. And I had shows that I had at Sony, I still had the Goldbergs. I had the spinoff, Schooled. I had a bunch of things in the pipeline, and I wasn't ready to walk away from those and make shows exclusively for Netflix. So just by virtue of where he was in his career and the fact that I had established myself independently of Happy Madison Television, at that point I was Happy Madison Television. It was just the right sort of natural split for us. He's doing great and making great movies for Netflix, and his comedy special is fantastic that he just did for them. And I'm continuing to make shows for Sony, and have the ability to sell them everywhere, to ABC, NBC, Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, wherever the show is right.

John Boccacino: Do you ever take a moment to take stock and, not say pinch yourself, but this is a land where you have people tell stories and they say dreams come true. And you look at where you came from, your humble beginnings to be right now where you are in this awesome office, doing the great work you're doing. Is it surreal, the success? Do you ever take a moment to pinch yourself?

Doug Robinson: Every morning when I drive on the lot, I'm like, I get to drive past sound stages, and

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I have five sound stages that I use on this lot now, which is, yeah. I don't spend much time dwelling on it because I'm always thinking about what's next, but I know how lucky I've been.

John Boccacino: How much of your success would you credit for your time at Syracuse and the lessons that you learned there?

Doug Robinson: It's funny because I have a son who's going through the process of applying to colleges now, and Syracuse happens to be one of the schools he's looking at. And as a friend of mine said, I want him to have his own path in life. I want my son to have his own path. And a friend of mine said, so... Backing up, my inclination is to push him away from Syracuse because he should have his own path. Not my path. My path should not be his path, but he really seems to love it right now. And so I was talking to a friend of mine about my son going to Syracuse. And he said, why are you trying to push him away from that? And he said, look at how many of our friends went to Syracuse and how well they're all doing.

So I think that Syracuse is a school that, when you come out of it, it's going to get your foot in a door. And then the question is, what are you going to do when your foot's through that door? How do you maximize that opportunity? And when that opportunity can be 10 minutes talking to somebody, to not even have a job interview, but might lead you to a job interview. So that's what your hope is when you graduate college is, can you get in that door? Not submit your resume online and hope somebody sees it, but can you get your foot in the door? And then what's your narrative when you're in that door? What's your story that you're going to tell that separates you from anyone else? And I think Syracuse helped prepare me for that.

John Boccacino: One of the coolest aspects of being here in Los Angeles is the semester that Syracuse University students can take advantage of here. Why do you like to give back to students? What's that like to, whether it's speaking at a commencement, whether it's having them for a tour, answering questions and answers that they might have, what about students excites you to get to work with them?

Doug Robinson: It's funny, because I was talking to somebody about that this morning, this exact question. I think being on a college campus, and I think when people who just graduated from college, it's the greatest time in your life. And I don't say that because... Here's why it's the greatest time. It is the greatest time in your life because anything is possible. You are a blank slate, and you are starting out on your journey of what it really is, your own journey. When you grow up, you are pretty much told what school you're going to go to. You go to the elementary school that's down the street, or the one that your parents want you to go to. And then that school is a feeder to some middle school, which is a feeder to some high school. You have a say in where you go to college, but when you're there, the classes that you have to take are given to you. When you graduate college, it's you. You're on your own and anything is possible.

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And that's my belief. When you say, do you pinch yourself when I get to drive on where I get to work? The answer is, yeah, I kind of do, but I had a vision for it. And I think that when you graduate from college, you need to have a vision of where you want to go. Who do you want to be? Who inspires you? And I'm not talking about actors or athletes. I'm talking about who and whatever area of interest. Maybe you just want to be in business. And you look at somebody like Jeff Bezos and you go, that guy's incredible. Or you look at the person who runs whatever business interests you, and you go, how can I be that person? And I really believe that every student has the ability, or should have the ability, or at least the drive, to try to figure out how you can go that distance.

So I love that moment in time. And one of the reasons why I helped start SULA, and it's one of the framed things I have on my wall hanging outside my office, is because it used to drive me crazy that, here's this school tucked away in central New York that supposedly could help you get in the entertainment industry, but yet had no real connections to the entertainment industry. And I would be on a set and I would run into a production assistant, a young person who was working and like, Oh, is this your first shot? No, I'm a student at Ithaca who had a program out here that allows students to come out and do internships and take classes. And Emerson had one. Why don't we do this at Syracuse?

So it was something that I just kept hammering, hammering, hammering. If you really want to be in the entertainment industry, if you want to say you're the number one communications school, you got to have a presence here. And fortunately, Lorraine, Dean Burnham was on board for that. And I think it's the greatest thing for me personally, that I've selfishly seen the university do because I have two assistants that were training, that were in that program who work out here full time now and work for me, both came out and did their semesters here. And there are a number of people that came through who are now working at agencies and management companies and studios. So it's the greatest program that I think Syracuse has ever done, because it really truly has given them a presence out here in Los Angeles now, and has put Syracuse on the map in the entertainment industry.

John Boccacino: Well, it's refreshing to hear you say that because, yeah, we do fancy ourselves to be a worldwide leader. And the fact that the program has taken off and has given these students access to world-class internship opportunities, networking opportunities, you have to make the most of the moment. And obviously it's not as crass as, Hey, get me a job, but networking is such a vital part of what you guys do, it seems like.

When you do have a chance to talk to students, is there one other piece of advice or one other practice that you tell them to maybe set them up for success?

Doug Robinson: Don't be afraid to reach out to people. Don't, don't. We had an intern this semester who, I won't name names because I don't want 3000, however many people emailing this person, but reached out to a really big agent and just sent them an

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email and said who they were, what they're doing, found some common connection to a client of his that they really liked. Can I have 10 minutes of your time? And he said, yes. So don't be afraid to reach out to people. You want to pick somebody's brain for five minutes, and you never know what paths are going to lead. So just don't be afraid to reach out to people. Don't be afraid to stretch beyond your comfort zone, because it's hard to face rejection, but the only way you're going to move up is to move out, and move out of your comfort zone.

John Boccacino: Well, we've had a real pleasure here on the 'Cuse Conversations Podcast, talking with Doug Robinson. We wish you nothing but the best of success. And hopefully that Emmy is not too far down the road.

Doug Robinson: Thank you.

John Boccacino: Thanks for checking out the latest installment of the 'Cuse Conversations Podcast. You can find our podcast on all of your major podcasting platforms, including Apple Podcasts, Google Play, and Spotify. You can also find our podcast at alumni.syr.edu/cuseconversations and anchor.fm/cuseconversations. My name is John Boccacino signing off for the 'Cuse Conversations Podcast.

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