Interviews

Movers and Shakers Interview with Todd Giannattasio

Published

3 years ago

February 10, 2020

Tell us your name and a little about yourself.

My name is Todd Giannattasio and I’m the co-founder and CMO of Ziotag, a transformational technology company that is disrupting the online video industry using Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning.

I started my first real company in 2011, a digital marketing agency with a heavy focus on inbound and content marketing. Over that time, I’ve become obsessed with how brands can build an audience using content and technology. When I crossed paths last year with my eventual partners in Ziotag and they told me the idea, I immediately knew it was an industry disruptor and I had to be a part of it.

What exactly does your company do?

Ziotag is an AI-powered video player that makes searching and navigating video content a seamless experience. You simply copy and paste the URL of any online video (or audio) and Ziotag will automatically generate transcripts, then create an Actionable Table of Contents (AToC) by understanding the context of the conversations in the video, while adding ‘deep tags’ to each segment in the AToC.

Now every word of your video is fully searchable with results showing up as a clickable timestamp to the moment of that search phrase.

Every segment of your entire video library is now properly indexed and organized.

Viewers can search your video gallery or skim the AToC of specific videos to find the topics that are most relevant for them and stay engaged longer because they are consuming exactly what they’re interested in, and interacting with it.

This is an absolute game-changer to get more views and engagement for video podcasters, event producers, online courses, learning and development professionals, content marketers, webinar hosts, and anyone else publishing or watching videos.

What were the biggest challenges you have faced and how did you overcome them?

Back in 2012 after Hurricane Sandy, all of my clients were shut down for months. I had no work, no income. It was a scary time for a lot of reasons. But that same experience became a blessing as it turned my whole entrepreneurial career around.

Because until that time, I had been networking locally to get clients, and that’s obviously not scalable or predictable. And when the local area was closed for the foreseeable future, it gave me the time and kick I needed to start my own content marketing efforts. And I went nuts with it.

I wrote 50 blog posts in 25 days. That means planning, producing, publishing, and promoting two articles per day for 5 straight weeks. Plus I documented the journey along the way and the results I was getting.

My website shot up to the top of Google and traffic increased by over 1,000% immediately. My content was getting shared across LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter constantly. I got my first mention in Forbes. My case study became required reading at the NYU Business School. Most importantly, new clients started contacting me from all over the country.

What piece of advice do you wish someone had given you at the start of your career?

Get laser-focused. Almost nothing matters except for sales and being a master at your craft. There are a million different things you can do in business that make you feel productive, but the more things you try to accomplish the less progress you will make. Get focused on just a few priorities at a time, work on them until completion (or until they are self-sustaining or delegate-able). Get comfortable leaving things untouched when they don’t matter to your priorities. That will be the most liberating moment of your life.

Who are your biggest influences and people you admire and why?

Right now it’s hard for Kobe not to immediately come to mind. He really is the personification of excellence and commitment to mastery.

His laser focuses on being the greatest, his daily commitment to his craft, his DGAF attitude when it came to anything getting in the way of being the best.

He knew the sacrifices that it takes to be one of the best in history and he accepted that.

He didn’t tolerate mediocrity from his teammates. I think that’s something we could all use more regularly.
Anthony Iannarino has also been a great virtual mentor to me over the years. His books and online content have been a guiding force for me not just learning sales, but learning mastery and life.

I’m always devouring any content I can consume books, podcasts, courses, anything to stand on the shoulders of giants and gain wisdom and perspective faster.

Tim Ferriss’s 4 Hour Work Week was probably one of the first that had me catch the entrepreneurial bug. Dan Kennedy has played a strong role in my philosophies in marketing and business. Of course Napoleon Hill and Dale Carnegie.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are?

I have the most admiration for my wife. Seeing what she does every day raising our two daughters (3.5 and 6 months) into these amazing little humans is a wonderful thing to me in the truest meaning of the word. And she has her own successful online business as well.

I don’t know how she does it, her strength and energy through all the daily distractions and frustrations of mom life and she’s still so happy and grateful every day. She’s up early to feed the baby, working late into the night to get new products out to her customers. She’s amazing. Not to mention she is my biggest supporter. Without her, there’s no way I wouldn’t be able to do what I do.

Moms are amazing role models for entrepreneurs. Mompreneurs are next level.

What do you see as your greatest success in life?

Success is a funny thing. It’s really very contextual and relative to perspective. A lot of people appear “successful” and some people may think I appear that way. But in reality, I don’t feel anywhere near successful yet. I don’t feel like I’ve even scratched the surface of my potential impact on this world yet.

I feel like Ziotag is definitely the best vehicle I’ve had in my life so far to have a great impact on a global scale, and I’m excited to bring our mission to reality. To use this transformational technology to make all of the educational video content in the world more accessible, more organized, and allow anyone in the world to find, learn, and take action on any information that’s available at their fingertips…that will be a great success.

All that being said, my daughters are my greatest success 🙂