Ryan Millsap, Chairman & CEO of Atlanta-based Blackhall Studios, is one of today’s top entertainment executives! With a vision for Blackhall that’s ambitious, energizing and boundless, Millsap is blazing a trail through the heart of the South – and setting his sights on the future of entertainment. Listen and learn as Ryan Millsap journeys through the myriad industries, people and landscapes that traverse the complex and dynamic world of film production.
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Ryan: We’re really fortunate today to have Dana Barrett here with us -- a longtime radio personality who decided to run for office in the state of Georgia -- which is pretty exciting. I can't wait to hear this story. What a transition: to go from behind the mic to in front of the podium. What inspired that?
Dana: It's weird to be sitting here with you, because last time we saw each other, I was interviewing you.
Ryan: Which is the best part of life, when things turn around like that.
Dana: Which means I got to ask the questions. And now I'm having to answer them. So, yeah. The short version of the story is that I was doing business media for a pretty significant period of time before the 2016 election, and I purposely stayed away from political conversation because, you know, you've got sponsors and clients, and you're trying to keep everybody happy. You just don't go there in ‘polite company,’ you know. Then, when 2016 happened, I just felt like I couldn't keep my mouth shut anymore. So I started talking politics on my radio show. At the time, I was working for a media company that was pretty conservative. And they were not happy about that. So, ultimately, that caused me to get fired from that station, which was a gamble that I was willing to take.
Ryan: Well, you know, you’ve gotta be yourself.
Dana: I just felt like I had reached a point in my life where I had to stand up for what I believed in and take that risk.
Ryan: And what I love about that is, you know, you think about the all the conversations about authenticity; taking risks; being vulnerable. But there's consequences of that.
Dana: There are; if you truly believe in what you're doing, it all works out. And in my case, I had made a lot of connections in the radio business. So I ended up moving over to the iHeart talk station, WGST, and started doing a show from there. On that show, I was essentially talking politics two hours a day, every day. And I was feeling good about that. But when I really looked at what I was doing, I was talking in the bubble to people who agreed with me.
Ryan: Right.
Dana: And, during this time, I also decided I needed to move. Long story short, because of the gerrymandering in Georgia, I sort of inadvertently landed in the 11th Congressional District.
Ryan: Which district is that?
Dana: It is the northwest suburbs of Atlanta. A lot of focus has been placed on District 6, which is the one where Jon Ossoff ran and almost won -- and then Lucy McBath came in and won. And 11 is sort of right next to that, to the northwest. It’s got a little bit of Buckhead, a little bit of Sandy Springs -- and then it goes up into Cobb County, Cherokee County, and Bartow County. So it's big.
Ryan: Is it one of those counties that feels a little purple?
Dana: Well, it's traditionally red. But demographically, it’s sort of ripe to flip. And one of the problems is that there's never been a real challenge to the to the incumbent. The incumbent is Barry Loudermilk. He is very, very far to the right: the guy who was on the floor of the House during the impeachment hearings, comparing Trump to Jesus. So, he kind of made the national news and all the -- you know, Colbert, and all of that.
Ryan: I couldn't even bear to watch that stuff.
Dana: Yeah, that was him. So, I was doing the radio show. I moved into the 11th. I looked into Loudermilk when I moved, and I saw that nobody was really challenging him. So I started doing my homework to see if this was something I could do, and ultimately decided to do it. I jumped in October 1st. I'm in my second quarter in the race -- and, you know, so far, so good.
Ryan: But most importantly, it feels like it's something that's coming from the heart.
Dana: Yes, it definitely is. I'm not somebody who ever wanted to be a politician. I have no desire, even now, to be a lifelong politician. That's not my goal. I believe in term limits. I want to go in, try to shake things up, make a difference -- put things like term limits in place, change campaign finance. We need, in my opinion, to bring things back from the polarization so that we can actually start to get results. And I recognize that a two-year term is probably not enough to do that -- to go in as a freshman congressperson. I think if I could paint a perfect picture for myself, I'd go in for three terms, and then move on and let the next person come in and continue that work.
Ryan: Tell me about some of the things that you'd like to accomplish. Like, what I hear you saying is that you'd like to see a more moderate America.
Dana: Yes. And I think the reason for that is, I truly believe that more Americans live in the middle. They're just not the loudest voices. I mean, listen: you're in the media. You know that what's sexy is what sells. And the person screaming is always going to get more attention than the reasonable person who is writing real policy on paper. It's just not sexy. But I think most Americans are tired of the of the loud voices, and they're frustrated, and they don't feel like they have a voice. And our current political system drives you to the edge.
Ryan: I think that's the biggest issue that we're facing: the way that the polarization gives you two options. Where they say, “well, if you want to be part of the conversation, you can be part of the conversation on the far right. Or you want to be part of the conversation over here, you can be part of the conversation on the far left.” But wow, how nice would it be if we could get back to where there’s a conversation in the middle? I'm a California Republican who's moved to Georgia. Now I'm a Georgian, and I'm a Republican in Georgia. But yet, as a as a California Republican, oftentimes in Georgia I feel a little bit like a Democrat, because I'm so moderate. So it's difficult to relate to the conversations that are happening on the far right. It's difficult to relate to the conversations that are happening on the far left. And it would be an incredibly huge boost to our country if we could have more candidates that were in the middle, having conversations across party lines about reasonable things.
Dana: It's the only way we're going to get anything done. Because otherwise, we're just swinging the pendulum back and forth between extremes. If we stay with Trump, the Democrats stay fired up, and they come back in two years, and they win the midterms again. If we swing to the far left, and we go to the Bernie side, then the Republicans get fired up, and in the midterms they win -- and we never get anything done. We need to honestly go back to the days of a McCain who reaches across the aisle. I didn't agree with everything McCain wanted to do, but he was a gentleman.
Ryan: Listen, Bill Clinton looks like a gentleman today.
Dana: Right. And these are people that worked across the aisle; that sat down with people they didn't agree with. They came to a compromise, and they moved the country forward. And we're not doing that anymore. You know, I describe myself as socially liberal, fiscally responsible.
Ryan: I love that.
Dana: Because I too have been an entrepreneur and a businessperson. I've covered business for so long. I don't think throwing money at every problem is the solution. But I also think we need to focus on true economic development. What's going to help small businesses grow? And we don't need to just protect big corporations. We need to protect all business. That's where jobs come from.
Ryan: When you think of yourself -- when you say something like ‘fiscally conservative,’ what does that mean to you?
Dana: I like the word ‘responsible,’ just because I think the word ‘conservative’ brings a bunch of other stuff with it.
Ryan: It’s too loaded.
Dana: So I say ‘socially liberal, fiscally responsible.’
Ryan: Fiscally responsible. Fair.
Dana: What it means to me is, for example, that we should -- when we do a budget as a country -- not have a ginormous deficit. We should actually figure out how to pay for things with money that we have, or are bringing in.
Dana: I love this. This morning, I was at a breakfast with Raphael Bostic, who was the speaker, and Raphael is the president of the Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank. He had somebody ask him about deficits, and what he felt about deficits. And he had the most wonderful line. He said, “Well, my feeling on deficits is that we should make sure that we can repay our debts.” It was that simple, right? Don't get yourself so strung out that you can't service your debts. And don't get yourself so strung out that that people who have lent you money become concerned that you can't pay your debts. I thought that was a really insightful way to distill it down to the essence.
Dana: Yeah. I also think we are in this mode right now in this country, and we probably have been for a long time, where everything is short-term thinking. There is no long-term thinking. When we create this giant deficit, we're just pushing this off on our kids to pay later, right? When we punt climate issues down the pike, we're just putting it off, so our kids are going to have to deal with it. And we're doing it politician by politician, so that they can get elected, instead of actually focusing on solving real problems.
Ryan: What did you think about Jeff Bezos’ announcement that he was giving $10 billion to try to solve climate change? Did you see that?
Dana: I didn't see it. But my first reaction is: good.
Ryan: Yeah, amazing, right? I thought it was incredible. I love seeing these guys not just try to solve how to get satellites into space, and get human beings on tourist experiences of space, or get rockets to Mars. But now, suddenly, like taking on the challenge of saying, “All right, climate change is real, and we're really rich, so how can we throw resources and mindpower behind the attempt to solve this problem that we have?”
Dana: The only other thing I would say to Jeff -- as if we were on a first name basis -- is “Pay your taxes, dude.” Like, that's it.
Ryan: You don't think he's paying his taxes?
Dana: Personally, I'm sure he pays his taxes. But the corporation -- they're using legal loopholes. They're not doing anything illegal, but I think this whole idea that we can put corporate headquarters in other countries and pay their tax rate instead of the US tax rate, and all these games that companies play so that they don't have to pay taxes -- there's got to be a better way.
Ryan: Now, one of the things I'll say about that is, the difficulty is that all of these countries are sovereign nations. So then, in order to try to create a system like you're talking about, you'd have to have something that was above the sovereign nation. Because Jeff is doing business with the UK, and that is totally separate and distinct from the business he's doing with the US -- and totally separate and distinct from the business he's doing with Sweden or Switzerland or Saudi Arabia, for that matter. So, it's a very complicated economic web that is difficult to solve. And so then, because it's not solved at some sort of meta level, then you have intelligent guys who are saying, “All right, well, we do business here, and money flows there,” and they're trying to solve problems based on the rules.
Dana: Well, they are following the rules, in fairness. And they do have the top experts who are helping them figure out how to pay the least amount of tax possible. That's their job. I get it. I think the problem is that smaller businesses don't have those same resources and end up with all the tax burden. I mean, I've had very small companies over the course of my life, and I couldn't offshore my taxes. It didn't go that way for me.
Ryan: That's fair. But I think if you looked at it on a whole-dollar basis, the amount of taxes that are flowing in because of Amazon or Apple or Google provides so much social benefit to the country as a whole that whatever we're losing based on tax loopholes in inter-country relationships is probably, net-net, not that big a loss, relative to the scale of beauty and amazingness that these guys are adding to the country.
Dana: Fair. And I have to say: all of these guys -- at least the ones that I can think of off the top of my head -- all do really good works with their money. I mean, Bill Gates does. Bezos is doing it. I mean, even Tesla -- you know, Elon Musk is doing things with solar panels. They're all working to make the world a better place with their money and time, and they don't have to. So I do give them all credit for that.
Ryan: And I think what's interesting, when you say they don't have to -- I think these guys have figured out that their happiness is tied to doing incredibly human things. So I think they're compelled to do this in a search for happiness.
Dana: Yeah.
Ryan: When you get that rich -- I mean, I don't know what it's like to be that rich, but I imagine.
Dana: Me neither.
Ryan: Let's do the thought experiment of getting that rich. You get that rich. And then you say, what's it all about? And how do I find deeper levels of happiness? Then you're all into this self-actualization mode. And if you're doing it well, then you're going to be doing things, I think, like what Bill Gates is doing. Have you watched the wonderful Netflix three-part series ‘Inside Bill's Brain?’
Dana: I have not.
Ryan: It’s fantastic. And it's all about Bill Gates taking the Gates Foundation money and really focusing in on particular problems: throwing huge amounts of money at resources and trying to solve something particular.
Dana: Yeah.
Ryan: That only happens if you get really, really smart guys who are really, really rich.
Dana: Yeah.
Ryan: Right? So I think that there's a there's an element of letting these guys play and explore, and having belief that in the end, things are going to work out well when it comes to these really huge billionaire kind of guys.
Dana: Yeah. And I do think -- I mean, look, that all sort of circles back to what I'm doing. I don't have that kind of money. I don't have those kinds of resources. But I’ve reached a certain age in my life where it's not just about my personal happiness anymore. It's not about, you know, the next pair of shoes, or the next good meal out, or whatever it is. It's about looking at the bigger world and saying, “I have a voice. I have an ability. I have the time.” Whatever the case may be -- or, in their case, “I have the money, and I want to work on making this world better.” For me, it's not about a legacy, per se. It's not about what people remember after I'm gone. It's about leaving the world a better place, whether someone remembers my name or not.
Ryan: So, let me frame my question, and then leave it with you: I sit in a kind of a unique place because I didn't grow up in Georgia. I love this state. I consider it my home, but I have as many friends on the far right as I do on the far left. I feel as comfortable having conversations in the far right as I do having conversations in the far left, and I feel like I can straddle that with a lot of comfort -- in a way that a lot of my friends on the far right can't, and a lot of my friends on the far left can't. My friends on the far right are really concerned that Georgia is somehow being overrun by liberal ideas, and that their whole way of life is going to be pushed aside. I don't have that fear at all. I think that that there's room for everybody to live their lives however they want in America, which is beautiful. But my question to you is: when you talk about being socially liberal, tell me what that means to you? Because I think that there's a middle ground where both sides can come together and have a lot more common things that they can agree on. But I think it takes starting to have that conversation. So, walk me through what you think of when you say, ‘I'm a social liberal, I'm fiscally responsible.’
Dana: I think, for a lot of people on the far right, the fear is that the liberals, the progressives, just want to spend a ton of money on programs. For me, what I mean by ‘socially liberal’ is, I fully support the LGBTQ community and their right to marry. That you should be able to love whoever you want to love. I support the trans community, and their desire to be whoever it is they want to be. I mean, how does that change my life? Why does it matter to me what somebody else is doing in their home, in their bedroom; with whatever clothes they choose to wear or how they want to be addressed; what pronouns they use? It doesn't. For me, that should not be something we're dealing with, in terms of restricting people.
Ryan: What you're saying is that one of the premises of our society should be people should be allowed to do whatever they want.
Dana: If it doesn't hurt anyone else.
Ryan: Correct.
Dana: I mean, if what you're doing doesn't hurt anyone else, then why do I care? I'm pro-choice, so that's part of my social liberalism.
Ryan: I'm 100% behind a woman having the choice to do with her body what she chooses to do. From a philosophical standpoint, it becomes incredibly complicated.
Dana: Yeah. Although I have to tell you, I think this is another classic example where the powers that be want us to stay on that issue -- because it means, if you're choosing to vote on a candidate solely because they're pro-life or pro-choice, you're ignoring everything else. You become a one issue voter. And we're never going to solve that problem with science, right? We don't know when life begins, and we never will.
Ryan: I agree with that.
Dana: So, it's a faith-based and a medical-based decision. And my take on this -- and, by the way, I have raised money for my campaign from people who are pro-life, even though I'm pro-choice. Because what I've said is, in in my view, we have been fighting this battle in the government and in the courts for 60-plus years; 70 years; whatever it's been now -- and we're not getting anywhere. Instead, we're wasting court resources. We're wasting lobbying dollars. We're wasting time, energy, money, etc. on this issue, when we have evidence that shows that you reduce the number of abortions by education far more than you do by legislation. So, I say, let's take this out of the government and out of the courts, and let it be a private issue. Whoever disagrees with me, who are pro-life -- you have free speech, and you have the right to educate people on your beliefs all day long. And I would never stop you from doing that. But let's educate people on what their options are, and let's stop dealing with this in the courts and in the government, so that we can focus on things like infrastructure -- our roads are falling down. So that we can focus on things like healthcare, and actually make sure people are getting healthcare when they're sick, instead of going bankrupt when they're sick. But instead, we just keep fighting over this issue...
Ryan: ...That you feel like needs to be put to bed. Not because it's not philosophically complicated. Because we all will agree that it's very philosophically complicated.
Dana: Agreed.
Ryan: We want to legislate freedom.
Dana: Yes.
Ryan: And educate choice.
Dana: There you go. Can I steal that from you?
Ryan: You could steal it. I’ve been using it for years.
Dana: I like it.
Ryan: For years, I've said, “just legislate my freedom and educate my choice. All will be well.” So you can use that at your will.
Dana: There you go. I will pay you a licensing fee. (Not.)
Ryan: Okay. So when you say, “I'm socially liberal,” what you really mean is, “I want to legislate freedom and I want to educate choice.” Is that fair?
Dana: Yeah, it is fair. It really is.
Ryan: And that kind of goes across the board everywhere. How would you do that with medical? Like, how does that fit together with medical?
Dana: You know, it's interesting. I don't know if that really fits the medical conversation as well -- from a slogan standpoint.
Ryan: Does that go over into maybe ‘fiscally responsible?’
Dana: Yes, because I think my issue is, I don't support Medicare for all. I think it's a nice idea. And I think the reason people like it is because it fits on a bumper sticker. It says, “hey, government's going to come take care of me, and I won't have to worry.” And who doesn't want to be taken care of? There is some comfort in that. And I get it.
Ryan: In theory, right?
Dana: In theory, sure.
Ryan: I want to be a billionaire like Jeff Bezos in theory.
Dana: Right? Me too.
Ryan: But then it's just, where does the money come from?
Dana: Right. So, here's my problem. And I struggle with this on a lot of the topics. We are in a place of bumper sticker politics, where if it doesn't fit on a placard or a bumper sticker, or in 140 characters, we can't be bothered to dig any deeper. And I just think our healthcare system is way more complicated than that. So, for me, it shouldn't be a choice on the left -- on the Democratic side -- between Medicare for all and Medicare for those who want it, or whatever, right? We need to actually dig deeper. If you look at what's happening in healthcare today, there are tons of layers of people in the middle who are making a ton of money. And we at the end -- the consumer -- we don't see it. I think we have to start digging into the industry. I know everybody hates the word regulation, but that industry needs regulation. We have proven that there there's too many people taking advantage. And by the way, regulation isn't going to cost us what Medicare for all would cost us. So it would actually potentially save the insurance industry and benefit them. Maybe they will make a little bit less profit, but they can continue to exist if we regulate properly. And I think the same is true with the pharmaceutical industry. There are so many middlemen that are jacking up the prices of drugs; the prices of insurance. We need things in this country like price transparency. And I don't know if you know this -- it kind of went under the radar -- but Trump actually just signed an executive order a month or so ago about price transparency. The problem is: by itself, it doesn't solve the problem. It just looks good on paper. What we need is price transparency at all levels, across the medical spectrum, along with doctor choice. You have to be able to pick your own doctors. No insurance companies should be able to say, “it's out-of-network. We pay zero.” That's crazy. If your car breaks -- if you get into a car accident and your car's wrecked -- you can take it to the body shop that your insurance recommends, or you can take it to your own. And they still pay.
Ryan: Right? No, it makes perfect sense.
Dana: But that doesn't happen in medical.
Ryan: Well, what I hear you saying -- which I think is really needed -- is that you don't want to have this driven by ideology. You want to have this driven by true economic thoughtfulness. Actual numbers on a page, and how things make sense. True compassion for other people at the same time -- but without compassion that doesn't have substance.
Dana: Right.
Ryan: Actual sustainable compassion.
Dana: I mean, people don't realize that, within Medicare, there is this idea -- it's legally written down somewhere; I don't know the statute or where it says it, but they're not allowed to negotiate price. How is that a good system?
Ryan: Listen: we would be so fortunate to have somebody as thoughtful and reflective as you, Dana, representing us in our government. We need more people like you.
Dana: Thank you.
Ryan: It's been great to have you on here today. I appreciate you taking the time. I wish you all the best in your campaign. I hope it goes wildly successful and that you end up being able to implement all this passion that you have to help all the people you want to represent.
Dana: Thank you, Ryan. It's such a pleasure. I could talk all day.
Ryan: Dana, if anybody wants to get in touch with you about your campaign, tell me some of your social media -- what are the best ways to do that?
Dana: The best thing to do is to go to my campaign website, which is electdanabarrett.com. You can find me on all the socials. It's @ElectDanaBarrett on Instagram and Facebook, and I think it's @TheDanaBarrett on Twitter.
Ryan: Great. Well, if you like what you heard today, go seek Dana out and help her in her campaign. We'd all be lucky to have somebody like her representing us.
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