What Business Mentors Taught Me About Media, Perception, and Influence — and How It Led Me to Build an Advocacy Documentary Firm

In a lot of ways, I never really had the typical college experience. I didn’t get the full experience of living in a dorm, partying, worrying about the SATs, or anything else because, by the time I was 20, I found myself working for one of the world’s largest crowd service firms. Instead of learning about the subject in a classroom, I was thrust into the world of media, perception, and influence, working at one of the top P.R. firms in the world, and I used those skills to start my own advocacy firm, Afterlife Films.

By the time I started working for the company, within my first year alone, I had netted $20,000. Not bad for a 20-year-old who wasn’t even registered for college. Once I enrolled in college during the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, I took a “break” when the world went into lockdown, but I managed to work off-site for a P.R. firm called Crowds on Demand. The CEO quickly became a business mentor, and through learning from him, I learned a few things that helped me with my startup firm.

If You Have The Money, You Control The Narrative:

If you want a message addressed or amplified to the public, if you have the money, that message will be showcased to the eyes of as many people as possible. This is a great thing if your intentions are for a good cause, but since money can create causes meant for false perception, can be designed, or fabricated, in the wrong hands, money can be a tool to negatively impact a person, cause, or message. I’ve seen firsthand what people are able and willing to do just because they have the cash behind them. If they want a narrative amplified, even one that is morally flawed, they can directly send that message to millions of people. For these concerning reasons, this is why I am building Afterlife Films. Afterlife is not in the business of producing hit pieces or amplifying causes for negative reasons, but personal biases and vendettas are something people can buy. I was taught by my business mentor to always look at clients and their inquiries on a case-by-case basis.

Know Your Client, Know Who You’re Dealing With:

On our site, if a curious client inquires about getting an advocacy documentary produced by Afterlife, the one thing absolutely required is proof or other credible evidence of what you want us to help you fight for. Planning on exposing a chemical factory that left your entire neighborhood with diseases? Stating that your child has been severely bullied in school and the administration did nothing about it? Afterlife vets every inquiry carefully to ensure accuracy and responsible storytelling from the very beginning of production. Evidence can include documentation such as video footage, photographs, witness statements, or any other relevant evidence that helps establish context. If you do not share these things, we look at it as a red flag. In fact, although Afterlife has successfully completed numerous cases and is taking on cases today, we are not officially launching until three years from now due to constant refining of our process before scaling further.

Advocacy And Protest Is The Greatest Weapon Or Shield You Can Use:

Protests do a hundred things all at once. It’s great marketing, it amplifies a cause, it gets people to back your message, and more voices than one can be used to change policies, demand public attention, or revolutionize a message. Or it can be used as the perfect weapon of defense. Let’s use a real-world example of when a client reached out to us to hold a major organization accountable.

An African American family had reached out stating they were racially discriminated against by an employee of a major hotel chain. A 25-year-old Black man approached the hotel bar for a drink. The hotel staff refused him service, falsely claiming he was underage, “looked suspicious,” and had presented a fake ID to them. The young man’s aunt approached the same bartender and was met with the same disrespect, as the staff member refused to serve her as well and aggressively claimed he “knew” she would pass the drink to an underage minor despite having no knowledge of their relationship. He then proceeded to call law enforcement on her.

Just like we vet every inquiry, we asked for proof of the incident. The family sent us the man’s official passport that he showed the staff member, showing us he was above the legal drinking age, proof of their hotel residency, and the written complaint the aunt had sent to management.

We then structured a 30-minute investigative documentary. We filmed on-camera interviews with the young man and his aunt recounting the discriminatory event and edited in smartphone footage recorded by the aunt during the bartender’s refusal of service. We issued a formal letter to the hotel’s management team and presented them with a strict ultimatum: address this immediately, make this right for the family your employee discriminated against, or face a widespread digital P.R. campaign and the public release of the documentary exposing the hotel within full legal limits.

Alas, the hotel’s corporate management team broke their silence. They reached out to the aunt and nephew, profusely apologized, and made it clear that what happened was an “absolute racial discrimination matter.” The hotel forced the staff member to be suspended, and the family was compensated by being issued a complimentary luxury stay. For this family, justice was served, and no documentary was ever published, though they always have the footage in case a situation like that happens again at the hotel chain. All within legal bounds.

Be a Voice for People Whose Stories Don’t Get Heard Loud Enough to Matter:

This is the ultimate reason why Afterlife exists. Think about the number of cases of everyday discrimination, social issues, and other situations that never see the light of day. This could be for many reasons, but a main one is because small, everyday problems may not be big enough for a story or for a major advocacy firm to pick up. There are countless stories of people facing quiet, everyday injustices with nowhere to turn.

Let’s assume a case is legally finalized. Court rulings don’t always equate to true justice or accountability. Or a client doesn’t have the money to even file a lawsuit or invest in a long, ongoing process. The reasons could be many, but whatever the case, Afterlife fills the gap: to give visibility to the overlooked and to bring attention to the kinds of harm that often remain unseen, unrecorded, and unaddressed.

So the next time you have a story that needs to be heard but may be overlooked, Afterlife Films will take it from there.

Get in touch with the CEO here: khalifbradley101@gmail.com