He used charm, others’ personal tragedies and fake celebrity endorsements. How Christopher LaVoie cast his reality show and reeled in successful entrepreneurs and corporate giants
“Chris has a rare ability to make an average person relatable,” says LaVoie, who had a similar success story a decade ago. He had a regular daytime TV show on NBC’s The Today Show, but was dismissed by NBC because he was black.
“I was on the show and I was called a ‘gangster’ or ‘drug pusher.’ I was called a ‘con.’ I got so fed up that I didn’t want to work in television at all. That whole experience is completely gone, thankfully,” he says.
Now LaVoie — at least for his first few seasons on The Profit — has succeeded on a completely different level. He has appeared on NBC’s reality television show The Apprentice, made the documentary Profit by The Profit, and created a magazine called The Profit. As a result, he was recently named the most sought-after producer by the American Society of Magazine Editors, according to the Los Angeles Times.
The Profit, launched in June, is like the Kardashian sisters’ life in a box. No one is spared from being interviewed or even profiled. There are no interruptions during the production, and the interview subjects — all of whom are either entrepreneurs or executives — answer to one question: Who should make the first move?
All we ever wanted to be was a normal person | Chris LaVoie
“I think it has changed the way business is done. The fact that you can tap into people’s pain points and tap into their emotions to create a positive, fun atmosphere,” says LaVoie, who took the job after a successful career in public relations, including as director of media relations at the NBA, where he negotiated the largest NBA contracts in history.
He has since turned the same approach on the television industry.
