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How I Became A COO!

Chief Operating Officer?

It Started As… Like many things in life, things often start with a thought. Maybe a dream or the hope of doing something different. When people ask me how I ended up in Bali it always boils down to luck or happenstance.

It could have been luck or destiny, who knows? I’ll never know and maybe I don’t want to know. All I know is, that one day in early 2018 I got a call from my friend Karan in Jakarta to see if I could help them shoot a small part of the film Hanum and Rangga. This little bit of a helping hand got me in touch with MD Pictures after about 20 years. When my friend Manoj, the owner of MD Pictures/MD Entertainment came to Toronto we got the shoot done, and with that came a job offer. 

Going IPO

MD was to be the first entertainment company in Indonesia to go public. So, they got the ticket: film and he needed a COO. I was not expecting or hoping for a job offer from my friend as I already had a job. The thought of switching continents, and countries and learning a new language was nowhere on my radar.

I love Indonesia, I love the people and the food. I have always had amazing experiences in Jakarta and Indonesia in general. So, when I was asked to help MD Pictures as the COO, I was a little shocked. Ok, I was very shocked.

One, because I was not expecting it, and two because I had not been in the film industry for a while. Though I knew the inner workings much of the entertainment industry would be new to me. However, the thought of organizing and running a big company was nothing new. Having had to produce 600 pieces of furniture from scratch each day for IKEA when we had our factory was the norm. MD had about the same number of staff at the time as we did. 250 people, several departments… How hard could this be? Essentially running our furniture business is the same as any other business once you have a helicopter view. It is all a matter of looking at where the fires and bottlenecks are and making clear logical decisions to move forward.

Did I Take the Job?

Yes, yes, I did. I moved to Jakarta in August 2018. I was planning on trying this out for a year. See how things went and take things on a day-to-day basis. The year was passing quickly and while there was much to learn, it was all about organization and bringing the departments together. As the year came to a close, I was asked to stay on and continue as COO. Then the pandemic came, and I was stuck in Jakarta. Yup. I was stuck as travel came to a halt. At the same time, I was at the end of the Jakarta Film Studio and Fourmix Dolby Atmos construction. Launching the studio and the sound mixing facility came to a screeching halt.

I ended up moving to the studio as COVID-19 was rampant in the apartment complex and took over the operations of the studio and RDM Publishing. This was something new but as MD Pictures restructured, we needed to make the changes. This change and COVID extended my stay at MD Pictures to 3 years before we parted ways and I moved to Bali to work for a different company.

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Zsolt Zsemba

Zsolt Zsemba has worn many different hats. He has been an entrepreneur, and businessman for over 30 years. Living abroad has given him many amazing experiences in life and also sparked his imagination for writing. After moving to Canada from Hungary at the age of 10 and working in a family business for a large part of his life. The switch from manufacturing to writing came surprisingly easily for him. His passion for writing began at age 12, mostly writing poetry and short stories. In 1999, the chance came to write scripts. Zsolt took some time off from his family business to write in Jakarta Indonesia for MD Entertainment. Having written dozens of soap operas and made for TV movies, in 2003 Zsolt returned to the family business once more. In 2018, he had the chance to head back to Asia once again. He took on the challenge to be the COO for MD Pictures and get back into the entertainment business. The entertainment business opened up the desire to write once more and the words began to flow onto the pages again. He decided to rewrite a book he began years ago. Organ House was reborn and is a fiction suspense novel while Scars is a young adult drama focused on life’s challenges. After the first two books, his desire to write not only became more challenging but enjoyable as well. After having several books completed he was convinced to publish them for your enjoyment. Zsolt does not tend to stay in one specific genre but tends to lean towards strong female leads and horror. Though he also has a few human interest books, he tends to write about whatever brews in his brain for a while.