Highly experienced, eminently stylish and graciously attentive, Magalie Rheault is the consummate diplomat, leveraging her 15 years of adult industry knowledge to execute company goals with aplomb.
As the chief operations officer for Evil Angel these past two years, with a strong resume as a longtime Gamma Entertainment employee from 2004 to 2017 running the gamut from affiliate management to product development, monetization and licensing, Rheault knows her way around the digital media game.
With Gamma as the main web partner for Evil, she is intimately familiar with the inner and outer workings of the complex mechanisms that whirr, whistle and spark to ensure content is flowing as demand is growing.
Backed by a roster of multi-talented and XBIZ Award-winning directors, not to mention the innovative Chris Gentile as chief creative officer and legendary founder John Stagliano serving up the big picture, Rheault deftly delegates duties to a resourceful human resources.
Now that Evil Angel is looking back on three decades of rocking the sex biz, XBIZ sat down with the brains behind the COO, for this executive suite interview.
XBIZ: Tell us about your background in the adult industry.
Rheault: Well, this will definitely make me sound young … I started in 2004! I joined Gamma Entertainment in Montreal as an affiliate manager for a mainstream program they were running. They were about 20 employees only at the time. A year later, we started the partnership model that everyone knows today and launched FameDollars’ affiliate program that I managed for years.
I became a product director a few years later and was in charge of website development, marketing strategies, building and growing internal teams, signing new partners, handling the relationship with our multiple partners and studios — and more. My last two years there, I was VP of monetization, conversion and licensing, three groups that were at the forefront of Gamma’s activities, on the product and marketing side.
I was lucky to have Gamma as my first company in the porn world, as they taught me so much. I also was fortunate to start at the very beginning of new activities, as I got to be involved in every part of creating successful products, teams and being part of building a company to almost 200 people. I left in 2017, after 14 happy years, and joined the Evil Angel’s executive team shortly after.
XBIZ: What led you to join Evil Angel, and how has your role at the company evolved in the past couple years?
Rheault: I joined Evil Angel in 2017 as their chief commercial officer. I was the CFO/general manager’s right hand regarding our online activities, business development and broadcast activities.
Since the departure of Adam Grayson as the CFO of the company, my role expanded a lot on the operations side. I am now the chief operating officer of Evil Angel and my responsibilities are now global to the whole company, rather than a specific segment of business. Company goals, teams and operation processes have to be created and aligned, so it’s my responsibility to make sure everything is in place to deliver successful products and to run a healthy company.
Isn’t the true job of a COO to manage the CEO anyway?
XBIZ: Given your extensive digital media experience, what are your plans for ensuring Evil stays on the cutting-edge of the competitive paysite biz.
Rheault: Well, as you say, having worked for Gamma for the last 14 years, and having them still as our main web partner, managing our membership site and online activities, I feel very confident that we’re in good hands. Having worked for them that long, it’s easy to debate on the future of our online state, to discuss new features etc., because we speak the same language, so it’s easy.
For us at Evil, being more hands-off with online activities, our goal is to create and deliver the best product possible: movies that represent our brand, that satisfy our customers on every platform and that are consistent in quality. We are also more active in engaging with our members, having created a closed focus group for power users and getting feedback on our content. This is where we believe we can really make a difference in retaining our members longer and converting new porn fans to our brand.
XBIZ: Discuss your approach to fostering a healthy roster of award-winning directors, while ensuring their productions are meeting company goals, which are a moving target themselves.
Rheault: In my opinion, the key to the success of Evil Angel is really the trust that John put in his directors. For years they shot some of the best content out there with limited access to data; it was often intuition and passion.
Now, with the business intelligence metrics that we have at hand, it’s easier to get a pulse on what’s working and what’s not. It’s our role to educate our directors as best as possible for them to make the best product. It’s the junction between data and intuition.
We started producing more in-house content as well, and that definitely helps us in aligning our own productions.
XBIZ: As a chief exec with a bird’s-eye view, how do you balance delegating tasks with diving into the trenches personally? Also, talk about your dynamic with other top-level Evil Angel execs, like founder John Stagliano and CCO Chris Gentile.
Rheault: When shit hits the fan, I step in. No, seriously, I’ve been in an executive role long enough to know very well the power of delegating. I trust that our team and people I work with will do the best they can and if a problem arises, I have an open-door policy where I can be of help at any time. They know this.
I do take the lead on company organization, employee’s roles and engagement, leading company changes and managing the daily operation needs, in the background. I also take on the business development side of Evil Angel as a whole, and I’m heavily involved with our website and licensing activities. Of course, I touch everything, but I’m surrounded by a great team of masters at their craft.
John and Chris are really the ones creating and influencing the content coming out of Evil Angel. We work well together, as we are very complimentary to one another. We have a great deal of respect for each other’s expertise and are open to discuss divergence of opinions.
XBIZ: What have been the biggest changes at Evil Angel this past year, in terms of branding, production and management?
Rheault: Our in-house productions started to really kick off and got us great publicity and branding. It’s been fun creating these with some of our active directors and bouncing ideas back and forth. Having our exclusive contract girls, Aubrey Kate and Katrina Jade, work with us on some bigger projects has also been really positive.
Our own Evil Angel Films productions (namely “I Am Angela”) got us many nods and several awards too, so it’s great to see a new “genre” like our documentaries, being so popular with fans.
I touched on this a bit before, but losing team members is never fun. So losing our CFO was quite the challenge, but I believe the hardest times are now behind us as we have rebuilt our team and are moving forward.
XBIZ: How have your innovative docu-porn series affected the movie-making and behind-the-scenes business processes at Evil Angel, given the success of 2018 XBIZ Performer Showcase of the Year “I Am Katrina” and last year’s “I Am Angela”?
Rheault: First off, the making of these movies is quite extensive and time consuming. Making a documentary is long! We definitely had to adapt our internal processes for those kinds of productions. With the amazing reception these movies got, and the interest from performers, other directors, producers and fans ... it’s been overwhelmingly positive.
Performers are coming to us, wanting to tell their own stories, other directors want to emulate the formula, and other studios have been telling us how great it is to see innovation in a more-than-not stagnant market. In any case, we tend to continue to stay on trend, create new ones if possible and surf that wave.
XBIZ: Tell us your grand ambitions for 2019 and the years to come.
Rheault: We’re planning a big revamp of EvilAngel.com — new features, new look and more engagement points for members. And on the side of our core business, is content. We want to enhance our in-house productions and want to keep working closely with our directors in having them create the best content possible.
