If I’m Starting a Production Company in 2026, I’d Do This ft. Mitchell Thayne

24:56When really, at the end of the day, you just need to get out of your own way. You need to share your work. You need to put it online and you need to reach out to people. You got like hustle. If you're not the one sending emails, of course, your inbox isn't going to be flooded, you know? And so I think just like we have to take off our creative hat and we got to put on our marketing and our sales hat and just understand that, you know, closed mouths will not get fed. I love that. Boom. Tap that on my wrist, dude. with the company you guys obviously make money from making videos and photos for brands and strategy right do you guys have do you own the equipment do you own the trucks like when you think back to your best investment in making an agency what were some of those things because I right now I'm about to buy a truck in the next like few weeks because I keep paying these guys fucking money and it drives me crazy to spend you know a few thousand bucks a month I'm like I just need to own this thing.

25:52It's driving me crazy. So I'm curious what have been those investments that you feel like have came back 10X. So, I mean, I think one of the biggest investments and people are probably going to, there's some people who will agree with me this or argue with me on this, but we bought a red V Raptor X and that has been game changer because for us, we were just shooting on Sony's, we were shooting on cannons and great cameras able to have a beautiful image, but there is something about being able to shoot on red. There's something about being able to shoot at, you know, 8K, getting all that extra resolution, the versatility for VFX, for social cutdowns, all that stuff.

26:30And also just like people looking at you and taking you seriously. I don't know why that's the case. And now that I like think that now I want an RE, you know, and all that stuff. It's a dangerous game, right? But I do believe investing in a great camera that has become a workhorse. I mean, yeah, we paid, you know, 50 grand for it, but we have made so much money because of it, because we're able to rent it out to the, uh, the clients who are, um, hiring us. We're able to, uh, just make better things that look better, which leads to them wanting to come back and work with us again. It just was a big separator for us.

27:09Um, like you said, um, like a grip truck, you know we bought that that's been game changer for us just even from like an efficiency standpoint we got all our gear right in there we just you know turn turn on the van and we drive to where we're going rather than loading up so that's really nice but i think the single best thing that you can probably invest in if you are a kind of smaller solo videographer small crew is good lights good lighting i mean you can shoot beautiful things on an iphone if it's lit well and it's not as sexy. It's not as exciting, but you have good stands, you have good lights, and then you learn how to shape light.

27:52You are going to be able to, you know, make your investment back a thousand times over. Because again, even if you're shooting on a Canon rebel T3i, if it's lit well, it's going to look intentional. It's going to, it's going to be elevated and people are going to keep coming back. So, um, yeah, I mean, I can probably justify a million different things that I've bought, you know, all this SSD is now worth like a thousand dollars and I bought it for 300. Right. But yeah, I, uh, yeah, I think just being intentional about what is this piece of gear or what is this thing I'm investing in? What difference is it going to make in my business and, you know, just being strategic about it.

28:33I think you're right with the camera. I feel like the camera is a good is a great investment because of the fact that you can rent it out. Like every time you do a job, you're like, OK, we're going to get a rental back on this thing no matter what. And I think that is a you know, that's a nice it's a nice thing for creatives here because we love buying cameras, man. Oh, it's the best. I just got it. And I can jump in and just say that for the solo video guys who are not maybe aware of this, a lot of productions like a client comes to you with five thousand dollars, right? You need to say, okay, this much is going for my time, this much shooting it, this much is going for the time editing it, this is going for the talent.

29:13But then you also need to allot some of that budget on the line items towards the gear. This is for the camera kit, this is for my lighting kit, all that stuff. And so then you're kind of having a line item specifically for that. That's one going to help the client value the additional things you're bringing and understand the benefit that you're bringing. but it's also going to make sure that you're able to actually create a scope where the budget is being allotted where it needs to be. And so you can now justify buying the light because you know you're going to be able to charge for it later.

29:46So sorry, I just wanted to throw that out there. I didn't understand that. No, I think that's really important because I think a lot of people are just like, how much do I want to go make this vid? It's like, I'm just going to go and I'm going to charge 1500 bucks and they get, I'm going to show up and I'm going to film and I'll make the edit. And that's, I think how a lot of freelancers work. But once you understand that there's so many different things that you can charge and you write it out on line item, it changes the game for sure. You told us that you're going to London in what next week?

30:19I'm going on Friday or on Friday. Okay. And then the spot that we're going to get into and break down was a multi city shoot, correct? I mean, it was all around Utah, but yeah, it was over the course of three days, popped into a bunch of different locations, yeah. Should we open it up? Yeah, but I just want to ask about when you're traveling to a new city or a new fucking country, how do you go about, like, are you taking the red with you or are you renting it? Like, I think it's probably a little bit easier if you're going all around the same state that you live in, I'm assuming. But going to London, like, are you guys renting a red out there.

30:57How does that work? What are you going to bring versus rent out there? Yeah. So it just kind of depends. I'm lucky because I'm like, you know, Delta Platinum. So I get three checked bags and we've created media passes. So we're able to get, you know, oversized luggage for pretty cheap as well with Delta. That's a hack guys look up creating your own media badge. You don't need to do anything official and you can just go show them the badge and get cheaper rates for your gear. But yeah, I mean, generally we're bringing our cameras, our lenses, that's just, we can pack those away pretty easily. If there's particular lights, those are generally pretty easy to pack as well.

31:40And we'll ship that out there, but generally stands, cables, heavier like grip equipment, rentals, things like that, we'll generally just rent that all there. and that's just quite a bit easier and it's not as expensive. Renting a C-stand or two is way easier than having to lug that around all over a different country. Shall we break this thing down? Yes. Let's do it. Okay, I'm going to pull it up.

32:22Mitchell Thayne:it's like wow it just looks like wow oh wow I'll introduce you it's a brand new future wow bang bang before we get into it tell us about the client how they found you scope of the work tell us the details about the spot Cool. Yeah. So the client reached out. We just had personal relationships. We'd actually, when I talk about, hey, Film Lab's trying to be its own brand, we did a little sub 60 second film festival. So people had to make a little film with some of these prompts in under 60 seconds. Anyway, some of the guys that worked with this client, their in-house team came, submitted their own film.

33:15They actually won. They were awesome. But anyway, we just kind of built relationship with them. Again, other creatives that we enjoyed kind of knew from social media and just connected, um, over the years. And then one day they just said, Hey, there's a job that we can't do a project. We don't have time for, we've got a million things going on. Um, because the parent company, um, they're, they're, they own Oath Nutrition. They own a walla water bottles, which you guys probably know, um, as well as blender bottle and a bunch of other things. And so we just had relationships with these creatives when they had a need to outsource.

33:52They thought of us as well as a couple of other people. So they they had their creative director reach out to us. They gave us a brief and then we had to basically pitch and bid on the project. So we had to create kind of a director's treatment, basically saying, OK, here's the references that you gave us. Here's the way that we would approach this project. So we kind of wrote our own scripts. We actually pitched three different approaches and projects, ways that we could pull off this project. They ended up going with the one that you see here. But yeah, we broke down everything in that treatment deck, which happy to share with you guys if that's helpful.

34:31But we broke down, okay, here's the concept. Here's what it'll look like. Here's visually where we will shoot it, how we'll shoot it, the gear that we'll use. here's kind of the tone that we're going for here's examples of what we'd make and we really tried to do a good job as just painting the picture for how we were going to pull it off and just kind of instilling that confidence in the client that all right these guys have thought through uh maybe anticipated some of the questions we would ask they've thought through how they would pull this off and um then we went and pitched and most of the other guys they were all in Utah as well.

35:09All of them pitched online. We just went and we pitched them in person, which I think immediately gave us an edge, right? I'm able to be there, dab them up, just tell them we're stoked to work with them, right? Just as that human connection. And I think that made a big difference. So then we're there in person with them, pitched, it went super well. And then from there, they just called us and we got the gig. And they came back and they wanted a lower budget than we had anticipated. And so then we just had to make some concessions and say, okay, you can't have this massive list of deliverables.

35:41We have to change a couple of things or we have to reduce scope here. We're not going to go out of state for this. We were going to come to where you guys are in California and shoot in LA and said, okay, if you want it for this budget, we got to do it in Utah. So there are some things like that, that we had to kind of make concessions on. But once we found a good middle ground, then began the pre-production. So location scouting, finding different talent, storyboarding, kind of each shot, how they'd flow together. And one of the main things that we had to figure out in pre-production is they had this reference of this Pepsi commercial where it was a Super Bowl ad a couple of years ago where basically they were locked on to a Pepsi logo on a variety of products.

36:23And it was just kind of tracking this Pepsi logo throughout this kind of sequence. and um what was difficult about that was you know it was shot all in studio you know led wall backdrop they had props had all this stuff we had to shoot this a lot more practically they had a robot arm um and we're like okay we can't take a we can't build all these sets on an led wall we need to shoot this all you know on location in these different spots just because of our budget and the time constraint and so we had to figure out how can we have this can because they want the can to be the hero. It's the new product.

37:00How can we have this can kind of be floating in the middle of the screen? And so we did a lot of pre-production around that, practicing different things, rotoscoping out a magic arm that was holding and locking the can in place in front of the camera. We ended up kind of figuring out a solution between After Effects, utilizing some AI rendering, just the little part around the clamp at the bottom or the top of the can. And that was just a whole pre-production process. We did all of that before we actually shot just so we could have the confidence that we could pull it off and showcase to them exactly what they can expect it would look like and how we'd pull it off.

37:41So that's just kind of what that looked like. As far as the crew, I directed it, had a DP, first AC, um, had a producer, had a grip gaff. Um, I'm trying to think had an 80 as well. And then, um, it was just a ton of talent. Um, we also had a stylist and an art director who just made sure what looked in, what was in front of the camera looked good. So full crew and, uh, went pretty well for the stuff you're doing for film lab. Are you typically directing every single spot? Um, I'd say probably direct about half of them. Yeah. Are you, do you still get your hands on the camera? Like, are you still DPing at all or nah, not, not as much as I used to.

38:25I, I, cause I used to be the guy I'd film, I'd edit, I do everything from start to finish, but I, I just had to be self-aware. I say, okay, what am I actually good at? I mean, you guys are probably gathering this. I can talk, man. I can communicate what I think, you know, what I care about. I can articulate it well. And just more and more realize that I probably am a better director than I am DP because I'm the guy I'm like, ah, it looks good enough. Let's just rip, you know? So it's good to have somebody who's really technical who is going to push back on me. And what's cool is that DP is my brother.

38:58So it's been a lot of fun. Yeah. Let's go. Shall we break down some of these shots? Yeah. Let's break it down. Okay. Okay. So we start off, it's on the little table. Someone comes up.

39:14Did you guys rig this to the side of the car? Yeah. So that was like a suction cup type of thing on the side of the car that we just kind of rigged it there. That was with the Komodo. Had to set the focus and just drive. I was actually in the driver's seat because we were pretty much out of time. The client was leaving and I just threw that on and we went for it. Wow. Wow. Okay. So once, once she's getting into the car and we see the drink and then we go to the, to the spin class. So you guys have this now mounted on an arm, right? And you guys have changed the bottom to be back like where it's actually like what it actually looks like.

39:53Yeah. Yeah. So down at the bottom, you can actually see it a little bit. I'm noticing now, like, uh, on that bottom left part, it's actually a little bit, there's a little bit of a dent there. Um, that's actually just probably an imperfection in our editing, but yeah, this, we had a clamp down in the bottom. If you saw the full video, um, you know, the raw unedited video, you'd see a big clamp around the bottom of this can. And what we did is it was just a, it was a whole process of taking coloring the footage, making sure, okay, these are the frames. And this is the beginning and the end that we really like sent it over to our VFX artist who is in house.

40:28His name's Nick. He's a stud. And he went and basically just was trying to generate just that tiny little bottom around the area, around the cannon down in the bottom. And, uh, he put that into AI, um, and had to do a bunch of prompts and different nodes for reference points, what the, what was going on and make sure that it was only really affecting that area. And then he just did a bunch of masking and tracking and After Effects stabilizing it. And that's kind of how we got that result. Wow. I love the little match cut from the spin class to just like the white, the white little backdrop. Is that practical?

41:05You said you didn't use a robot arm. So are you Ronining it? So I should, I should say we did use a robot arm in the studio, in that studio section. We didn't for any of the lifestyle stuff. the robot arm is so sick oh it it's such a hack man but i do think it's one of those things that's really easy to overuse just like people with fpv you know when they have like 10 shots of fpv in a video i'm like a little too much so it's one of those things it's like you got to season it you know a couple shots sprinkling in there but not too much i love the shot where it's like the drink pass so we go okay well first let's break down this ice shot yeah how do we make the ice shot happen?

41:46Uh, I shot hand grabbing ice. Yeah. So what's funny is that's my hand. Um, so what we did is I don't even know if I want to explain how difficult the other thing was, but what we were going to do is we had a robot arm with a probe lens and we had an, a magic arm kind of locked onto the actual can. And so the probe lens was going down into the ice and we were shooting, we were going to shoot into a mirror, reflect back up onto the can, if that makes sense. Really, really complicated. We ended up running out of time, so we couldn't do that. So instead, what we did was we got a fish tank and filled it up with water and ice.

42:34And we knew we were going to kind of transition to this kind of outdoor pool scene. So we're like, okay, how do we make it look like a blue sky? We just got like a flag, like a white floppy over top. And then we shot with just like a really blue light up into that. So it kind of looks like a blue sky. And then we shot from underneath the fish tank. Um, we had that propped up camera underneath, just kind of looking up, um, with the ice and whatnot. So then I just stuck my hand in, pulled it out and it was just, uh, tracking and scaling in with, with, uh, after effects. This is definitely not, it doesn't look that cool.

43:14Once a raw clip, it just looks like a hand coming in and grabbing it. I was, I was scaling the pacing helps. I was wondering if the, if the push in was in camera or not, because I was like, how the fuck did you do that? If it was in camera, but knowing that it was done in After Effects makes me feel a lot better. Wow. It's so nuts. Yeah, I was on the scaling. Dude, that, okay, and then are you rotoscoping for the second shot where he grabs it out and then he moves it to, like, hand it off? Yeah, so that's all just on the clamped arm. Yeah, so we rotoscoped out the bottom using AI to just kind of fill in that content-aware fill.

43:55That's how we basically used the AI. and then it was just kind of tracking so we added motion blur and speed ramping and it's crazy what speed ramping can do to like tie those scenes together yeah wow so sick and then for the for the very last shot how did we light the very last shot so you have like something punchy that's on like the left yeah top left corner right yep what else yeah so we this was just a um just a paper roll that we had, um, kind of laid down and then, um, we just set up and you'll see that we had a lot of like flavor cues on different shots as well. We had a food stylist there.

44:34So it was so nice to be able to have somebody there that just set things up in front of the camera and made it look good. So they set the cans, they set the, um, actual boxes. And then from there, yeah, we had just kind of like a nice back light, um, coming from behind that's kind of casting those shadows. We obviously also had like a fill, um, on the left side of the camera as well. Um, and that's pretty, and then we had another little kind of top down light as well from behind it, kind of just casting and giving a little more of an edge, but it was a pretty simple setup. This is sweet. It's turned out so good.

45:09Okay. A few questions. Um, for this client in particular, was it just the hero video? Were there any cutdowns that you guys made? Any other deliverables that you guys provided as just like on top of just the hero video? Yeah, I think we ended up delivering like 20 something videos. Oh, wow. Which was, yeah, crazy. So we had because as you see here on this last shot, there was three different flavors. And so we had this hero video with all the flavors. We had a hero 30, we had a hero 15, we had a hero six, and then we had individual flavor videos. So, um, just kind of focusing on just that particular flavor in a couple of these scenes.

45:51Um, and that had, those had, you know, thirties, fifties, sixes. And then, um, we obviously had other little cut downs just from particular scenes, um, that they wanted. Um, they had teasers where they're saying, Hey, something's coming, you know? So we had, We had silhouetted shots of the product or different little things where we were able to tease it but didn't showcase the product. So there was a lot of that. And then we also had a lot of photo assets that we delivered as well. Wow, that's awesome. Biggest learning from this particular shoot? Like what was your biggest takeaway from this project?

46:27Yeah, I think we put so much of an emphasis on the video. How are we going to track this? How are we going to light this? how we're going to pull this off that when it came to the photos, we probably didn't give it as much time as it deserved. Um, and I think, I think a lot of times it's very easy for us to have the photographer just, Hey, come over our shoulder, rip a couple of shots in between scenes. Um, and what I think we learned on this one, um, was cause we actually had to go back and reshoot some more of the studio stuff because our photographer just didn't have the resources and the support.

47:02So the photo when done right at a very high level, especially for like food products or people who are very particular about how those, that product imagery looks, that photographer needs to have their own setup, their own team, their own stylist, all that stuff to do it right. And we kind of just had him over our shoulder, ripping a lot of stuff. And once we got feedback from the client, I'm like, dang, now we got to reshoot this just for photo and be a little more intentional in the studio. So that's definitely something that we learned from that. I think that's one of the hardest parts about doing the shake and bake, the both, is you're like, you're really focused on the video.

47:43And then, you know, they obviously need their time. And then you're like, well, we're also running behind. And then you get into that sticky situation of trying to do, you know, the over the shoulder and then some of something has to sacrifice. Yeah. Yeah. So if you can just be intentional and strategic about it from the get go and give them resources and help and time, then hopefully you can avoid that. And again, not every project requires that. Like in many instances, you can just kind of pop in and snap a few stills and you're good. But at least for this, we need more time. Product, beverage, and food is so difficult.

48:16Like there's so many nuances that come with shooting that specifically to make food and beverage look good is way harder, I think, than people think. Like, yeah, I agree. Without a doubt, without a doubt. This was a very fun breakdown. Yeah, it was so cool. When you think about this upcoming year and like finishing it out with Film Lab, what do you really want to focus on to take the business to a higher level than where you're currently at right now? Cool, great question. Yeah, I think we have just been making stuff for other people for a long time. The last, you know, almost five years now, we've been making products and brands and things for other people.

48:59One thing I'm really excited about, and all of us in the creative industry right now are just stoked about Obsession, the movie that was made for$750 ,000 and has sold for$15 million and has done over$200 and whatever million. I mean, it's one of the most dramatic success stories in film ever, other than like the Blair Witch Project. So for me, I'm starting to see that maybe the only way to make money I've always considered with film was in commercial. And I'm like, it's very rare that anybody could do a narrative thing and ever really be successful on that. But I've started talking to more and more individuals, like guys who make great money selling, like filming and selling documentaries.

49:43People who are creating short films or doing narrative things that are really exciting. And this is just like from the passion side of me. It's not like I got into film because I wanted to film somebody drinking a drink out of a can. You know, like I always wanted to tell stories. That's why we all started. Right. And so I think for me, I'd be very interested in seeing if we could make some sort of a narrative, some sort of a documentary and actually make money from it. that's something I definitely want to explore. And I'm thinking that because Netflix, because of all these big studios, more and more, they're starting to realize that the power is in the hands of us as creators more than ever, anytime ever, really.

50:31And we have our own distribution channels. We have our own ways of getting attention and that's pretty cool. So for me, very interested in exploring some of that. But then obviously it's just continuing to figure out how can we have stability in such an unstable, uh, unstable career. Um, how can we have more, uh, consistent retainer clients, um, and can just continue to bring value to the brands that we work with. So it's not really a straight answer. Um, just probably keep our heads down, keep making commercials, but I would love to explore doing something a little more narrative and story driven too.

51:10Yeah. It's so interesting because I noticed a lot of the really large PE firms are wanting to get stake in the creator economy. I believe the Whaler was just sold for, I mean, not the Whaler. Yeah. I believe it is the Whaler, which owns the lighthouse, just sold like a massive chunk. Had to be multiple nine figures for what they're building. and I noticed another firm put$150 million pledge to like creator economy businesses. And it's very interesting because it almost seems like it's similar to like what record labels are doing where they would come in to like a podcast and say, hey, for 10 million bucks, we own you guys for your eternity.

51:51But it's interesting to see, they obviously see so much value in what people are building that they are putting multiple nine figures together to go and buy up these small, medium-sized businesses to then own the future distribution of whatever they're doing. So obviously there's something very enticing for them and why they want to put their money behind these businesses. So it's going to be really interesting, I think, to see where it all ends up playing out. Well, I think 505 has got some money coming towards them, I'm sure. So if any private equity firms are smart out there, you should be hitting these guys up for sure.

52:34Where do you think the whole movie side of it is going after seeing these three big YouTubers have very successful debuts? You had Baker. You had the – what was the other guy that did – Marcapelio. Yeah, yeah, that guy. And then the dude who just did Backrooms. Like those three movies were all – And I guess no. obsession wasn't a youtuber no yeah he was he they started on youtube yeah right yeah they had i believe it's like a million subs on their youtube channel i just remember getting hit with a short form i didn't know if they were doing uh yeah and i mean and short form but they crushed they crushed youtube too and it's so it's so interesting because they were doing comedy and so was uh key and peel yeah and then just it's it's so interesting that i think comedy and horror seem to have a little bit of a crossover.

53:24Yeah. I, I don't, I don't get how they can do that. Um, I remember, I think it was Jordan Peele kind of just talked about like this, like kind of leading people where they, they think they know where they're going and then you kind of just hook a different way and that comedy and horror can have kind of a similar flavor that way. But yeah, it's super cool. And I'm, I, I'm not exactly sure where movies are going. I just know it's becoming more accessible than ever. And I know that what, like, for example, what you guys are building here, you know, 505 as a podcast has distribution. You have people who are interested in what you're saying.

53:59It's because you put out 200 some odd episodes, right? You've been very, very consistent. And so for, you know, them, it's like, hey, I could bet on Kostas and Braden because they're consistent and I know they're going to follow through on what they're saying. and I know that they have a built-in audience. And so you guys taking swings is a lot safer bet because there's going to be a lot of people like myself. If I heard that you guys were going to be, you know, making a doc or a feature-length film, dude, I'd be interested. I'd be behind that, right? Because you have that built-in and you have that built-in like loyalty.

54:31So like Brayden, I remember seeing you at the Lakers, right? And watching your stuff, this is freaking sick. So yeah. Could you talk to us a little bit about potentially stepping into the doc space and the friends that you've talked to, what that looks like? Because I think a lot of people that may be listening right now think that that could be a very cool route. Because I agree with you. I think, you know, I make my money from doing commercial ads, but not every single ad, you know, fills up your cup. Some of it just is like, this is money in our pocket and this is a good bag and we're going to help them get this vision across the board, but like not every single project you get is going to be creatively fulfilling.

55:10But I think that like I enjoy the doc space probably the most of any genre that I watch on TV. You know, I'm like always hunting for like an amazing doc. What does that look like from people that you've spoken to? How do they get their docs funded? And what does that look like? Yeah. I mean, I think what I've heard is a lot of times people make a mistake and they'll just start on a doc before ever doing research and finding out, are there people who would be interested in this? It's all in the pre-production. So are there people or organizations who would stand behind this message, who are interested in having this story told and would benefit from that, just kind of identifying and thinking through that a little bit more from the get-go.

55:53And then, you know, obviously it's like identifying the right story and then going and telling it. Um, but I, I've heard that the pre-production process of that and, and finding the people who believe in that message from the get go is really important. So for example, I want to do a doc. Um, I come from a family of farmers, like look at me, dude, I rode horses. I milked a cow growing up. We had a pig farm, right? So, you know, like that, that was, that was my life. That's where I come from. And so the idea of a doc sharing the mental health of farmers and ranchers is really interesting to me because farmers and ranchers have the highest suicide rates of any group in the United States.

56:37generally because they have crushing amounts of debt, very little support from government or other people in the world. And, and also probably just a culture of just hard men, just kind of internalizing and pushing, pushing through difficult things. That's a really interesting doc to me. It's personally meaningful. I have an 87 year old grandpa who's still working in our farm, right? But I have to ask myself the question, okay, are there other organizations who would be interested in telling this story who would be able to get behind this message? And I'm sure, I'm sure there are, I just need to go identify who those people are and find out what's important for them to get across from the get-go.

57:19And then once I kind of have that in my back pocket, then I'm equipped to go tell the story because I already had built-in sellers and potentially those the sellers are going to have connections for distribution. So I think just being intentional with that beforehand is going to be big. Yeah. It's so interesting. It's similar to how, when we talked to Danny Gewurz about when he was trying to sell his film and he's like, you know what, we're going to actually monetize it through the YouTube audience. So like these brands, you know, so they went and like sold spots on the BTS and they, I think had like four different filmmakers who were like selling spots essentially for it.

57:56So then they could afford to fund the film, which is just a different model, I think, than traditionally. And you're right. It's similar to how we sell our creative work to these brands where it's like they see the deck. Okay, this makes sense. I'm interested in this. Here's how you guys can be a part of it. And then kind of going from there. Yeah, totally agree. And Danny did it so well. I mean, he inspires me like crazy the way he's been able to pull that off because, yeah, from the get-go, he's intentional about it, but he's also a bit unconventional. And that's what's cool is this industry is changing so much.

58:30And like you said, these bigger organizations, these private equity firms, these massive brands, all this stuff, they want to get into helping shape culture because that's what us as creatives are doing. We're not only selling stuff. We're not only just making videos for the internet. We're shaping what people think about, how they view the world. and so there's a lot of people that want to be a part of it and so if you can just help them understand how they can get involved the way you're going to approach the whole process and helping shape that culture tell that story then you're just making it easy for them to say yes you're not only shaping the culture in the film landscape but also in the running landscape you like that transition bang let's talk about good let's talk about dead last because it's typically the place that Brayden comes in.

59:18And so he really resonated with the brand name. Shots fired, dude. Well, Brayden, I want you to know, dude, I relate to you when I see Kostas trolling you on social media for not going to the gym. I'm like, I'm glad I don't hang out with Kostas because he would be bullying me nonstop about how often I skip. Well, dude, no, here's thing is just Brayden makes it so easy that it's it's like it just writes itself you know I'm glad like fandom comes in multiple different shapes and sizes and this is just like this is what I have to deal with like you know sometimes it's a stalker and sometimes it's like this oh man but anyways hey you're taking that on the chin though yeah exactly dude talk to us about dead last because I had no idea that it was uh before talking to you and we don't need to get into like the numbers and stuff but I thought it was just kind of like a hobby thing because I had seen you post about it a few times I didn't know that you were really making it into like a full full-on brand doing the whole cut and sew it's super fucking interesting we've done a few rounds of merch and we understand how difficult the clothing space is.

1:00:34Talk to us about Dead Last, where the idea came from, and just tell us about it. Yeah, man. Well, thanks. So I can talk about this subject all day because I'm passionate about it, right? But there are two things that drove the kind of idea of Dead Last. Well, one was as a creative, and I'm sure all of us feel this way and everybody listening who is a filmmaker, creative in some way can relate. I am making these brands a dumb amount of money. If they're giving me$10 ,000, it's because they're going to make a hundred or 200 or more thousand dollars off of what I am creating. And so the question was just kind of always in the back of my mind.

1:01:18And I don't know about you guys. A lot of times I'll talk to some of these brands and I'm like, you guys are not very organized. You guys are kind of a mess. Like I thought I was a mess, but you know, I I'm starting to realize that maybe we're all just kind of making it up as we go. You know, I'm like, all right, if you can run this multimillion dollar brand, like maybe I could too, brother, you're telling me. So always in the back of my mind. Yeah. You feeling that too? Yes. Oh my God. You want to put somebody on blast? No. But you can talk offline about it. It's just interesting. Yeah. You're like, I don't know.

1:01:53I, we work with a lot of big brands and you just can, yeah. It's like, you guys are doing insane numbers. How, you know, how is this possible? Yeah. It's like, you won't even respond to my email for three weeks. Like how, how are you running a nine figure company? Yeah. It's very confusing. So like in the back of my mind, I'm like, okay, what I do is so valuable. I know it's making these brands a lot of money. I feel like I could do something like this too. So that was kind of always in the back of my mind. I just didn't know what it would be. And then I, you know, as many creatives do, Brayden, I was much worse than you.

1:02:31Never went to the gym, never took care of myself. I gained like 50 something pounds. Sorry. I'm like, kind of, that was a backhanded compliment. You can tell Brayden has put on a I was once as big as you. No, no, no, no, no. I probably am still bigger than you, dude. But I gained like 50 something pounds. I was a new dad. I was stressed out. I wasn't taking care of myself. I was staring at a screen all day. Never went outside and touched grass. Definitely never lifted a weight, you know, and I just started feeling worse and worse. And then one day I was like, okay, I got to just like eliminate all excuses.

1:03:11I can step outside my house and go for a run. And if I run for 10 minutes, I will be absolutely cooked because I am out of shape. And that's all it's going to take is 10 minutes. I'll have dumped something. And then that kind of just started compounding. I went out for a run. I started feeling better than I wanted to eat a little bit better. And then obviously I started on this health journey where I started losing weight. And what came with that was a lot of, you know, creative clarity. I started feeling lethargic. I started feeling more energy. And with that, I was like, wow, running has like actually impacted my life deeply, right?

1:03:46Like my relationships are better. I'm better at work. I'm more creative. I feel better. I fit in my clothes better, right? All these things that was, was really exciting. And so from there I was like, all right, the one thing is I feel like I don't really belong. I can't call myself a runner because I'm like, I'm like 210 pounds, 215 pounds running like I I'm not like most of these other runners and and then I kind of started thinking more and more about like there's probably a bunch of people who feel the same way a little too intimidated to start running maybe don't feel like they fit into the typical stereotype and that's kind of where the beginnings of the idea for dead last came and so for me I had a friend named Lucas we've actually never met in person still to this day but he I know he'd kind of dabbled in creating some other brands.

1:04:36He's a really talented creative. And I reached out to him and said, Hey, I kind of got this idea. Would you want to go in on it with me? And then from there, it was just kind of ideating around what's the message, what's the idea. I want to make something for the underdogs. And so when thinking about where I'd come in a race, it was dead last. And so the name itself was kind of funny. Anytime I threw it out to people, like they thought it was fun. And so we kind of just started leaning into that. And it took, you know, 10 months of developing the brand and trying to find the right suppliers for where we can get product and all that stuff.

1:05:10But we launched May 2025. And so now we've been in business for a little over a year and it's just picking up steam. And when you think about that first initial drop, like obviously you got friends, you got family, you got people maybe in your community to buy it. But then after that, I went on Facebook ads library last night. I saw you're running like a pretty solid amount of creative. Was that originally how you were like, okay, we can, we can go and do this. I already know how to make great content. That's how we're going to start to scale this thing and get it into the hands of more people.

1:05:42Okay. So at the get go, yeah, it was just friends and family buying. Right. And, uh, we didn't expect much from it. And we also didn't have like a lot of inventory. Um, so we kind of went, pushed it out there after maybe a month, we sold out of everything. We weren't really running any ads. And then it was just, okay, we take that money, invest it into some more product. It finally gets to us and we do another drop. So it was really kind of slow going. And it wasn't until fall of 2025 where we actually had a significant amount of product. I think we had like five or 600 units of something of, of all of our products that we launched and like, okay, let's, let's do a couple of ads.

1:06:24And what's funny is, and I hate saying this because I'm all about the beautiful cinematic stuff, man. It's iPhone footage. I know. Yeah, man. It's like, so we created this. I've, I've always been really interested in like reflective print. I just think it's super cool. So we did this track design with dead last on the back with this reflective print on it. And we have this ad that's literally just an iPhone clip. My buddy's running and his friend is filming him with the flash on. And it's just this reflective, really cool looking shot of his back. Might even say a back shot as he's running. You can cut that out, sorry.

1:07:03But as he's running, right? You see this reflection of the shirt and that has absolutely killed for us. We're getting like 18X ROAS. Like it was - Oh my God, I'm not. off that thing. Yeah. And that hurt me, but that's also where I've learned a lot about, okay, the beautiful cinematic stuff is to build the brand and build the community. People are like, I resonate with this brand. Their stuff obviously looks high quality. I'm really interested in that. And that's the stuff that I get a lot of joy in making is around these collections. But then while we're out shooting those things, we'll just pull out our iPhone and say, okay, run.

1:07:40you know okay here's the product actually in motion and then that's the stuff that we run our ads with you know you know kind of crazy you know what's funny though when i think about that i bet you a lot of people buy it because maybe they run at night as well obviously it looks sick and it's like high quality clothing but then you don't get hit by a car because you can see the you can see the person so you have like a double you know a double use case there would say hey looks really cool like obviously looks fun on the phone but then also i'm not i'm gonna be seen by a car or by these lights when I'm running, you know, and it looks in swag.

1:08:13Yeah. How much, uh, how much time are you putting into dead last? Because you're running a full company. And if it's, if there's something that me and Braden can relate to, it's trying to split our time between a couple of different ventures, this podcast and our actual work is one of them. And it's like everything you do requires a full time amount of hours put in a week. You know what I'm saying? Especially to do something at the level that we all want to do it at. And so how much time are you putting into dead last? And as like as the revenue has ramped, have you started to put more emphasis on dead last?

1:08:57Yeah. So I should say that at the beginning, it was really just kind of an experiment where I'm like, OK, let's invest. you know, a few thousand dollars into kind of developing this, kind of see if it has any legs. And I mostly just want to see if this is something that I can do and like use it as like a learning experience. Cause I didn't actually start out thinking that it would like do super well. But what was interesting about that is I made decisions based off of like, this is what I want. And this is what's like exciting to me rather than how do I make the most money out of this right now?

1:09:32and because of that I think we built the brand well and you know it was able to grow so at first it was kind of just you know an hour here hour there luckily Lucas my business partner he has always been able to put in a lot of time and he actually does it completely full-time yeah so he's full-time on that it's funding his life which is awesome and then we've got like a part-time customer service guy as well who's my brother-in-law which is great and then we've got me and my business partner, Mike at film lab, he's also doing a lot with dead last as well. So it kind of started out just a few hours here and there.

1:10:07And now it's kind of ramped up to probably about 15 hours a week right now for me. But luckily a lot of like the difficult part of kind of figuring out what fabrics do we want to use? What silhouettes are we kind of going for? We've kind of figured that out and we're now just kind of iterating and improving all of those things. Um, so yeah, slowly it's taking more and more of my time But I think what's really cool is it's been like a really great case study for me To go and say all right, this is what i'm doing with my brand, you know, which is now You know went from six figures last year to seven figures this year and it's going to continue to grow which is crazy I never would have thought that right um, but i'm quickly starting to see the value in what us creatives should be doing is investing and betting on ourselves, right?

1:10:57We have all the tools. We know how to garner attention. We know what's cool. Like we know what people are going to get excited about. And instead of always doing that for somebody else, finally being able to do that for ourselves and build something is pretty significant. To make the same amount of money. Like I should say this, the seven figures that we've made with dead last has been 10 times easier to make than seven figures in a production company. Um, cause you're building something that can compound and that can grow versus, you know, in production company and creative when we're doing it for other people, it's eat what you kill.

1:11:35And we're constantly going on the next hunt for the next project versus now the projects that I'm making for dead last is growing the business. um, which is something that's going to continue to feed me and the family. So it's a pretty cool thing. Are you, are you using revenue from, uh, dead last and then paying, uh, film lab, your production company to like produce the content? I think eventually we will right now, what we're doing is we're just paying the, paying my guys individually, um, just kind of freelance rates, um, kind of other in their odd hours after work, things like that. Um, so it's, it is cool to kind of like double dip on paying some of my producer, my DP, my editor and being like, Hey, you guys want some side hustle work with this other business?

1:12:28Let's do it. So that's kind of how we're doing it. I think eventually when the budgets are big enough and you know, dead last has enough cash, then we'll probably hire film lab outright to do stuff. You know, I think that's the wave because as we all know, making the fucking video is the most expensive thing for the brand by far. Like they all make the damn brand and that's great. But then they can't go shooting the stuff because they don't know how to shoot the stuff. They don't edit the stuff. They don't know how to do any of the creative process. So you literally get to do like the hardest thing for the for the business right there.

1:13:03You know? Yeah. And it makes such a difference being able to handle and deal with our own costs internally. And also, I think freelancers don't recognize how good they are actually at building things. Because if you're a freelancer and you've had any level of success, which is you're able to make money doing something you're passionate about, you have probably had to learn how to build a website. So you're building a portfolio. You've probably had to learn how to pitch. You've probably had to learn how to articulate a vision or an idea or something to somebody at some point. You've had to be good about managing your own calendar, emails, all of those things.

1:13:44Maybe make your own Google business account, whatever. Those are all things that shockingly most people who are in a corporate job have no idea how to do. They don't know how to start something. They don't know how to set up an LLC. They don't know how to do so many of these things that naturally us as freelancers at some point or another, we've had to dabble in and learn. And so I was just shocked at how much of what came from just a creative freelance, creative entrepreneur background, how applicable it was to so many other aspects of creating even a totally different business. Yeah, it's fascinating.

1:14:18I mean, I think that there's, you know, there's so much that we learn from just, yeah, just making videos that can go into, into the brand. What has been the, what has been one of the biggest learnings from now like owning your own physical brand not just something where you're like making videos or taking photos for companies sorry let me think about that oh you're good biggest thing i've learned

1:14:48i think the biggest thing that i've learned from that is just brand over anything else it's it's so easy for so many brands to just try to go for the money right try to have the ad that performs the best that gives them the best for us whatever and it's just short-term thinking right it's just cash exchange for a little bit more and what we did with dead last because it started out as a passion project is we just focused on brand we just focused on a message we focused on making things that were meaningful to us and interesting to us. And as we built slow, it's made a big difference. Our first year, we did$100 ,000, you know, nothing really significant.

1:15:29This year, we're going to probably do multiple seven figures, because I think we built a foundation of brand overall. And so I think when that's really been applicable to our clients at Film Lab, because I've been able to ask them, like, what is your real goal here? Are you just trying to like make sales and do something quick or are you trying to build something longer lasting? And I'd say most great brands, it's built over time, you know, and it's playing the long game. It's being patient and it's providing value and meaning and connection to your audience. And so that's, I think the main thing that I've learned is that kind of sneaking suspicion that I think most of us creatives have that brand is important and we want to make things that are cool and that make people like connect with the brand.

1:16:18Most of the time we're arguing with marketers or performance, you know, ad buyers who think that their only metric of success is a great ROAS on the ad. It was, it was really great feeling to realize now brand above all is truly what's going to win. Hell yeah. I love that, man. This has been such a fun conversation. Ladies and gentlemen, this has been episode 214 with Mitch Thane. If you're still here, please hit the subscribe button, drop us a comment, leave us a like, and we'll see you guys all next week. Peace.