B Scar TV Podcast
Hi-Quality conversations with your favorite creators, thought leaders, and cultural tastemakers - hosted by Brennan Scarlett.
B Scar TV Podcast
S3E7: Taylor Kavanaugh
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Taylor speaks on his journey as an entrepreneur and his iterations through several film companies. He talks about what it takes to access the best of your creative ideas. He gives insight on the structure necessary to unlock creative talent within an organization. Most of all, he shares what inspires him to keep showing up… again and again and again.
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Introducing Taylor Kavanaugh
Speaker 1Selflessness , grit , tenacity , organized execution this is the mindset and culture at Blue Ox Films and the commitment that co-founder Taylor Kavanaugh has made in his approach to filmmaking , Because , after all , it's not just about the shots , it's the workflow that wins championships . I hope you all enjoy this episode of V-Scar TV with our very special guest , taylor Kavanaugh . Good to go , all right . Well , appreciate you being here , man . Yeah , nice to be here .
Speaker 1So we kick off every episode , every conversation , with inspiration and sharing inspiration , because the podcast these conversations . The mission is to inspire listeners in pursuing their goals , dreams , how they're living their life . And for me , selfishly , I love conversations with individuals who are doing just cool shit in their life , high-performing individuals , and I'm inspired by them , and so the whole point of this whole deal is to share these conversations with the world . So , to start off , I have a two-pronged question for you . I want to know what's inspiring you , both in your work from a filmmaking perspective and also now what is inspiring you from a personal standpoint . So , both of those things , in whichever order , yeah , but as of late , what's been inspiring you ?
Sources of Inspiration
Speaker 2say creative and in film wise .
Speaker 2You know , as we've um , as we've gone through and the team and I have sort of stood up and expanded blue ox , we've come to in a lot of things when things are sort of organic and small .
Speaker 2You know it's , I think it's typical to like a just a normal lifespan where you kind of your birth , you survive , you start to understand your environment , you start to operate more effectively within the environment , you grow , you start to put more detail and parameters and direction on it .
Speaker 2And I feel like our group , with our mission of telling , telling stories , our preteens , blue Ox is like a preteen , where we haven't yet fully hit maturity or those or those vital stages . But we're like getting there and as part of the preteen stage we're more mature than we were a handful of years ago in almost all facets . But one of the key points of maturity , to kind of speak to the inspiration point , is we've kind of gathered this clarity , and you already used the word , I think , our mission as a group , when we select what we say yes to and what we have to say no to and the types of stories . I think we're here as a group , as Blue Ox and certainly me a small part of that to tell stories of high-performing products , athletes , leaders , teams . I just think that that's what we're here to do , and we didn't know that in the beginning that that's what we're here to do and we didn't know that in the beginning .
Speaker 2We were just kind of like trying to stand up sort of a group and get some equipment and like get enough skill sets to survive to move to the next stage .
Speaker 2But as we've done that , I think that part's become clear . And as we've become clear about that , it also sort of self-serves like more and more sort of inspiration and direction . Because when you're aware of like oh , this is a little bit more of my mission and our collective mission , you pay it , you're able , you're capable of receiving other sort of , you know things from the universe or like your environment or other collaborators , and you pay more attention to those things that are within that sort of spectrum , if you will . So I think that's been a big source of inspiration for us recently of just like coming to the realization over the last year or two of like hey , naturally this is what we gravitate towards , these type of stories and these sort of individuals and this sort of approach . But getting it down to like but this is what it says on paper and this is what we talk about to each other , I think that's opened up other areas of like , wisdom and inspiration and direction and clarity that we've started to use as a , you know , a metric and sort of a rule book and a guide to what are we continuing to try to , you know , put out in the world and stories that we're trying to seek out . And , and you know , if we get , when , when we get approached by brands and other collaborators , like against that rubric of like high performing leaders , athletes , individuals , products , like if it doesn't hit that it has , it has to be really beneficial in other areas , for us to say yes because like that's , that's become like a , you know , a checklist for us . So I think that's it on the , the filmmaking sort of work , personal side , and there's a lot of other stuff , but that's just something that comes to mind . I think on the personal side , no-transcript , and you know , for me I think a lot of inspiration comes from a lot of I'll merge clarity with that Clarity and inspiration has come from , you know , having a young family and sort of being forced , forced in some ways , to like prioritize and focus on these things or like remove other things that I can't , I don't have time to spend on anymore .
Speaker 2I think that's been , that's been that's . I've gotten a lot of clarity from that and at first before before I had , you know , children and , you know , got married and sort of like started needing to contribute to other lives and not just my own . You just have a lot more choice and time to like hey , this is how , this is how I'm going to live and this is how I'm going to spend my time . It just becomes a lot . You become more clear of like Whoa , um , these other individuals like really need all the all time they can use more than I have to give . So I have to like be really specific on where that time comes from , and I think that's been challenging in some ways , but also really beneficial in others .
Speaker 2I can see huge benefit and inspiration and clarity from um , just things as simple as like how my schedule has changed in the five years since having kids of like I I have become . I've transitioned more from being a floating creative that works through the night sometimes and then does this and does that to like very regimented , uh , in my and I'm not sure which one I'm more comfortable with , but as of late , because the kids go to bed at seven and like boom , that's when the clock starts a little bit of free time . It's been very regimented and that set me up in a place and I think a lot of creatives talk about this like in order to receive ideas and energy and like to do the best work . I do think there's an argument for being very regimented in how you show up every day and I think having kids has and having a young family and schedule with my wife and , of course , the you know , as mentioned , the , the , the required regularity with the , with the kids , has put me in that space and it's taken four years or so to adapt to that .
Speaker 2But now I just feel like I'm getting an additional energy boost and an openness for whatever reason , just to like receiving the good ideas and like being able to like show up for people and I've never been particularly good with , you know , sort of acknowledging that time is important and being on time , but like this has helped me get there and it's sort of adapted and influenced how , when you're running a business and trying to create new ideas and you know more and more people are relying on you , it's like , oh , this comes at the right time because it's not just my kids who need some dedicated time and regularity and sort of all that stuff . It's now a growing team of of people that also need those things , so there's good crossovers there . So I think that's my answer on the personal inspiration of just like having a young family and surviving that , but also like taking on on sort of un un things I didn't predict .
Speaker 1Yeah , that are valuable there . So , right , no , that makes sense and that it's almost counterintuitive , because , essentially , the more Blue Ox has narrowed its focus on what its mission is to do , the more definition that it's given itself you guys have given it , your team has given it , the more opportunities and maybe even more freedom , in a way which is like a little bit counterintuitive , right , because if you don't define the mission , you can do everything , but that actually starts to constrict you more . But then also , on the personal side , the more clear you've been about your priorities , the more you're able to take in know , which is like it's counterintuitive to me .
Speaker 2Yeah , there's a little bit of a relationship that exists , an equation that , as you're going through building a business I think this probably applies to building an organization or a relationship or anything as you gather resources to do more things and that's not just monetary , but obviously building a business is foundationally gathering monetary resources to invest back in and do other things with . As you gather more resources , ideas , funds , people , everything , new avenues and new doors open and unlock to do new things . But at the same time , you're trading on the other side of that equation . All of a sudden , you're going down a path as you invest , as you acquire more resources , you invest more into a business an irreversible path that it becomes challenging to reverse course . So there's this trade-off when you're
Balancing Resources and Flexibility
Speaker 2super lean . A good example in the film industry would be like there's this trade-off like when you're super lean . A good example in the film industry would be like you're a freelance editor , right , you have all sorts of flexibility and thus creativity . You can finish a project and go travel to Italy . You can go do this , and that is hugely beneficial and it's a reason why , like in the film industry , for example , and a lot of others , the freelance industry is is hot and meaningful and highly productive . On the other side of that equation , freelancers don't typically amass significant resources to invest back in and build a huge organization right , that's why it's called freelance . But if you do do that and you gather resources , ideas , people , cameras , this that all the stuff you're opening up more doors but you're actually closing others at the same time . So you have to balance that at the same time and like , what is right for my own personal creative goals ? What is right for maybe a group's creative goals ? What's right for our responsibility to put good work out into the world ? That's for every one person to figure out and , like , draw their own line and their own path .
Speaker 2But like it's it's important to be aware because , like , oftentimes we and I feel the same thing , especially in film , especially with social and all this stuff it's like , oh shit , that person's doing amazing work . I wish I was there . You gotta be really cautious about that . It's not about , it's not about them and their work . It's about your contribution to the work that's in front of you and like it can , that can only be the focus , because that's the only true way to get to truly like , have the right amount of fuel to , to go to kind of what society or the industry sees as higher levels of work . You have to , you can . There's no quantum leaps , there's no jumps , there's no . You have to kind of struggle and crawl through all of it .
Speaker 2So the piece of that , that trade-off , I think is very real and there's benefit in enjoying both of those . And some people go through a spectrum where they start with a high level of flexibility but limited resources , and that's beautiful and meaningful and really important things are made and created and done in that realm . And other people sometimes crawl or start , or whatever the journey is like , where there's a lot of resources but limited flexibility , and that's meaningful too , I think . My own personal opinion is , if you can split the difference between the two and maintain some of this and also maintain some of that is where a really powerful , you know , area lies and creative endeavors and maybe filmmaking and other stuff and probably other industries as well . But it's a hard trade because you always kind of you always kind of want what you don't have , what you had but you don't have anymore , and you always want a little bit of what you might have in the future and you know it hard to . That's kind of . That's the challenge , that is the challenge . That's the challenge of it .
Speaker 1It's , the mental games are just as tough to play as the actual building of the thing . And I've found in my own entrepreneurial experience and I am not short on ideas and that I have a passion with ideas and not just like sparking them , but I love to like put them down on paper and build them out , and I my favorite part is doing it . Yeah , I love to have the idea and then do the thing and then look back at the first time where I put that idea back on paper , I'm like , damn , like it gives me a rush . Yeah , like the same type of rush that I like had playing ball , like that's why I've chosen this entrepreneurial path . Yeah , but the more that I've executed on ideas and done things and and realize what it takes to bring , you know , because every idea is a production , you know , like whether it's a film or an event or a podcast , yeah , you know the whole thing it's some production and every production takes a lot of energy , it takes a lot of time , and then , when you get to the end , there's so much that has been learned and oftentimes with my ideas , it'd just be like , hey , I want to do this thing , but I haven't quite yet defined the why behind I want to do this thing , or what define the outcome .
Speaker 1What is the outcome that I'm hoping from this thing ? Is this thing to make money ? Is this thing to fulfill some type of passion ? Right , and so I'm learning now as an entrepreneur , as I'm having these ideas . It's like asking the questions of why and then , once I answered some of those , then thinking about the how Versus , like in my younger days which I say younger days maybe , like last year , like 12 months ago it's just like okay , idea , let's do it . And so now it's teaching me to slow down , which is almost also counterintuitive , because the slowing down , I think I'm hoping will allow me to go faster in a way , or build and scale the ideas and be more impactful with the ideas and stuff . So , yeah , there is those balances in there build and scale the ideas and be more impactful with the ideas and stuff . So , yeah , um , yeah , it is there . Is that those balances in there ?
Speaker 2yeah then yeah , no , it's um , ideas are a beautiful thing . I kind of , I kind of think I've , with a little bit of the recent , just maturity and investments and expenditures just for me personally . I kind of think about like a lot of people , a lot of creatives just , and I think we in general take this notion of like receiving ideas as kind of a given , like it's something that happens up in the biology for everybody , but like it might be . You know , I have a lot of thoughts of that because I'm introspective of like where you know , I also have a lot of thoughts and ideas . Most are terrible , some are okay , a few are reasonable to try out , most of those fail and then a few actually work . That's a very small percentage , but you have to go through the hard work of doing all that and I'm really interested , I'm really just curious and I think it has to do with , like you know , other other spiritual realms , biologic realms , astro , like all sorts of stuff of like you know , I have this .
Speaker 2I have this sort of evolving thought that you have to , you have to pay for , you have to pay to be in the place , pay by the work , the thought , the regimented , to be in a place to receive the right ideas , and that that could be an external thing , but that could also just be internal . Like we have to do the right things to keep ourselves healthy , to be mindful , to have clarity of thought in order to receive whether it's some other force like delivering some things to us , or it's just our own , you know matter within our skull . Like cooking those things up and like I think , if you see , especially as a creative like one , you don't , you can't take your ideas for granted , like it might dry up . Like if you don't do , if you don't take care of yourself , if you don't do , you're not inputting the right information to like then re , re , sort of rebake in your own form , like it might dry up . You can't , you can't put trash in your body and expect to be a high performing nfl player . Right , it's kind of the same with ideas and you have to pay for those . You have to watch things that push , push you . You have to experience things that might be challenging to get to or take resources to do , but , like , when you pay for those you're , then you're paying for the , you're paying the ticket , the admission to like get into on any random time , whether it's on a trip or in the most mundane sitting at your desk day , all of a sudden , boom , holy shit , that's like that's something that could move the needle and what I'm trying to accomplish that idea and I think you have to .
Speaker 2I think creatives thinking about it that way , where you have to , like , pay the admission to like , oh , and it's not just one time . You're like you're paying the toll on the fucking toll road , like every single day . And most people like Marshawn Lynch says , most people can't handle like the over and over and over and over again sort of thing . But if you do , if you survive that and you kind of pay that toll , I think more and more and the line isn't linear , it's exponential . Over time you're 10 years into a creative career or 20 years Like . If you continue to do that , then you're going to get exponentially more ideas , opportunity . And maybe if you stack that with , like the additional resources that you know in real time and space , like you stack like that's when you know it becomes really dangerous .
Speaker 2And I noticed with a lot of our young team that and this is for everybody perhaps , but we all have a real and I think it's part of being human is like we're like living right now . It's easiest for us to understand , like , right now , bank account , creative credits list , this friendships relationships , all the good or bad like to understand right now . Bank account , creative credits list , this friendships relationships , all the good or bad like to understand right now . It's really hard to understand , especially as , like we , our team is filled with many young creatives of like okay , you're , you're 20 , 25 years old , editor X or director X or whatever .
Speaker 2The reality is you're not even going to be close based on statistics and like entertainment industry standards , you're not even going to be touching your most meaningful and best work for another 20 years , but you're not even going to come close . And that's not just like , that's not just you . You could be , you could be , you could be the best in the world at something , but like you're not even going to touch your bet , you're not even going to have the opportunity , you're not even going to be in the same ballpark as your best work that you're going to contribute for literally a number another 20 years . So when you see that , when you think about it that way , you're like well , today should be less , less fucks given about the outcome and what I'm posting on social and way more fucks given on like paying those prices of like seeing the right stuff , ingesting the right stuff , making the right relationships , all that stuff so that you're just stacking , you're just stacking and stacking and stacking , so that you
Entrepreneurship and Developing Ideas
Speaker 2can have a coming out party 20 years from now , followed by 10 of the most impactful stories or this that the world's ever seen . Whatever it is , whatever it is for you .
Speaker 2That's really important and I think that it's important for just people to keep that in mind , especially like younger generation creatives , where , like you've got , you've got time , like you've got a minute , but like that feeling that everybody has of like oh shit , well , I need to make this really good thing tomorrow because everybody is doing it , use that , but then fine-tune the dial a little bit of like , that same anxiousness , like use that as the fuel , but then , instead of like worrying about the outcome tomorrow , worry more about like how am I paying down ?
Speaker 2And like getting more inputs , because we all like , as a filmmaker , whether you you're , you know , an editor or a director or a creative director or whatever a producer your own ideas are just reformulations of whatever you might be gifted , but also reformulations of just like what you've , uh , what you've seen , whether that's a bunch of Tik TOK videos , whether a bunch of docs , whether that's your relate , it's everything that you've ingested and then like , reformulated into your own style . And you have to again . You have to pay down those experiences and relationships and things and ask the right questions and engage in the right way to get as much into you as needed so that you give yourself a chance to reformulate things as quote new ideas in ways that are meaningful and you know can contribute value .
Speaker 2So sorry , that's a little bit of a rant , but no that was fire it's important for young creators to like keep , keep that , keep that stuff in mind , yeah .
Speaker 1You know , yeah , and one thing that stuck out to me , what you were just saying , was it actually it's not just the work that influences your work from an input standpoint , right , it's also about , like , what you're doing physically , the relationships that you have you know , what you're watching , what you're eating , where you're traveling to .
Speaker 1All of these experiences are cumulative in the way that they inform one another . It's not just like the couple hours I spend , the few hours I spend at work , will help me in work or will influence work . It's like , actually , how you spend the 16 , your 16 waking hours will influence your work . Yeah , and how you , what you do in your work , will influence your relationship with your family , like , like it's this big web that I think it's easy for us to think about because it is thing about straight lines . This influences this , like in a linear way . But there's actually this web and I've thought about that a lot because I found in , you know , I have a , I run a nonprofit organization and the creative agency , and and then there's the podcast and all these different things , and I I've found that , like , lessons I learned with the creative agency helped me to run the nonprofit more effectively . Like I'm pitching a production to get sold . In the same way I'm pitching for a sponsorship . Or I realized the relationship I'm fostering with a donor is the same . You know , I'm learning a technique I can use with the podcast how to have a conversation like and all these things are like .
Speaker 1You know , the , the , the experiences are cumulative . And I heard , uh , it was a conversation Warren Buffett and Jay-Z . They had a conversation with uh , I think it was with Forbes maybe , but it was cool man , jay-z like blew the Omaha . Yeah , bro , it's , it's great , you should watch it . It's a good interview . And I think it's like David Forbes , one of the Forbes family , was interviewing Warren and Jay-Z in Omaha , nebraska , and I think it was Warren who said , like , all of your experiences are actually cumulative . Like for Jay-Z , he's building a record label , but that's also helping him as a businessman , as an entrepreneur , and working as a businessman is probably helping his music as well . And taking that with me , I'm really like , okay , yeah , all of these inputs are influencing all of the outputs .
Speaker 2Yeah , to put it back , we share some football experience you at a much higher level . But I remember in college my buddies and I in the locker room we one day were sitting like close to the end of the sort of the experience senior year and we're like this is we had this thought and I'll tie it back around to this because I think it's connected is most people see high level athletes as the expression of what they do at the Olympics or at 16 games in a season or whatever , and that's that's valid , like that is the most public expression . But that's not the actual thing , that's the . That's the outcome , that's the , the actual thing , that's the outcome , that's the result , the real thing . And when we sat in the locker room at Oregon State when I was finishing up there and we calculated , it was like some insane sort of statistic of like , for every 575 hours of training or practice or this , it resulted in one hour of on-field competition and then , if you take that down , even more of like for your time on the field . For me it was much more limited . I was getting in where I could get in , but like a few special teams and this and that like the , the , the time invested was so severely weightier than the time on field and outcome that when you see it like that , you realize that the value actually you're , just whether you're at the Olympics or you're , you know , showing up for the premiere of a film , you were , it's , it's all the same thing , like if you , if you treat that , those are the results . Those aren't the actual things . The actual thing to get there is those 579 to one hours or that's the real thing .
Speaker 2And I think you know another thing that I think is a secret , secret weapon for our team that we've kind of baked into just how we all operate , is the human condition , like generally we're primed to avoid sort of challenge and difficulty . Right , a lot of us it is a select few and it can be anybody , but by default it's more a select few . And you see this with people that are conditioned themselves athletes and other high performers to like really embrace that the difficulty , the shittiness of any challenge , like an early morning of this or that . It's like I mean to be a good documentary filmmaker , to go through the mundane of watching every good documentary of like that . Those are challenge , very challenging scenarios and we're generally conditioned to . Eh , I kind of hit a wall here . So I'm gonna like go over here , like yeah , it's , it's few people that like truly just like bang on the wall over and over and , over and over again until it just like and people give up too easy I think , give up on daily hardships and like longer term things . And I think part of our secret weapon is like I've been too stupid and stubborn to like give up on some things and you just kind of wear people down and and you keep coming at it again and again and before you know it , you're like , oh shit , actually I went from like like being a nobody in this space to actually having some , having some , having some cred and like having created some stuff , but like you can't do it and I think it's just a universal law that you have to do it over and over and over , again and again , like our boy beast mode says , like most people are not down with that . Most people cannot , cannot , don't want to take that , you know . So I think it's a really important piece of the of the puzzle , because At the stuff that we're doing right now at blue ox , like doing documentary films and other there , these things are so hard to make .
Speaker 2They're ungodly difficult to like . Come up with the idea to talk somebody into financing it to . It is so hard , it's like very , very , very hard . And if any one of these films like we were talking before we started rolling , like the two things that are they're coming out the you know , the air force elite on netflix and this hbo dream team , one that just came out if we just had kind of stopped at the first instance of like oh , this might be a lot of work or this might be hard , or you know , we had stopped it , this feels impossible . They wouldn't exist in the world , plain and simple .
Speaker 2And I think there's just so many good , valid Ideas that deserve to be out there that just don't Quite .
Speaker 2They get trampled on before they can become robust enough to survive strong winds and people that are out to you know , try to get get it and you just have to go over and over again . It's just really vitally important . So just surviving that and leaning into like oh , this feels , this feels hard , good , it should like cause that's the first hurdle of many of like weeding out the people that may or may . That can't , that won't contribute to the in filmmaking , like the overall conversation of it . It's like the ones that do , I think , across , if you had a thousand different people and you've probably seen this with a lot of your guests like the ones that are out there creating the stuff , just kind of have this understanding and acceptance to lean into some of the hard stuff and to do it over and over again and to pay that price over and over again and then finally you , like you know , kind of emerge of like oh , I guess you know , I guess we're out , I guess we're doing it now and so if it was easy , everybody would do it .
Speaker 1I think that's . I think that's truth . Um , you talked about being in the locker room and , uh , went to Oregon State where I played four years at Oregon State and we were actually connected . I shared this with you on the phone when we first spoke that the Cavanaugh brothers . I remember middle school , high school , learned I knew about the Cavanaugh brothers , bro , you and your brother , connor , both absolute ballers at Lincoln High School . I knew more about Connor because he's he's your younger brother , and so when I was like old enough to really be like watching football , listening him and Jordan Polk , oh bro , they were so cold . Yeah , actually , bro , I see Jordan Polk , upfferson high school . He has a track team that he had to catch up with him .
Speaker 1Oh man , good dude , such a beautiful , beautiful person yeah , great dude , and so I knew about y'all's ballers , and the brother was at puerla state and you at oregon state , and you'll walk on bro lunch bucket award you dug deep lunch bucket is it four ?
Speaker 2years ,
Sports to Filmmaking: Team Culture
Speaker 2four years running . I think so , bro . I think so . It's crazy yeah .
Speaker 1So you talking about I've heard you say survival a couple times . You're talking about , you know like willing to do the hard work I mean at oregon state , being a walk-on and getting that award every year , playing special teams . You very much lived that long before the filmmaking career began .
Speaker 2No , I think I owe a lot of that . Connor . My brother was an excellent athlete , like a football player of the year and all sorts of stuff . He's a better for sure , certifiably a better athlete than I was , and that Connor Cavanaugh to Jordan Poole combo was deadly . It was fun to watch . Yeah , so fun . And Jordan , that's amazing to hear he's in Portland doing his thing .
Speaker 2I'll have to catch up with you , but I think anybody that participates in sport or anything else that requires sacrifice and challenge and also like sort of a giving of oneself to something larger , a team , this , like those are challenging things that not everybody like sort of leans into . But if you do find a way to do that , they give back in ways that you're not currently able to estimate . And for me personally , I think I was just really fortunate and lucky maybe in some ways , like missing a couple screws of like you know where most people are , like I'm sane and I'm not going to put myself through this . I think in other ways , like mostly in sport and the the . You know high school football and baseball and wrestling and you know track and all this stuff , and then in college and in sport as well , like I just kind of I just accepted , like that , in a lot of those environments and scenarios , I'm just going to , I'm just going to do it , I'm going to show up again and again and again and like it . I think , um , again , I had a screw loose or two , but like it , it , it . I eventually started to see how , if you pound on these things long enough , then you eventually just kind of craft your way into , you , manufacture your way into belonging in a , in a space , and you cannot estimate . A perfect example is just like all the things you were mentioning , just how these all things are just the interconnectedness of our , our decisions and relationships like is , is , is very , is very significant . And a good example is like I think back now .
Speaker 2I don't spend a lot of time thinking like retroactively , but when I do one of the most , you know , uh , fun , and it's also like in some , a concerning thing to think about what , if I hadn't have done this Today wouldn't exist . I think about the activity and investment in sport and some of the relationships that was had there and how , those when I started my own filmmaking sort of creative entrepreneurial journey in 2012 , 2011, . Sort of creative entrepreneurial journey in , you know 20 , 2012 , 2011 . If , if I didn't have those relationships from spending four years at Oregon state or even going back before that , the opportunities to the very first opportunities to do a documentary series with , when my brother was at Portland state uh , in the Portland state , football team wouldn't have existed , wouldn't have known team wouldn't have existed , wouldn't have known , wouldn't have known the Nigel Burton , the coach there . Like it just wouldn't have happened .
Speaker 2And like every other single like decision tree that went out to all this started with that and there were a couple other like small things like that in similar ways . So , like I think back on that , it's like scary . Like , oh , what if I didn't just stumble upon this ? Or like what if I didn't keep saying yes , despite being a brutal amount of hard work ? Like , oh , it would be scary , I wouldn't have this , life would be different .
Speaker 2And I think , like you just have to take that to current day and say it's important just to continue , like pounding away on something that you believe deeply in and you just feel the need of like and if it feels right , it shouldn't be subject to other people's interpretations of .
Speaker 2You know well , you can't make money doing that or this or that like if it feels right , you should just keep pounding away . And yes , there are some realities that you need to . You know pay for gas and this and that and we have to work through those things . But like when it feels , when it feels like powerful and right whether it's filmmaking , creative sport , like walking onto the oregon state football team , like continuing into multiple scenes in the nfl , whatever it is like you just kind of have to , you just have to keep getting , you just have to keep going , yeah . So there's a lot of ties back to sport that I'm really blessed and fortunate and grateful that kind of played out and the way they played out , and maybe in alternate universes , like they played out more in my favor or an alternate , less in my favor , but I'm happy and grateful with the things that happened to at least get to you know , open up the doors that led to you know doing stuff now and you know it's important . Yeah .
Speaker 1Yeah , I know what kind of guy you are doing stuff now and you know it's , it's important . So , yeah , yeah , I know , I know what kind of guy you are . Man , I see that lunch bucket immediately .
Speaker 2Oh , he's that guy . Huh , you know , I think the mode on I , I'm , I . I don't spend a lot of time thinking about it , but I am proud of those . It's fun , it's fun and I think I am not that motivated If I lived , if I was a just an individual . I think I'm a small percentage of the person that earned those sort of those awards and those lunch bucket awards you're talking about .
Speaker 2It was basically at Oregon State , like who , who basically works the works the hardest is the tenacity to like come again and again and day after day and everything that's . Essentially it's like bringing your lunch bucket to work like a construction construction worker or whatever . And um , but on my own I don't think I'm capable of that . It was the gathering of a hundred different individuals from all over the place that in some ways , in a healthy way , I had I was competitive with and wanted to outperform . But in other and in other ways and both are valid of like , I'm just motivated by to like show up and perform for them , and there was just this really unique atmosphere that was amplified even more and I'm sure it is even like way , way more in the nfl , but in in the college football locker room .
Speaker 2You just like you all kind of really believe in this one thing and this was like kind of pre some of the other things that exist now , with NIL deals and everything , and it felt just like really unique of just everybody's trying to win and like go to the next and go to the league or like , but it all goes through .
Speaker 2Everybody , just like you know busting , busting themselves to , like , you know , put in the most amount of effort to like open those opportunities to beat number one usc and be a top 25 team . And , you know , for a certain selective , you know , lucky ones go play at another level . But like it was the motivation through that that even enabled me to , you know , do any of that work and to be , you know , humbly recognized by the rest of the team . Like yo tk is a he goes pretty hard and like he's a , you know , good example any of that work and to be , you know , humbly recognized by the rest of the team of like yo TK is a he goes pretty hard and like he's a , you know , good example in some ways of like you know how to , you know , maximize some of the pieces .
Speaker 1So yeah , yeah , no , I mean team culture plays a huge role in that and it's . We had a really . You know I was at Cal for four years and then I had a year at Stanford and you know the culture at Cal wasn't bad per se , but the culture at Stanford was just a lot stronger , more consistency with the staff and stuff . And so when I was driving over here this morning , one of my boys called me , who I played at Stanford with and also a walk-on , earned a scholarship receiver engineering-type mindset .
Speaker 1It's very similar to you in some ways and he just randomly called me . He was just chopping it up and he was like what you doing ? I'm like , oh , I got a podcast today . He said , oh , who's it with ? He's like , oh , taylor Cavanaugh . Oh , crazy , crazy , bro , let me tell you , you're the walk-on at working state . And when I told him I'm humble the lunch bucket award four years straight , and I was like , bro , that's basically like our team technician , because at stanford we'd give out a technician award and immediately he's like oh shit , like he knew that . You know what I mean . I didn't even have to tell him what the lunch bucket award was , was he's like oh , wow , okay , this dude is a real deal um , well , I don't even know if those last couple years I truly earned it .
Speaker 2I think the team just maybe felt obligated and if it's gonna be three , like we can't , we can't , we can't , uh , you know we got it . We got to just give the gift in the fourth . So maybe I earned it , maybe I didn't . Either way , like it's , it's a . It's beautiful to be , you know , part of a part of a squad and a team big , small , at whatever it's like . It's such to be , you know , part of a part of a squad and a team big , small , at whatever it's like . It's such an important part , I think , of the human experience .
Speaker 2And this Netflix doc we did , um , air Force Elite that's going to come out in in May , on Memorial Day , like an incredible example of that and that's some of the you know you talk about early inspiration pieces like that's one that I that shouldn't be mentioned , like this documentary that we did following these amazing the best fighter pilots in the world . They come together and they have to fly within inches , fly F-16 jets within inches of each other . The amount of trust and practice and care and system that goes into trusting your teammates to do this job in a way that literally won't crash all the planes is like really remarkable and there's there's essence of that obviously baked in throughout sport , throughout good , good and bad , you know company , team cultures and everything , but like this latest expression of this really cool doc has mentioned air force elite that we , that we got to do , was such a remarkable sort of like vivid , very acute life or death example of that . It was cool and it's cool to see those parallels from you know my limited background , you know semi-limited background in sport . That feels like a long time ago and seeing that refresh like oh , I forgot , like what what that really feels like to depend in some cases life or death for your health , your , your knees , your , you know ability to like depend on , you know the , the person just inside of you to like do a specific job and do it well so that you can then do it .
Speaker 2That's just such an important piece of like any organization and when you talk about culture or high performing teams or whatever , it just that's a , that's a foundational piece , is people that are willing to accept that challenge and you know take , take , hits and and all the stuff to allow the next person to you know , make the make the tackle or you know , make the play or fly the jet or whatever is like you can't do it without it , because you basically shut off the valve of any potential as soon as everybody is more self-focused and you some of that is important , right , we have to be self-motivated and all this stuff . But , like , you shut off the valve more and more when individuals are more focused on like themselves , or at least the majority . Once you cross maybe 51 percent and it's like , hey , I'm , I'm 51% concerned about myself and only 49% concerned about , like , the work we're doing as a team . You kind of you turn off those , you turn off the opportunity to really like make these huge strides and you see it in the Air Force and these amazing squadrons and NFL teams and you know and everything .
Speaker 2And that's one piece of the journey that I am just really grateful to have observed in mostly good and some in some poor ways of like .
Speaker 2Hey , here's what it looks like , for better , for worse to like organize a group of people , apply some resources , have a mission , try to like get everybody up and going , to like put physical things in place to buy cameras or this or that or build software or whatever and like , without the good examples that I've had in my past of like , seeing coaches and teammates , like really here's how it looks , I wouldn't , I wouldn't possibly have been able to even come close to apply those things to hey , what does it look like to build a small , you know , burgeoning production company or be an entrepreneur of any sort ?
Speaker 2Like they're literally there , they were . It relies on those experiences that just happened to fall in my lap and you know I just saw it through and through to not say no to every day , so , but it's amazing to see these high-performing teams . It's remarkable and that's how real , real , real work and change gets done , whether it's the federal government , the military teams , whatever it is . When you have teams operating like that , that's how the real work gets done , and it doesn't always get celebrated or acknowledged all the time .
Speaker 1Yeah , 100% that's how the real work gets done , and it doesn't always get celebrated or acknowledged all the time . So yeah , 100 when you left oregon state , uh , you graduated , you were done playing football until then blue ox came to be .
Speaker 2Keep filling those those years so I did engineering , matt and my now business , my my now business
Origin Story of Blue Ox
Speaker 2partner , who's been's been a confidant business partner throughout since college up until now and continued into the future , matt Wilcox . He went to Jesuit and played basketball , went to Oregon State and so we were in engineering together and sort of had latent creative passions and skill sets that we sort of , in bits and pieces , explored in college . And it was right . After college graduated , took a big long trip through the South Pacific and we started kind of storytelling people in American Samoa and Fiji and Tonga , new Zealand , australia , all these places that we travel . And that was kind of the first impetus of like oh , this is actually really cool , like having a camera , engaging with people , using that tool , capturing it on some sort of medium and then like putting it together in you know , final Cut , final Cut Express or Final Cut Pro that we use at that time , like in the Final Cut days , putting it together and we're like , oh , whoa , this is really exciting , like it's really cool . You can like use these different tools and things to like evoke emotion and like share somebody's story . And it's really beautiful to like meet some random hiking guide in Fiji and , like you , go up to the top of the mountain with them and like you hear about all this shit that he's been through and you capture some of it and then include it in a little bit of a story , like it's just really , it's a beautiful , it's a beautiful process . So we took a trip right after that . That kind of spurred a lot of that .
Speaker 2Matt and I both worked as engineers for almost two years like doing like proper engineering , like building buildings in Seattle and , you know , in Washington state . We did that for a little bit , mostly just using our engineering salary that was pretty good to buy cameras and like kind of continue to fulfill this little kind of ambition of tinkering with , uh , with with cameras and editing and everything . So we really just use it to support that . And then it was around like 2012, . We started our first company . We left sort of the comforts of having an engineering salary and having a nice condo and that sort of stuff Kind of did the typical , some version of the typical story of like move back in with your parents and like put a desk in your room and like that you grew up in and like just start trying to piece some things together . And it was around that time that we started , you know , doing little bits and pieces videos . I mentioned , like the Portland state video that we did there's a , there's a series somewhere floating around the internet that that that was some of that early work and we just started then chipping away in 2012 .
Speaker 2And we went through kind of one company and sold that back to our other partners and did a couple other like and that was all the learning . That was like paying down sort of the experiences and who do we want to partner with , who's right , who's wrong , and like what kind of work do we want to be doing . We were just kind of paying those things down so that three and a half years later , four years later , in 2016 , when we're like , hey , we're going to do this , just Matt and I , and like this is the right situation and the right setup and we really we want to . We proved ourself right in some ways , learn some hard lessons and others we want to focus mostly on like sport , storytelling , and here's how we want to do it . We were just better prepared and like humbled in some ways , more confident in others , and and then started what kind of became this iteration of blue ox films in like 2016 . So you know , um , there's a , there's a lot in between there , but um , that's kind of like the , the narrative of it . Yeah , in a nutshell , so , how blocks get the name . It was as simple as we at the time .
Speaker 2So when Blue Ox started , we started it out of a trailer , an RV .
Speaker 2We bought this , we bought this motor home , basically for one of the first projects we ever did traveling around for the Pac-12 doing the , this show , the Drive , which I think we've talked about . And in order to do that , it was a limited budget and it was with a really amazing collaborator director that was at the pack 12 . Then michael talasian , who we actually worked with on this nba dream team dog on hbo . So it just shows you , like , how cool relationships just continue to evolve . But mike t as we , as we call him , amazing filmmaker and producer , showrunner , brought us on and said , hey , I have this , we want to make hbo hard knocks , but we have about 1 , 20th of the budget . Like what do you guys think ? And the answer was like hell , yeah . So we kind of engineered and developed this idea of like what if we literally live out of a motorhome for the entire football season ? We just drive from place to place and spend five days with Cal and then Stanford and here and there and like we just drive in between .
Speaker 2And it was such a unique experience because we literally parked our motorhome in the stadium Like we had like we were parked outside of the Rose Bowl for like a week , so we'd be like running the Rose Bowl stairs in the morning and stuff . And so we started Blue Ox in in the motorhome basically traveling around and we started doing other client work and so we'd be editing from the road and everything , and then eventually that project kind of gracefully concluded . We did some for the basketball teams as well and um , and then we moved it kind of into a more proper sort of office space and had a minimal amount of resources that we had kind of collected just through those early projects to say , hey , we can afford a lease , and got a couple other people that were gonna have help and it kind of went from there . So Blue Ox is the name of the RV . I didn't hit that one . We were busy on the RV . My ADD brain is moving . We were busy on the RV and it was simple as it was . As simple as we got to bring somebody else in to think of a name for us , because we're we're unamused right now . So it was simple as like , let's , let's , let's have this branding company , draw us up a quick website . And , by the way , while you're at it , like , what's a cool , what's a cool name . And they came back with like three and Blue Ox was the least worst one and we're like all right , this is it .
Speaker 2And then when we , and then when I think inspired by you know , there's like american tall tale sort of right right , right . I . I assume that was the , the thought behind it , or at least that's what I associate with type situation , type type shit . So so I assume I and I was like okay , like that's , that's okay , that's okay , uh , and then it just you know , like that's okay , that's okay . And then it just you know . And then it's one of those things like you make an early decision and now it's too baked to really change . Oh bro , it's solid , it's solid , it works . So as you go like it's not , it's not , nothing we're doing is ever like like this is it , this is how it's going to be , it's just , it's just how it is right now .
Speaker 2So , like the openness to like every single day I actually think that's a huge like pain point , a vice of mine , but also a virtue is like like that in the team and it annoys the hell out of people . I changed my mind so often . I changed my mind all the time limited enough so that we don't we don't spend a bunch of time and money doing this . I've I compartmentalize it so I change my mind before we start applying , like building this stuff .
Speaker 2But like the ideas going back and forth , like I embarrassed myself internally of like yesterday I was sure that we were going to do this and today I'm embarrassed because literally the best of my knowledge is we should actually do the total opposite .
Speaker 2You know we're trying to figure out .
Speaker 2You know we have a LA office and we have a Portland office and where do we build out our team and how do we shut in ? Like literally day to day it's like , well , fuck , we should be , we should be putting everything into building the team in LA and then the next we should be putting everything here and like , and I think that's that can be a problem if you don't eventually come down and say this is what's happening , we're doing it and it . The same goes for like freelancers and just where we're all at in the journey of like we have no obligation to just do yesterday because , well , we're pot committed . Now we have the opportunity to like say , hey , that's what I did yesterday and I see the benefit and maybe the shortcomings and learnings from that . But like we , we can shift and change , and that is to be balanced with , like the necessity of like sticking with things and like pounding through as well , but like it's all you know , you have to kind of do both at the same time , you know .
Speaker 1I feel like when you do change your mind , it helps you , it puts you in a different frame of mind to think about , like okay , this decision has been made . Now what are the consequences of the decision ? You know what I mean . When you're in like the balancing act , it's like , oh , that could be one thing , that could be another thing , all right . When you actually make the decision , it's like okay , now I'm looking down the path . It's like become more real , yeah , and then okay , if you switch and change your mind , then you can go and like , look down this path . And it's almost like a practice in like , visualization of like okay , I made a decision , not that has like the whole team is on board and we're spending resources , but in my mind , I'm set on LA . Okay , well , that means this pros cons . You look , looking at it right there , cause the next step is like all right , we're about to do this thing .
Speaker 2If you have the right inputs , you should , you can and you should trust like what feels , not to get it , not to overcomplicate it . It's just like what do I , what do I really want to be doing and what do I think what is meaningful to me and what is meaningful enough that I can , like put my head through a wall again and again and again to make it real . That's usually the thing . There's other complexities around . Well , how do you monetize that ? Or how do you do this or that or whatever . But like that's the second phase , that's , that's the secondary part .
Speaker 2The first part is like I have to tell the story , like I'm going to regret if I don't pursue this and I might accept a hard no , there's no other options later down the road . I can accept that , but only if I really truly like pursue it . And sometimes that means doing other things on the side , doing this or doing that . But , like you know , you can only go so far as an individual . You know you have , you have , you do have to have thought partners and thinkers and teammates to like really scale those things up . So you have to balance that too , you know , and and find the right like-minded and align ideas and approaches and give a little bit to get some , and you know it's all part of the function , so all right boom coming out of halftime .
Speaker 1Based in portland . Blue ox is based in portland . We are a portland-based podcast . Why portland for you ?
Speaker 2well , I think it at the beginning it just is a fortunate benefit , that kind of like a lot of things kind of falls in our lap and if you are smart about it , you can learn to appreciate and identify and adapt and sort of build on the things that we're just sort of
Values of Process and Workflow
Speaker 2blessed with . And I think Portland is a lot of that . I was driving across the bridge on the way here and the beauty and the livability of Portland is really remarkable . There's insane value in other cities New York , atlanta and LA and everything and Portland's obviously a much smaller market in some regards but it's so livable and it's such a beautiful city and there's huge , there's huge benefit to there's . There's powerhouse sportswear companies that reside and have invested here and there's a whole ecosystem around people that help provide creative and support and production and all sorts of stuff for those and um , and I think that's really remarkable . So have a niche , but like a really meaningful group of creative organizations sports-based you know history and companies that reside here and so , speaking from just like a business perspective , like that's made a lot of sense . Like blue ox has had a really long and fruitful and hard-working , meaningful relationship with the nike brand of families and like we build a lot of our company through doing working really hard and doing really good work for them . So I think that's been just really , really beneficial and a continued purpose to continue to invest here .
Speaker 2And even when you know whether people outside looking in believe in Portland or not , like it's just been , it's been obvious for us to continue to , you know , do that . And then I think personally it's just there's been , you know , I don't know all the all , the all the stats and figures , but I know like my dad's side of the family has been in in Oregon and Portland for a long time and and there are sort of multi-generational sort of comfort and component to that and have friends and family and everything , um , and I just I think when I so there's there's that sort of , like you know , personal retroactive looking , there's the current portion of there's just a lot of there's there's a lot of good work and business and story and talent and people in portland that I , that I believe in and I love and appreciate . And then , forward looking , I think I , you know , have an extrapolation of that and a very small component that we Blue Ox me can , we can provide is adding , adding to that in a vision of a , you know , you know high performing , you know highly diverse , highly creative workforce and , you know a group of people living and working in like really meaningful , high performance sports stories and organizations , like that's all possible , like the components are . The components are there to continue to like , deliver and build on that sort of idea and , and you know , and it's why we Blue Ox , like we have we're , we have some remote team members . We have about six people down in Venice and LA . That is is really valuable and you know , and really cool , but the vast majority of our editors and camera people and like producers are here in Portland and kind of circled around . All of that and hopefully , like in a really small way , we can continue to participate in bringing outside talent because most of our team is from all over the us or other places .
Speaker 2Yeah , and continuing to bring people to portland to not only contribute on specific work and creative but interact in the community and add value there and you know that sort of thing . So , yeah , I believe in portland and I have a huge gratitude . You know , just happened to be placed here . My parents lived , moved here , showed up here and you know , just happened to be placed here . My parents lived , moved here , showed up here and , just you know , try to express gratitude just for , like , the amazing livability and beauty of Portland and access to , you know , coast and mountains and different biodiversity and everything .
Speaker 2It's like it is really cool .
Speaker 1Can't beat it being from the soil out here and the range of responses I've gotten throughout my life since I left Portland when I tell people that I'm from here . At first it was like oh yeah , hell yeah , I hear Portland's cool . Then like , more recently , are you okay ? Is everything okay out there ? Yeah , and from my perspective I agree with everything that you just said , I think is it's . It's a great city to to be in and to work in . Yeah , to come home to . Yeah . The more I've been traveling and coming back , you know , just getting home it's , oh man , fresh air .
Speaker 2Here's my theory . If you want to understand a microcosm about a city , you don't even need to go into the city , you just go to the airport . Is the airport dialed in ? Like how ? How do the people the front desk talk to you like it , it , the ? The airport is the first line , bro . That's so real to understand what you need to know about a city . And I'm not saying good , bad , I'm not . I'm not saying like it's a loose connection , but like there is , there is something . There is something to it . How many people , what ? How you're going to be responding when you , when you order a coffee or ask you know , whatever , like it's , there's something to it .
Speaker 2And for for people that don't know or have , uh , have , any sort of negative sentiment about Portland , roll through the Portland airport . If you haven't been there recently , that's my piece . It's like people I'd go there to hang out . I'd go there to do work , get a coffee and do work . It's like that beautiful . So shout out to the Port of Portland folks that did that remodel if you've rolled through there recently . But that's my theory . You know , did that remodel if you've rolled through there recently , but that's my . That's my theory is like you want to learn the first step about a city ? Hang , hang in the airport for a little while and do some talking and searching around and you're going to learn a thing or two about that geography .
Speaker 1That's so real , bro . When I , uh , when I landed in New Orleans for Super Bowl , I rented a car from Enterprise and I got out there maybe it was a little bit late , it's like in the evening , and there weren't many people in there , so it was just like the three folks . It was two folks on the Enterprise side and then one folks maybe on the , you know , the Avis side , and they were just all chopping it up and I walk in on a conversation of they were talking about hot Cheetos and somebody was like yeah , bro , hot Cheetos dipped in ketchup .
Speaker 2It's fire . That's your first insight into the culinary scene .
Speaker 1Yeah , bro , in New Orleans , like that's it and they were just having a ball . They did not pause their conversation with me . They gave me great customer service but continued to chop it up and laugh and then kind of included me in it , like what you think ? Like in the New Orleans accent .
Speaker 2I was like I was like , okay , yeah , I fuck with this place , that's fire , yeah , that's fire no , I , I love and appreciate portland and I just think there's so much to offer and just I'm bullish on it .
Speaker 1So yeah , yeah , um , changing gears . So I had , uh , I had a coffee with neil a couple weeks ago , dope , yeah , neil's a uh cool dude . It's funny we actually have some . We have some mutuals from his time in university of georgia , nice . Yeah , so , uh , he was like on the football staff doing the video stuff , yep , and a couple guys I played with one , I played with ledbetter and my me and davin bellamy in houston and he was he's cool with both of those guys , like real cool . So it was .
Speaker 1We met at the family friends night like , bro , let's chop it up , have a coffee . I'm glad you guys did that . That's awesome . Yeah , uh , he's cool . But he was telling me about , like the how process oriented blue ox is and how process oriented your mind is , because I told him about , like , our podcast and just asking for some tidbits and so the , the process orientation . But then also , boom , I go through the website as I'm doing some research . I'm going through the fridge tab on the website . Well done , love the fridge tab on the website . Yeah , falling through , yeah , and something sticks out to me . I see workflow wins championship . That's like , oh bro , that's fire right there that's a , that's a , that's a sticky one .
Speaker 2People , people connect to that one . Yeah , that's good . Um , and it's truth . I yeah , I don't know where really that comes from . I think you know , I think to .
Speaker 2To make creative things , you got to have range between the ends of the spectrum of like pure creativity , with no necessary regard to time or money or anything , just like the idea . That's on one end of the spectrum . The other end of the spectrum is like pure execution and like workflow , and I think you have to have a little bit of both of those and I think we've built a team with people that , if not in the beginning , are at least open and willing to accepting that filmmaking creative is really both of those . And when you look at the expression of filmmaking and content creation , it is one of the maximum , if not the pinnacle , expression of merging art and science , merging these two ends of the spectrum , process and creativity . And we see it more and more as we get a little bit deeper into doing documentaries and working for really , you know , pristine platforms and like it's one minute about the idea and the evolution of the character and these very soft , moldable things in the next minute it's like these legal check boxes need to get done and it's all part of the same project .
Speaker 2Or like you're a day behind on your visual effects , or like highly technical , literally like math oriented . How do we build this spreadsheet to better reflect this information , to support and deliver on the creative and like filmmaking is this incredible mixture of both of those and traditionally , I think the way that the industry has handled that is , you have different people come in that have different left brain , right brain , different people with different brains handle this and they talk to each other to get along enough to like allow the project both to be legally cleared and highly creative . I think what we've attempted to do at blue oxen and I appreciate neil p , neil neil p or boy neil peterson sharing that I think . I think I take it as a compliment , but I'm not entirely sure I'll have to talk with him . I'm joking , but like it's both sides of the spectrum , people like . I think people acknowledge like this is a value that I bring to the team , but also like a real pain in the ass .
Speaker 1He was commending you . He was like bro , this dude , taylor , is a monster . He talked a little bit about your morning routine . He was like you got to ask him about the morning routine . Like he's locked in so he was giving you the bonus , it's both . He's locked in so he was giving you his powers , it's both .
Speaker 2But having that range because filmmaking , documentary , branded content , commercials , really require both and I think it's a beautiful equation and a balance that exists . And if you have a willingness and enough of sort of that left brain and right brain to allow those things to coexist and then identify patterns of how they can work better together , and that's the essence of it is a real passion and I really , really believe that people who think that it's just pure creativity that is going to express itself automatically are limiting themselves significantly . The workflow , the producing , the production management , these are multiplying factors to the creative idea and with one or the other the organism can exist . But if you have a very strong , solidified , passionate , creative concept , idea , story that you're after , and then you don't just like , go linear of , like one unit of creative , I need one unit of production or workflow , it's , it's , it's , it's multifactored , it's exponential , where you take the origination of an idea , you know a shoot , any creative aspect , and you say , well , instead of one unit of production , workflow or process , or you know , workflow wins championship style mentality , I'm gonna apply 10 units of that . Well , your creative idea just got 10 times better like , and it's mathematics , like , it just is , and I've seen it at Blue Ox , I think we're on .
Speaker 2We have a whole you know process and list by you know how we number projects and all this stuff , and we're on project . We've done 700 and 765 projects I think . Today 765 , some got canceled . Some are shorter , some are longer , like our , I think our dream team , uh , documentary is in the three hundreds . Uh , our , our , um , our air force , elite , netflix one is also in the three hundreds . So it goes to show you like it took about 300 , 400 projects from beginning that those getting project numbers to actually seeing the light of day , damn . Okay . So we've done and I think one of the benefits that maybe Neil is speaking to is one of , I think , the skill sets that I've realized that I'm really grateful for and have worked to kind of do the hard work to develop further is pattern recognition . Over 700 projects . You start to identify , hmm , we're doing this in the same way , the same time on these specific projects and then you say , well , how can we maybe save literally 10 minutes on the next project ? That's like that and reapply that 10 minutes I'm being extreme with it , call it 10 days , right , and reapply that Instead of copying and pasting this information from here to there . We're going to reapply all that time into making the idea better or applying that to some somewhere else . So I think I'm really passionate
Democratizing Storytelling
Speaker 2about it because I see , I see , as I've , as I've finished sort of like ensuring that Blue Ox is at least going to survive for a little bit .
Speaker 2The next big area that I see as a competitive advantage and it's sort of the biggest problem and challenge of the day that I'm working on solving and getting out of , the biggest problem and challenge of the day that I'm working on solving and getting out of the way so we can find the next ones to go do . It's when we have , you know , employee 35 come in . That's a producer or editor , they , they , they come in because they meet a threshold of like , passion and quality and a talented human and a really good human to come into Blue Ox . But beyond that , they know almost nothing of like how we specifically do things and there's infinite number of ways to make a podcast or a film or whatever , infinite number of permutations of how you do that . I think we've found a way , through pattern recognition and obsession of those things , that is like relatively efficient and in aggregate produces good work .
Speaker 2But how do you communicate eight years of experience and 750 projects to somebody coming in ? You can't . It's impossible . Normally that person would have to spend sort of even if it's an amplified timescale like two , three , four , five years , before they actually understand it .
Speaker 2So my one , and I think the solve to that is , to the extent possible , to the amount that you're you can have the time and resource to invest to solidify these things is to build a playbook . Like the workflow wins , championships is like here's blue ox's playbook . I'm not , we're not going to tell you how to like stem the route and adjust to the ball and go out and make plays , but like generally , here's the playbook for how we get a brief from Nike to make a sizzle or get a brief from Wieden and Kennedy to go edit some campaign or whatever . Here's kind of how we do it . It's a checklist , it's a process . So we've slowly built those things and you can't do it all at once .
Speaker 2I didn't even know that was important for the first eight years that we were doing it . It just't even , it just didn't even register . But like the last four years , and especially the last couple of years , it's been like oh , now I've seen I've seen a lot of these patterns and sort of the pattern recognition applied with a little bit of sort of what you know I enjoy of like it sort of a you know entrepreneurial , engineer type mindset of like how can we just make this better for the people coming in ? And it really is that the base foundation thing is I just enjoy building things and seeing things run smoother so that the work can be better . But I think the most foundational thing is like I'm just highly , highly , highly passionate and focused on making all the team members in our team really fucking good at what they do and giving them every possible tool , giving them all the right support and culture and all the different things , giving them the right push and challenge and the workflow .
Speaker 2The playbook is a really big piece of that . I know that a really talented producer coming in can either operate at 50% of her capacity or 95% , and that 45% differential has a lot to do with what I personally and our team gives to her in terms of a playbook and information and like hey , here's learnings , here's do's and don'ts , here's all the pitfalls in one aggregated place from of the 760 projects that we did , and 300 of them could have gone better . Here's some delineated stuff of like eh , consider not doing what we made the mistake on on project 200 , here on project 800 . You know what I mean . So I think that's the essence of it and I think workflow and process and that sort of stuff gets a bad sort of boring rap sometimes , but for me I think it's just been a big unlock and I think a secret sauce for us is like we understand it , we care about it enough , we're willing to like go through because it is hard work , like putting your mind to that and doing that but we've done enough so that the two most important outcomes can become real being amplifying the work and also just giving people a better playbook .
Speaker 2It's like a you know it's a new player , like we see . You see it all the time and you know , in nfl , nba , all over different companies , like the same player goes from you know a challenged organization to a really good one and all of a sudden , like they're different players . Yeah , I think it's the same . I think it's the same thing and there's probably parallels to that of like , well , what's different about the other organization or the other franchise ?
Speaker 2Well , you know , they might have a better offensive coordinator or like the playbook might be better , have the right playbook to fit their skills , or don't have the right coaching or support or whatever , and then they go somewhere else and it's a fit . And not saying that like Blue Ox is right for everybody , you know , cause it's not . But like for the right people that you know fit kind of our , our check boxes of things , like when they come in , there's a big difference between just them doing their own thing based on their experience , and like hey , do your own thing and go make plays on the ball . But also like here's some ideas of like how to put yourself in position with the playbook to like go , go make really good stuff . Yeah , you know , and it's kind of proven , so I'm passionate about it .
Speaker 1It's kind of nerd , it's nerd shit , but yeah no , I'm vibing with it , bro , because it , because it's a big part of what I've been thinking about lately too . I'm thinking about like there's a certain point where , you know , the unbridled creativity gets you to a certain point and then it's like all right , well , to push past this you know , glass ceiling or threshold to do more effectively , you know , and be passionate about , and not be , you know , just to have it be too much . It's like there's gotta be some infrastructure . So it was kind of like all right , well , let's , let me put energy back into the infrastructure in the process . And uh , so I was telling you about the , what I've been reading .
Speaker 1I've been reading a couple books . A book a month , four hour work week I've just finished , oh , bro . And like building a business around process , not around people , which , like he's on the extreme of it , right On automating everything . But there's something to that , right . It's like if you just want to have all the people you know carry all the luggage from your one city to the next , yeah , you can do it , you'll get there at some point . But instead , if you make some railroad tracks , you know what I mean Put this stuff on the railroad tracks and have a go . You can get there much quicker , but it's so powerful I'm in that place and so when Neil was sharing some of the process stuff and I saw the workflow that term in itself is something that's like I pulled from that from Tim Ferriss in the 4-Hour Workweek Like what is the workflow ? Yeah , like how manual does all of this need to be ? How steep is the learning curve when a new person does this project or when we go do a project that look like the last one ?
Speaker 2yeah , you know so , yeah , it's all platform to work from . You know it's uh , yeah , I care about a lot . I I actually think one of you know we're I'm still in the , we're still in the mode and sort of my time is really spent building , building blue ox , and I don't think that's going to change eventually . I I'm anticipating that one of the the bigger goals that I'll have is and this is sort of tangential and sort of uh , the expression of it we're doing right now . We're doing some like kind of software exploration in place with the theory of like is there sort of a best possible route on how to produce a documentary or branded content or a podcast Like ? I think the answer is yes and we're working on like , how do we take all this experience that Blue Ox it seems to have worked . We're not the end all be all , we're not perfect , but I think we've done enough that it's like oh , okay , overall this works . How can we sort of put that down into a software that basically enables producers and other production and other creatives that are organizing everything that needs to be organized around a creative idea that gives a structure and a playbook , not just as an internal tool to Blue Ox , but eventually , I'd , you know , I think we will take that , take that outward and be like is this valuable to other people , people .
Speaker 2So we're , we're tinkering with that and I have a software team . You know we have a software team , kind of building that for blue ox and testing it , and you know that's that's the latest expression of sort of workflow wins , championship , sort of mentality of like , you know , honestly , we have , you know , somewhere between 35 and 45 projects at a time in different realms of production , or creative or whatever and like , even though we have a good team , it's not automatic that all those 40 we have 46 projects today . All those 46 projects are like , cared for and all remember , like , or set up or have a google drive folder for everyone , like that is all normally really manual effort . So we've started building just these very small pieces of like hey , can we click a button the minute we have the next documentary that we need this for , and can it auto create all the documents that we need , whether we use them or not ? Can we , you know , how can we information share between those documents so that you , you know , the shot list is copy , you know , is informed , and by all these other documents and the credit you know . So we're like we're identifying these patterns of that we are manually doing a lot of stuff and then slowly but surely cause it is time , and you know , thought intensive , to sort of take playbook sketches on a whiteboard that the OC is doing and put that into a galvanized , solid playbook .
Speaker 2And that playbook , I think for us will continue to be just using off-the-shelf tools , but maybe more and more building for our own team and our team and our creators , and maybe beyond that of like putting it into a digital , digitized , you know , software based , you know format that can help , can help producers and can help people . Like hey , I've never done , I've never produced a podcast before , but I'm like really smart and driven and creative . Like could , could a product like this give you boom ? Here's the steps . You need these specific legal docs , you need this . Like you should create this . Here's the steps . You need these specific legal docs , you need this . Like you should create this . Here's a template for the schedule . Like , yeah , could that be valuable ? Could that unlock another , a next quantum leap in ? Like creators , I think it's possible and that's like I think the biggest hurdle that I think will is is his passion now , but will continue to be a passion of like man .
Speaker 2The richest form of information share , the most meaningful one that we have ever in the history of 500,000 years of evolution , and probably forever , will be the sharing of stories , like it's . It's an insanely powerful medium . It's the same power that you know , you know boosts a league because of a TV show . It's the same thing why , you know , you go out . Now we mentioned Portland and , like you know , there was some storytelling that went on around Portland and everything that was negative in nature , and now a lot of people have that story like on both sides of the spectrum . It's the power of storytelling and storytelling will always come from humans , like the origination , because storytelling is about the human experience and it will always be . That's what will always be interested to us , because we can't change 500,000 years of evolution .
Speaker 2And but there's a lot of people walking around with incredible stories the next amazing documentary or the next amazing Nike basketball commercial or the next amazing feature film , but because of workflow , because of workflow or you know , they're not able to get to the starting line .
Speaker 2Their idea is just as fucking good as anybody else , but they maybe don't have like the one right document that you need to put your ideas in to be taken seriously by a platform , or they don't have the one right connection to some attorney or sale , like what .
Speaker 2These are things that are overcomable , like solvable hurdles to unlock , like put more power in the hands of more creators and ip generators to simply want put potentially make more good stuff , yeah , in addition to a wider volume of better work , in addition to a higher quality of it .
Speaker 2And so we're tinkering with those ideas and like kind of building them in software format for our team , but maybe , maybe in a share that with with with you know more people , because that's a huge passion that I have , like whether it's on our immediate Blue Ox team . You know more people , cause that's a huge passion that I have , like whether it's on our immediate Blue Ox team . But I think eventually my ambitions will become more of just like let's make Blue Ox as good as it can be , with some competitive spirit in there , with other teams and everything to just like how can we maximize just like here's , here's everything that Blue Ox developed in a very user intuitive software format that like go everybody could go , like at least get to the starting line that we got to to make the best stuff like would love to . Would love to do that eventually . So democratized storytelling , that's a . That's a simple , elegant way of putting it , maybe because here's your storytelling is not currently democratized yeah , yeah .
Speaker 2It is not , it is a and that , and I've seen that more and more and I think like storytelling has made huge strides in terms of the diversity of voices . I think there's some really amazing strides that I've just witnessed and am proud of just watching , and proud of counterparts in very tiny ways attempting to help , like you know , sort of extend those as well in our little tiny area . But like it is not a democratized environment and that's one because there historically has not been a wide variety of voices saying we want to tell this story . There historically has not been a wide variety of people holding cameras or chopping it up on a keyboard , editing it , just like that just has not been the case . It feels like there's been good steps there and it feels like there's overall like a real value , recognition of like oh whoa , like a lot of people have a lot to offer in filmmaking in general . So I think that box is checked . The other , or at least continuing to be pushed ahead , has some progress and momentum and real potential and it's like moving in the right direction . The other box , that checked , is maybe even more subliminal than just sort of the diverse voices and creators piece , which in some ways , is easier to see than this .
Speaker 2People , whether no matter where you're from or what your socioeconomic background is like , if you don't have the right access to the right intellectual property of how do I take a really good idea in my mind and , like , put it into a camera or go out and shoot it ? There's very clear sort of structure in place for making . Imagine your goal is to participate in making Netflix documentary . There's very , very clear not only hurdles but walls that exist to how to get an idea there or how to do the right things with the right skill sets , or how to connect with the right people to get the right brains on that . That , maybe , is even more of a challenge and , of course , I think it has to do with like people who historically have had access to , you know , wealth or connections or money like probably are absolutely more likely , but the problem also exists , like across the entire spectrum and that seems like something that is solvable . Like . There's micro pieces of like and Reddit and some of these platforms are amazing , insanely powerful platforms , but are examples of maybe where it's going , where you need less information to jump over these hoops and it feels like it's going in a more democratized environment anyway , and there's both legal and economic support systems for the youtube model . Like there's all sorts of you know amazing metrics , now that you know youtube and netflix are competing for the most viewership across any two platforms in the world , and like those are two very , very different platforms with different content , right , but like , where , where do you draw a line in the middle of the average of them and like , say , well , which one's going to , it doesn't matter who wins , it's just like these trends are really happening .
Speaker 2So I think platforms to put a diverse subset of IP on and you know , and creators on is very important . Getting the right tools in the hands of those creators , of all creators , that can get one , get to the starting line , whether they know that exists or not , and from the starting line , navigate the landlines and the pitfalls of how to get something . It's a very powerful proposition . I think it is solvable , um , but it takes , you know , it takes a group of people to like , have that experience and identify and be willing to like kind of open source some stuff . Yeah , because the commonality right now is like let's not say how we do anything , so we keep our secret sauce , so that we can be incrementally more successful than somebody else , like you know . So the biggest vision is just like increasing the volume , breadth and quality of , like all the stories that you we're sharing , so I think there's tools that can help with that yeah , that's beautiful man .
Speaker 1It's beautiful um software development , automation , democratizing , storytelling . These are all dreams for the future of blue ox maybe , or blue ox adjacent .
Speaker 2They're definitely dreams for me and super lucky to have a , you know , an amazing , current nimble , small team . That is like I found a way to replace what just Matt and I were doing in a motor home , like five years ago , and we figured out how do we and it's not always perfect , it's not always easy , but like , how do we basically replace ourselves so that other people can have that , that , the credit and the opportunities and the experiences and everything and like . That hasn't always been easy , but we've been able to do that and now that we're , I think , continuing doing that more and more , the goal is to replace what I'm giving to blue ox in leadership and strategy and creative and everything like replace me here so that I can move on to the next thing . And I think you know that's that's just my own personal uh , you know approach and appreciation for sort of entrepreneurial spirit of like wanting to move to the next thing , and I think that's my greatest value to other people . Um , just like you know , serving other people is being living somewhere close to the idea stage where you kind of plant the seed and then you like get it just big enough to survive a couple storms and being trampled on and then like , and then let somebody , let somebody take it over . You know , I think that's as I'm , as I personally , mature and just you know um identified , you know patterns and what works and everything that seems like the one of the most valuable places that I can contribute to . You know identified , you know patterns and what works and everything that seems like one of the most valuable places that I can contribute to . You know all these things , our immediate team and you know the work and everything .
Speaker 2So I think that's probably going to be the case in the next few years of like we get our team at Blue Ox to a place that's even more robust and solidified than it is now and attract the right you know leaders that we have now and external leaders and get them to you know and have a playbook and a roadmap and all the support and all the pieces that are needed to have it continue and then tangentially , like I can go , whether it's you know the software or whatever that is , and like , go , do something that is tangential in nature , that is connected , that's supportive of the overall goal of just making the best stories , and continue to find , like new , new parallels and roadmaps to like help with that . So that would be fun , but it's dependent on , like you know , we still gotta . We still gotta do the small things every day to support it , sort of resource wise and but , um , yeah , we're lucky , it's a ton . It's a ton of hard work , but I , yeah , I just I just love the making of things and it goes back to the workflow piece of just like
Blue Ox's Mission and Closing Thoughts
Speaker 2.
Speaker 2I just think it's really thrilling to take random pieces of you know material , whether that's people or you know ideas or whatever , and like try to just attempt to rearrange , arrange them and then rearrange them and eventually try to find something that kind of makes sense and starts to , you know , provide function for people yeah it's kind of it's it's fun so yeah , you've done it .
Speaker 1You've done an incredible job , man . I uh , like you've been , you've inspired me . I knew about blue ox , his work , before I knew that you were running the company or that you founded the company . I didn't even I didn't know about the connection there and that the Blue Ox's first project , the drive that I was at Cal when you guys were doing that documentary . I didn't know that that was . You didn't know the Blue Ox until you know . I started doing the research about you and but I've heard about Blue blue ox projects . I've seen the projects on nike , seen the social media . It looks beautiful , uh , and and the work that you guys are doing and , um , I read a , an article with uh . You did a an interview with a music boom or somebody like oh music bed , probably , music bed , yes , music bed .
Speaker 1And and you talked about you defined what you guys are here to do . Blue Ox is here to tell stories about high-performing individuals , products , athletes , entertainers , et cetera , and you talked about like we don't feel good , just like to be in the room with these people . That's not why we're so invested in this work . We are invested in this work because we are able to tell stories of human excellence and the dedication that each of these individuals have put into their craft deserves to be taken very seriously and with care . And I read that and I was like , damn , that's well put , man , Really well put .
Speaker 1And for me , being an athlete and growing up an athlete and dreams to go play professionally and then be lucky enough to do that , and then , coming out of that , I realized how critical , inspiring stories of those people , those athletes , those entertainers , any of those high performers how critical they were . Those stories were for me and my journey to keep me going to say , oh , yeah , that's possible . Oh , I got more to go , you know , more to go , you know . And so I want to thank you for doing that work you know , for the future of , you know , young Brennan Scarletts who are coming up now and seeing Anthony Edwards pass the rock , which I watched . Damn bro , Like that's the type of shit that says , okay , kid watches that I'm going to go play in the league , you know . So thank you for inspiring , telling inspiring stories , inspiring the masses . Man , Love what you're doing , Can't wait to see what comes next and I appreciate you being here on Beast Guard TV man .
Speaker 2Beast . Guard TV for life dude , let's go . Pleasure to be here . Appreciate you , bro . I'm honored .
Speaker 1Thank you , man . Yeah , all right , y'all Peace . This episode of Beast Guard TV has been brought to you by Scarlet Creative . For the full-length video episode and more content , find us on Instagram , youtube and TikTok at Beast Guard TV , and please leave us a review . Drop a comment . What do you want to see ? What do you want to hear ? Who do you want to hear from ? We would love to hear from you . This is your host , with the most Brennan Scarlett signing off . No-transcript .