Balance - BKN Creative

Company: BKN Creative
Owners: Kevin Tydlaska–Dziedzic and Brandon Tydlaska-Dziedzic
Year Started: 2015
Employees: 11-25 (Intermediate)

Welcome to An Agency Story podcast, I’m your host Russel.

On this episode, we have Kevin and Brandon Tydlaska-Dziedzic, CEO & Co-Founders of BKN Creative, a full-service boutique and Certified LGBTBE creative and marketing agency based out of Tampa, Florida.

Kevin and Brandon share their path together both as a couple and eventually as co-founders of their agency.

Big proponents of culture, they share the significance of transparency and communication with their team. They stand on valuing team members and giving them a voice is crucial for retention and productivity. Their focus on trust and transparency doesn’t hurt client relationships either.

Enjoy the story.

Show Notes Insights

Transparency and open communication are vital in building trust with clients and team members. Being honest about challenges, addressing issues promptly, and maintaining clear lines of communication can help establish strong relationships and ensure smooth project execution.

Balancing fun and perks with delivering high-quality work is crucial. While creating an enjoyable work environment is important, agency owners should also prioritize delivering exceptional results for clients. Striking a balance between a positive work culture and professional excellence is key.

Investing in company culture can have a tangible economic return. While benefits may vary, even as a boutique agency, owners can attract top talent and by being creative about the benefits that are meaningful

Don’t chase the dollar. Carefully selecting clients who align with the agency's values and goals is essential. Not every client will be the right fit, and it's important to recognize when a client relationship is not working and take action accordingly.

What did you find insightful or inspiring about this episode?   Send an email at russel@performancefaction.com to share.

Are you interested in a conversation to build specific strategies for your business like the ones mentioned in this episode?

Schedule a 15 minute introductory conversation here to learn more.

Transcript

0:02

Welcome to An Agency Story podcast where we share real stories of marketing agency owners from around the world. From the excitement of starting up the first big sale, passion, doubt, fear, freedom, and the emotional rollercoaster of growth, hear it all on An Agency Story podcast. An Agency Story podcast is hosted by Russel Dubree, successful agency owner with an eight figure exit turned business coach. Enjoy the next agency story.

Russel: 0:41

Welcome to An Agency Story podcast, I'm your host Russel. On this episode, we have Kevin and Brandon Tydlaska-Dziedzic, CEO and co-founders of BKN Creative, a full service boutique and certified LGBT business enterprise, creative and marketing agency based out of Tampa, Florida. Kevin and Brandon share their path together as a couple and eventually as co-founders of their agency. Big proponents of culture. They share the significance of transparency and communication with their team. They stand on valuing team members and giving them a voice has become crucial for retention and productivity. They're focused on trust and transparency doesn't hurt the client relationship either. Enjoy the story. Welcome to the show today, everyone. I have Kevin and Brandon Tydlaska-Dziedzic with BKN Creative with us here today. Thank you so much for being on the show, Brandon and Kevin.

Kevin: 1:29

Thank you so much for having us.

Brandon: 1:30

Yes. Thank you.

Russel: 1:31

Let's get right into it. What does BKN Creative do and who do you do it for?

Kevin: 1:34

BKN Creative is a full service, creative and marketing ad agency that's based in Tampa, Florida with remote offices in both New York City and Denver. What we do is anything creative marketing and advertising. What we like to say the most is that we like to put a face and a voice to your brand. We focus on marketing, we focus on creative, and then of course we take those wonderful things and put them into some sort of an advertising platform. Brandon, why don't you jump in to name off a couple clients?

Brandon: 1:58

When we began Creative, we decided that we didn't want to pigeonhole ourself to a specific industry, being that Kevin and I have jumped around from different agencies and marketing departments and different companies in general. We liked the idea of being able to play off of our creativity by bringing in all different kinds of industries. Cause we feel like whatever we could do for one industry, it can help us jumpstart a piece of creative or a strategy for another client. We have had lawyers, restaurants, yoga studios, immersive art experiences, credit unions, global BPO servicers. We've run a pretty big gamut of the clients that we currently work.

Russel: 2:32

Awesome. We'll certainly dive more into all the amazing work you've done for sounds like a wide variety of industries, but before we even go to the backstory, what is behind the name BKN Creative?

Kevin: 2:43

BKN Creative actually stands for Brandon, Kevin, and our network, but it also pays homage to Brooklyn, New York, which is where our relationship developed. It's no secret to most people, but Brandon and I have the same last name because we're actually married and we own the company together. When we started dating, Brandon had told me early on, I have this dream to own a creative marketing agency. I was like, okay, but as our relationship grew, it became obvious that we wanted to do that. Brooklyn is where our relationship sparked and developed, and it's also where the idea of us owning a creative and marketing agency happened. Two things, BKN, Brandon, Kevin network. Then of course, we're mainly creatives. We both have our degrees, we both went to art school. That's where the name comes from.

Russel: 3:20

Short, sweet, simple, meaningful. You got everything combined in there. That's awesome. Let's ride in the time machine for a sec. What were young Kevin and Brandon doing or thinking they were going to be when they grew up, and we'll see how that evolved from there?

Brandon: 3:32

For me, growing up, I always knew I wanted to do something in the creative field, I just didn't know what. I always jumped around from stuff, from culinary to interior design to architecture and all that, but then I found a passion into wanting to create things that anybody could use on a daily basis. My degree is in graphic communication, so graphic design. It's flourished from there, and in graphic design, you can go from the print route to the digital route to web to a lot of different things. I've been lucky in my career to be able to jump with different companies doing different things. I've worked for a real estate investment firm doing a bunch of boring graphics, to an educational software company where I was doing app interfaces, to working for another big agency working on brands like Red Robin and Starbucks and whatnot. I've always knew that I wanted to be some kind of creative, I just didn't know what until I got into about high school and then dove head first into it.

Russel: 4:21

What about you, Kevin?

Kevin: 4:22

My story is unique. I didn't think about what I wanted to do when I was younger. I actually grew up in foster care and had a failed adoption at the age of 12 that failed when I turned 18, when I came out. I didn't think too much about what I wanted to do other than I wanted to be in theater and an actor and, every gay kid wants that. That was definitely a path that I wanted to pursue. But my story landed me actually starting in banking, which is interesting. I got a job as a teller and worked up to become a loan underwriter. From there, I went back to school and found my love for photography and filmmaking. I decided to go to school, I got my BFA in College of Art and Design. But my career also jumped into accounting, which then led into marketing. I had this great creative side of me, but then I had this great analytical side as well. I jumped into marketing headfirst, and then developed this creative skill. Married those into moving into the agency world as well. I worked in jewelry, did some fashion photography, but on the e-comm side, and then created our own agency. Brandon dove into the agency world, whereas I worked in marketing at some companies outside creative stuff, and then landed as a creative director of photo in a jewelry company, which was not my forte, but I left that and that's what led us to start BKN Creative from there.

Russel: 5:29

Between the two of you do have all the bases covered from industry to creative to accounting. I can see where it makes a good match. We know where you guys met, when did you guys meet and then I'm sure we can get into how that actually evolved into the agency?

Kevin: 5:43

That's a pretty fun story, Brandon, why don't you why don't you can tie it in with that one?

Brandon: 5:46

We met in 2011, obviously in New York, where we started off as your normal relationship, and then throughout the years we decided that, with Kevin being so passionate about photography and me being in graphic design that it made sense for us to partner, right? We're already partners in life. We already know how each other works and our dynamic. Luckily Kevin and I have similar work ethics where we compliment each other well. If I'm not able to do something, he's able to jump back in and finish it or vice versa. We have this weird way to volleying each other. That comes with us being together, not only in business, but in life. We learned a way to to make it happen, which has been exciting to see the growth and the journey since 2011 when we met until we started our agency in 2018.

Kevin: 6:28

I want to jump back for a quick second because I think that the beginning of our relationship added to the power behind who we are now. When we first met, it was through a mutual friend and I was not interested in anything other than being possibly a friend. That quickly changed the night that we met. Not that it got weird because nothing saucy happened for a little bit but it definitely was this interesting time in both of our lives where I had lost my friend to suicide and Brandon was coming out. We met in a very creative and inspiring city, but it's also a city that is hard to live in for some people, and it certainly was for both of us until we met, but we had a very rough two years where we were the couple on the corner of the street fighting and doing this weird stuff but that led to us, truly, I think, understanding and loving each other for who we are, how we thought and certainly how we led our lives and that has aided into who we have become and how we work together with ourselves, but also with our team and our clients, because we went through all of this weird stuff at the beginning. Which was our lives and where we were at. I always think that's worth mentioning because the power behind who we have become is actually a result of what we grew from when we met.

Russel: 7:32

Makes a lot of sense because a lot of weird stuff happens when you start a business. As you said, you've figured out how to get through the disagreements and the differences and the, what the heck is going on? If you don't mind sharing, who jumped first or how did that all actually get the agency going?

Kevin: 7:45

I jumped first. I was working at that previous agency and had a manager that I was not fond of. She was the marketing director and did not like me and the feeling was mutual. I felt that we couldn't be our creative self and certainly impact the company in a profound way. I talked to Brandon, I knew that he had this a dream and I knew that I could probably, with my personality, because I can be quite intense, that I could support that growth or at least try it. Brandon kept his full time job at the agency he was working at, and then I actually dove into starting BKN Creative, not at first as a full service creative marketing agency, but I actually, when I was living in South Florida at the time, we had bought a house in Tampa. Brandon was in Tampa. I was still in South Florida with this agency in the apartment that we had down there. Moved up to Tampa. Knew not one person, but I knew that there was one thing that was not going very well in Tampa, and that was the idea of great professional headshots. I thought, I could probably create a cool event around it, make it fashion-y from New York. Use the New York background as the thing. We brought these fun snacks, and we'd have champagne, and there was music, and it was amazing. We did both professional headshots and personality shots. I created this event with a hair and makeup artist, her name is Marissa Morran, local in Tampa. We created this event, and it was selling out. I started replacing my income and eventually within one year, Brandon was able to leave the agency role so that we could focus on the marketing creative aspect of it. By that time I had one marketing client where I became their marketing department, Maverick Home Remodeling, which is in Littleton, Colorado, and they're a home remodeling company, still our client today. I was able to support Brandon leaving and then he can jump in to explain his route.

Brandon: 9:16

The beginning was an interesting time because, like Kevin said, he was living in South Florida for nine months. He was coming back on the weekends and doing the commuter kind of lifestyle. When we decided to say, screw it, let's start it, it made the most sense in the fact of the way Kevin's brain thinks and how he manages things is, he's a go getter. He figures out something and if he knows that he wants to do something, he'll figure it out and he'll get it done. It was interesting because we had moved to Tampa. We didn't know anybody, so we came up with this grand idea to start a business and hoped for the best and luckily it worked out. Like Kevin said, most of our work that we were getting for that first under a year was mostly photography work, but we slowly started to get some other design work here and there. It ended up being me being working full time and doing part time stuff for BKN here and there, helping him grow stuff, and then it got to a point where we're like, okay, it's either now or we don't do it. Having this paycheck coming in from another company has helped us get by, but we're like, if we don't do this, if I don't leave my job, we're not going to be able to get to where we want to. We're not going to be able to grow this. I jumped ship from my last company and was like, we're going to see what happens. Luckily we're, what, four years since that. It seemed to work out so well.

Russel: 10:16

Congratulations. It sounds like obviously it was a smart move, and going back to even what you said, a headshot party, I think is such a creative, cool idea and especially something probably a lot of people hate doing, but if you make it a fun event, I don't know how many photographers are out there listening, but I'm even thinking like Biz Dev for a marketing company is, headshot party. I hope it becomes a trend. If it did, it started here and we'll certainly credit you guys.

Kevin: 10:36

Oh, it did. It's funny that you say that too, because in Tampa Bay now there's several headshot days. Photographers caught on pretty quickly and developed their own headshot days. Since we moved into the full scale creative marketing ad agency that we are now, I moved away from it, so I don't actually do them as much anymore. I have repeat clients, but I will actually totally accept that I did lead that in Tampa Bay, and now such a growing city that there's a lot of them happening, which is great. It was a very smart way to make money at the time for something that I love doing, and as it was still built in passion. It certainly was a very unique way to jump into an agency world, but it was also difficult because people would be like, don't you do headshots? I'm like, oh man, no, I do a lot more. It did take a little while to transition from, oh, headshot photographer, oh no, they're actually a big agency. That was interesting.

Russel: 11:20

I'm sure if we looked at a map of where the best headshots in the country come from, I'm sure it's concentrated around the Tampa area. You took the risk. You went full head in, went full agency. Was it all energy, adrenaline, passion, or was there seeds of doubt maybe in that first year? How are you guys feeling?

Brandon: 11:36

I would say that first year, and up until maybe the third year, it was a lot of blood, sweat, tears, a lot of it's what we want to actually be doing. This is a lot of work. We don't know the management side of owning a business and all of that. But we're good at figuring out what we're doing wrong and learning from it. We've had numerous situations that have come up that were like, oh, I guess we didn't do that right, and then we learned from it. I think one of the biggest ones is that we were maybe two and a half years in, and we were about to land a bigger retainer client for us at the time, it was going to be an additional five grand a month for us and being where we were at in the business, that was like okay, great. It's going to get us by until we can get our next big client. We got back from a vacation that we spent maybe a little bit too much money, and we were like, it's fine. We're signing on this new client where it will be great, but at that time we didn't have them sign an actual contract. We got back from vacation and they were like, sorry guys, we can't do it and they canceled. We're like, as much as it sucks, as much as we're going to have to figure out what we're doing, if we're going to keep our business or not at this point, we know that we need to have actual proper contracts in place that protect us and the client to a certain extent, and then go from there. We've had a lot of ups and downs that I think we've tried to use as something to learn from and grow from.

Kevin: 12:40

I think it's also worth mentioning too that, we are in a unique industry, kind of combating some not great players in the industry as well. And so when people think a lot of times about marketing advertising in general, there's not good thoughts around it, right? Because they're like most marketers, they want to make a lot of money, but they're not very impactful. That is a mentality that we have had to work against and to prove ourselves to our clients. We do because we've always lived with the philosophy that we're only going to do stuff that you need and that you can benefit from. Not the stuff that we can sell you. I think that has been good for us, but it's been a challenge and it still is to work alongside an industry that hasn't always been great at facilitating small businesses, but also with working within budgets and not charging an arm and a leg, doing things the right way as opposed to doing it the way that we can bring in a whole bunch of money. That's been a little bit of a challenge. I think that's worth mentioning, as well as personalities, right? People are funky in general, but particularly in business. I am not a stereotypical CEO all. I can curse quite a bit, I'm definitely passionate. I can be intense, but I also lead from love, always. I think a lot of people aren't used to developing personal relationships with the people that they work with. That's always what we do when we meet with people. I wanna know why you do the things that you do, what motivates you and what do you want outta life? I think that people aren't prepared as much for that. They're like, here's what I need, and I'm like, cool. Who are you? Because I want to make sure that there's somebody that I want to collaborate with as well. I think that is a very unique angle on our agency. We're not going to take anybody, right? We want to know, are we going to work well together? Because if we're both passionate about what we do, we know why we're doing it, our collaboration is going to be successful no matter what.

Russel: 14:18

Love it. We certainly all paid our dues to the school of hard knocks. Some dues are heavier in certain semesters. I've done quite a number of episodes now, I think you're the first married couple I've ever had on the show. Maybe not the first married agency partners, but certainly the first duo that showed up on the show. A lot of times people talk about how business doesn't leave when you walk out of the office or clock out of your computer, but how have you guys navigated some of those difficulties that arise through that?

Brandon: 14:41

It's been a lot of learning. Even with that part, usually any conversation we have leads to talking about business to some degree, but throughout the years we've had to learn how to keep that separate because it does get a little bit draining at times. Cause you can't go home and vent to your partner about, oh, this was my day. What was your day? Cause he knows what the day. I think when it comes to internal business, we both have our own separate things that we focus on. I mostly the design, he's mostly photo/video. Then we break in between the marketing side, but we both have our own distinct roles and I think that helps because we're never stepping on each other's toes. We're always there to help each other, if we know that someone's having a rough day, that we can jump in and help as much as we can. We've had to learn to, when we're back in Tampa, we know that we need to leave our computers at our office, that if we bring them home, we will continue to work, and that's not very healthy for our relationship outside of work. We've learned different ways to do things. I think the one thing that helps is that, if we talk about business, it's a business expense. If we're going out to dinner, let's write that off as much as we can. But other than that, I think we've had to do our own learning into relearning a new way to not only do work in our business, but also how to do things a little bit different in our own relationship because our relationship had to grow with the business growth.

Kevin: 15:51

The other thing too, that's probably worth noting is that we have created a at home environment in our agency. What that means is that we wanted to create the agency that we wanted to work at in general, that we couldn't find. The benefits that we have, even as a boutique agency, we have full health insurance, medical dental pension, we have a 401k. We have these elements within our agency that are typical for a boutique agency that has less than 10 team members, which is us. With that, we also support the way that people live as well. For an example, all of our staff besides us are women and or people that identify as women, and so we offer them their feminine hygiene products as a cost to the business in our restrooms. Those little touches, coffee every day, there's things that we wanted to provide to make work feel very much at home and with an open door policy. We've had some interesting things that our team has told us where we're like, oh my God, to hell with that. We've created this environment and I think that aids in our relationship because we're always comfortable. At home, at work, we're always ourselves in front of clients. We don't edit ourselves down, ever. Those I think have helped us to negate any bad feelings towards each other within our work, and we know our roles, right? I am the CEO, so oftentimes I will step into those shoes to control the environment or certainly talk to clients or whatever. Brandon has his role as well, where he can sometimes step into that too, or whatever. We've worked out how we navigate our clients, our space, our team and each other.

Russel: 17:16

Being a human centric organization was certainly the key to our success in the agency world and foundations we live by. I think that is somewhat central, at least the mindset is central, I guess you could say in the agency space. Humans, they're everything in terms of the work we do, but I think maybe one of the differences is some folks sometimes, especially maybe starting out, focus on some of the fun and the perks, but maybe not some of the things that, eventually they feel jaded a little bit, like, why isn't this turning into more money? There's this dichotomy of yes, the perks and that caring is good, but where does the rubber meet the road, can you speak to how that's had tangible results in the quality and the output of your business?

Kevin: 17:53

That's a great question because I think a lot of people struggle with, is it worth giving this culture if we don't have people performing? The cool thing about the agency within that first year, when I was setting our hourly rate and all this kind of stuff, I wanted to build those things and knowing that we eventually would do that. I had already built it into our bottom line in general, I knew the costs that we would have for team builds. I knew what the cost would be to be able to have an espresso machine and have syrups every day. I knew what that would likely be, I priced all that out. I built that into a build of our business plan. The costs associated with supporting our team and creating this incredible environment is not one that we see very impactful. The interesting thing though, is that, what I have always found is, if you take care of your team members, they'll likely take care of you. But there's one more thing, and that is living a fully transparent life. Our team knows our salary. They know what things cost. We keep them in the loop when something's happening with a client. We support our team. Let's say that a client is upset about something. We don't go, oh my God, I'm so sorry, or shame on you, team member. I'm like, ooh, let's actually dive into this. Where was the miscommunication? Did our team not handle it well? If they did, then great, it's a growth opportunity. They're not in trouble. I'm not going to write them up. It's a growth opportunity. We communicate that with the team. If it's our client and I'm like, oh, this is actually our non-negotiables. Here's our boundaries as a team and you have to maintain that. There's an organization in Tampa, we had their CEO be nasty to Brandon and one of their team members. I was like, oh, that's a non negotiable. I had to call the CEO up and say, hey, our collaboration, we're equal. You can't talk to our CCO, who is also our co-founder. You certainly shouldn't talk to your team member that way, and it was fine. I think that our team knows that I'll go to bat for them. I will always defend them. I'll always correct if needed as a growth opportunity, but I think that offering that fully transparent environment has allowed for them to feel safe and loved and like they can grow in the company. There's no secrets. Of course, there's some stuff that stays between Brandon and I, but typically, it's a fully transparent environment. Marry that with this incredible culture, and we have seen productivity skyrocket. I think people are into being taken care of in the environment that they are putting their life into, because they spend more time at work in general. We have a hybrid model so people can work remote and at the office. They need to make an appointment at 9 o'clock in the morning, put it on the calendar. That's it. I don't need to approve you to go to the gynecologist. I don't want to do what you need to do for your life. There are elements that I think that, because we've created that environment, the productivity matches that. For me, anybody listening, or certainly anybody who is a leader in a company, culture is the main, because if you want to retain your team members, you got to make them feel like they're valuable and they have a voice. Those are very basic things. People struggle with it for some reason, but if you can offer those basic things, people will produce, and if they're not, then they're not for you. Move on, but be transparent about it as well.

Russel: 20:35

Yes. Perfect. Love so many parts of that. Can't disagree with a single one. And consistency, transparency, those are values that I preach quite often. It's good to hear how those play out in the real world for agencies like yours. I could have a billion more questions, but I think I only have time for a few more. If you don't mind sharing what's the future look like for BKN Creative? What are we talking about 10 years from now?

Brandon: 20:54

There's times where I feel like we're starting to live the future of BKN Creative because Kevin and I, when we started the business, we always talked about wanting to have it bigger than us in Tampa, but growing an office in Denver and an office in New York, and we're at the precipice of that. We're right at the beginning where we opened up our office in Denver. We opened up our office in New York. I would say for me, the growth would be us expanding more into the markets that we're starting off in. I'd love to get some more West Coast clients and growing that. I'd love to get some more clients up in New York. I would love to get into more campaign work and more video work, all the truly fun creative campaigns that we haven't gotten a chance to work on yet with any of our clients. We've found a good market in Tampa for what we're doing, a lot of it's more the marketing side. I would say more creative work and growing and building something bigger than I think Kevin and I could have imagined, especially in the first couple of years where we're like, can we even get this one going?

Russel: 21:44

That's amazing. Anything to add to that, Kevin, or did he nail it on the head?

Kevin: 21:47

Yeah, he pretty much nailed it on the head. I think that the thing I always say is I want to be able to impact more people's lives by offering roles. I'd love to continue growing above the amount of team members that we have, which is pretty healthy, currently at eight. I also want to impact brands with our concept because we have such personal approach to how we do business. It's very much different than typical agencies operate and our clients love that. We love that. We're so passionate about what we do and certainly how we do it and the concept that we created with in BKN Creative, but I want to spread that to bigger brands, where they can work with an agency like us and be themselves. Certainly money is going to be a part of that, as well as advertising a product. I want to be able to take our concept, grow it bigger, offer roles and create this lovely family of fabulous humans that all love each other, which is probably this grandeur idea, but still that's my plan.

Russel: 22:36

Beautiful. Can't wait to see it. Before I get to my last main question, I understand that, Kevin, you've lived out some of those actor roots and were in a TV show recently, or has it has been released? Tell me what's going on there.

Kevin: 22:48

I was, yeah. I've been in several commercials in Florida, but there's two major things that I've done so far, which is why we're in New York as well, because I'm going to pursue that a little bit more too, but I was in a Hallmark movie called South Beach Love, and then after that, I was in a TV show that's coming out soon on Apple TV Plus called Bad Monkey, where I got to perform alongside Vince Vaughn and Alex Mafa, which is pretty incredible. The cool thing about that is I'm the CEO of this company that's almost at a million in revenue, and I also get to do that stuff on the side. I always tell our team and anyone that I know is that you can actually do everything you want to do in life, you got to organize, plan and actually do. I have these two career paths that are parallel. They're going alongside each other. I do have this other little acting stuff on the side. I love to perform so we're going to keep pursuing that now. But yes, you will see me on TV. I don't totally look like this, but the voice is there, so definitely recognize it.

Russel: 23:37

Most famous person I've had on the show, maybe sometime drop a line in the background about An Agency Story, if you could, in one of these shows, I'm sure they'll keep it.

Kevin: 23:44

I'll do it. I'll improv that in, for sure.

Russel: 23:46

Appreciate that. Last big question for you guys, and I'll be curious to each of your take on this answer. Are entrepreneurs born or are they made?

Brandon: 23:54

I guess for me, I would say an entrepreneur is made. When I grew up, I don't think I fully knew what it meant to own my own business or be an entrepreneur at all. Even when Kevin and I met, I don't think I understood all the different levels and depths to it. But since starting the business, the ideas and the thoughts that have more so than doing BKN, we have ideas of different businesses that we want to start. I think for me, it was more made in the sense that now, after creating our first business, I'm thinking about all of the different things that we could potentially do and add onto our plate, which will be a lot, but we love to do that and more and more.

Russel: 24:26

Love it. Kevin?

Kevin: 24:26

I think it's both. I think that there are some personality traits that live within entrepreneurs that people can be born with, certainly, but for the most part, I think that your environment can influence your ability to believe in yourself to become an entrepreneur. I do think it's a little bit of both. I would say that I was not personally born into a family where that would have been the case, and certainly my childhood through high school was not an environment that would support entrepreneurship. I think that every human has the opportunity within themselves to be an entrepreneur if they believe that and try and take risks. if you're willing to take a risk in your life, you're already an entrepreneur. I think it can be as simple as that. I think you could be born with with a couple of traits that may support you and being a little bit more successful, but ultimately, if you believe it, you can achieve it.

Russel: 25:10

Best statement you could put out there. If people wanna know more about BKN Creative, where can they go?

Brandon: 25:14

They can go to www.bkncreative.com. If you're in New York City you can go to bknnyc.com or in Denver, bknwest.com. They all lead you to the same place, bkncreative.com. Or you can follow us on social, which is simple@BKNCreative as well. We love to hear from people in general, so email us, call us, all that information's on our website. We'd love to hear from them.

Russel: 25:35

Everybody knows where to go now. Thank you so much for being on the show today, Kevin and Brandon, so many inspiring nuggets and takeaways that we were able to gather. I appreciate you taking the time to share your story.

Kevin: 25:45

Thanks for having us.

Brandon: 25:45

Yes, thank you so much.

25:49

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Kevin: 26:25

Something that we did that was most fun was last year was a fun little holiday mockumentary that we put together, which I believe lives on our YouTube channel. We sent it out to all of our clients to celebrate the holidays. The DP that we use often for our video shoots, Christian, he came down from Indiana and filmed it with us. We hired a sound guy and it was such a good, solid crew. It was making fun of ourselves and the things that we do, everybody has a little isms. I can get a little bit Queenie and outrageously gay. And I say oh, there she is. All this kind of stuff. It's ridiculous and fun, but you don't realize the things that you do until your team is writing a script. You're like, holy shit, I didn't do that. It's so weird. Why do I do that stuff? There's things like Brandon, when he doesn't love something for Creative, he's, oh, I don't love that. And you're like, you can say you hate it, all good. But he always says, I don't love that. The team was like, oh God, I got to put that in. The humility that you can give or get and have is good for your team in general, but that was a pretty fun moment.

Russel: 27:20

That's amazing, love it.