We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Justin Katz. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Justin below.

Justin, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What do you think matters most in terms of achieving success?

I think success is entirely subjective to each person and that is what makes it such an interesting goal for everyone to achieve. Many have a bucket list of what they hope to achieve in their career, or have specific financial targets they think will be the ultimate indicator of being successful. As I have progressed throughout my own career, I realize that success is something that is ever evolving, not something that has to have a set end point. Having a creative career involves constantly challenging yourself to take on new projects that fuel the fire that burns inside all creatives. For myself, I have been I always thought being “successful” was hitting the benchmarks I had set for myself early in my freelance journey – but I realize now that true success for myself involves listening to my heart and following it where it takes me, which most recently involved me making the transition into being full time freelance. There are lots of unknowns still ahead of me, and I certainly have not hit my financial goals yet either – but right now I feel more successful than I ever have before.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

Hello! I’m Justin Katz, founder of Justin Katz Media and Aerix Agency. I am a full time freelance videographer, video editor, photographer, and digital media creator. I have been doing both salaried / 9-5 video production work as well as freelance work for over 10 years! I primarily do videography in the live music / concert space (namely in electronic music) but have also recently started breaking into other industries / projects while going full time freelance; in turn I have launched my brand Aerix Agency to be representative of this new chapter! For my clients, I pride myself on being extremely attentive and believe that the smallest details are just as important as the overall vision of the project. I have always been into video production from a young age, starting in my preteen years with a small video camera making silly videos with friends. That slowly progressed in my teen years into making video game montages, and finally in college I decided to pick up a real camera for the first time. Ever since then it has been a constant journey of discovering my creative passions and following that path to the fullest. I am extremely grateful to be able to do what I love for a living and for all the amazing places it has taken me.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

For me in particular, a lot of my work has focused on videos that live on social media or are otherwise distributed to my client’s audience / following, so the most rewarding aspect has been seeing the impact my videos have on others and what it makes them feel / think. I take extreme pride and joy in knowing that something I created myself has made the person viewing it feel something inside of them; having them relive a certain memory from a concert or feel like they can get a glimpse into what it was like if they were not there. I am a very emotional person overall and I often find that I try to pour a lot of that into the videos and media that I create. Often times I find that I want to take on work that I can align with heavily so that I can truly establish and maintain the emotional connection I have with the work that I am doing and the media that I am making.

We’d love to hear the story of how you turned a side-hustle into a something much bigger.

Yes! I went to school originally pursuing cyber security while, but while still in college and doing freelance video work for fun, I realized that video production was going to be my true calling – and so I decided to focus on that fully from that point on. I originally got an internship in the video world first with a Facebook marketing page company, and then the year following landed a 3 month internship with Billboard; I worked primarily doing video editing for their social media pages but also participated in some live event production. During these internships and while in school, I focused all my free time into doing freelance work for concerts and artists; I was fortunate enough to have had some friends who were DJ’s and producers and I fell naturally into shooting first for them, and then their colleagues. Networking played a huge role early on for me and I focused a lot of energy into making connections at every gig I was doing. My first full time job was working hourly for a real estate company helping to create marketing videos. While there, a contact from my Billboard internship (who was now working at Yahoo Finance) reached out to let me know about a contractor position on his team, which I applied for and joined. I spent two years with Yahoo Finance full time, all the while continuing to push my freelance work for DJs’ and artists. I began to expand past just local New York gigs and got some of my first travel gigs at music festivals. COVID hit in 2020 and halted my freelance work and transitioned my Yahoo position into a remote one. After leaving Yahoo Finance, I briefly worked as a production department administrator for a marketing agency before landing my next big full time role at Rockstar Games as a post production producer. I was with Rockstar for three years; as COVID recessed and gigs resumed, I was being catapulted quickly into doing larger gigs more frequently. This worked while being fully remote, but as the position transitioned back into being in office this year, I made the decision to jump feet first into the full time freelance world in May of 2025. It’s been a roller coaster of the best kind since then!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.aerix.agency
• Instagram: @justinkatzmedia
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/justinkatzmedia/
• Twitter: @justinkatzmedia
• Other: You can find my personal page and all my current work at my personal pages @justinkatzmedia and www.justinkatz.media, as well as follow along on the new full time journey at my new brand @aerixagency and www.aerix.agency !