Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Jay Irwin. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Alright, Jay thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. So, folks often look at a successful business and think it became a success overnight – but that often obscures all the nitty, gritty details of everything that went into the growth phase of your business. We’d love to hear about your scaling story and how you scaled up?

It’s hard to say but for John (my business partner) and I, our journey started with losing our jobs. We were both forced out of our comfortable jobs and had to figure out how to move forward in life. John had wedding video side- hustle that he decided to make his full-time gig. I just started to freelance in video production and work any job that was available. I laugh thinking back because I had no business doing so many of the jobs i was doing like home repair, working for an industrial engineer and substitute teaching. Thankfully i had a really supportive wife with a good job. John had a brand-new mortgage; a new baby and his wife had recently lost her job as well. Those days were motivating to say the least. The stress was intense! Lots of sleepless nights and tears. Eventually you start booking more jobs and you can start to raise your rates and slowly you become more comfortable. After years of building our businesses, it was a natural progression for me to want to take it to the next level and I knew i didn’t want to do it alone. John had developed skills in one area of the business and me in another so it was only natural that we try to come together and see what we could do. Partnerships are not easy, but they are super powerful if you are willing to do the relational work. We learned to trust each other, leaned into each other’s strengths and growth happened.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Sure, We are a commercial media company providing video and brand support for a wide range of clients. We partner with everyone from hospitals to NASCAR teams to help them communicate their stories with their clients and fans. One thing i think we do really well is helping to focus messaging to bring the most meaningful impact. We also take great pride in being loyal and very scrappy for our clients. We tend to lean on finding creative ways to get things done instead of throwing money at problems and truly enjoy long working relationships with our clients.

Can you open up about how you funded your business?

Great question, John and i both were able to lean on our own businesses for primary income and reinvested everything we made in Match Frame Creative back into the business for years. We were able to bootstrap it.

Looking back, are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?

The first thing that comes to mind is people. I know that might not be what you are looking for, but I think truly trying to treat people with respect and operate with integrity has opened so many doors and paid more dividends than i could have imagined. I guess we probably would have said we knew that on some level we were getting started but i still think people are hands down your greatest asset.

Contact Info:

• Website: MatchFameCreative.com
• Instagram: Instagram.com/MatchFameCreative
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/MatchFrameCreative
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/6443416/admin/