We were lucky to catch up with Noah Cordell recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Noah thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Can you talk to us about your team building process? How did you recruit and train your team and knowing what you know now would you have done anything differently?

Corner Media looks very different today than what it did in our first year in business. I founded Corner Media in 2019 with a close friend from high school and college, and for the first year, it was just the two of us handling everything ourselves. Eventually, we parted ways as business partners since his main passion was music, and he wanted to dedicate more time to it.

The following year, I managed the company solo, and quickly realized that achieving certain levels of success in the film industry is nearly impossible without a solid team and constant collaboration. That’s when I decided to bring on two additional partners, Patrick Neumann and Kenny Herron. We hit a groove, each of us leveraging our strengths to grow the company in ways I hadn’t imagined before. Bringing on Patrick and Kenny was the best decision I could’ve made—it taught me that having a team who can challenge and expand your way of thinking is invaluable.
Patrick was another friend from college that was a few years older than me working in finance. He came on board and is now our Head of Operations managing all money and keeping us organized on the books. Kenny was someone I met doing freelance jobs in film. He is an extremely talented director that I used for a lot of my gigs and eventually we had the conversation about him coming on board as a partner and creative director of the company. Bringing on these two was the best business decision I have ever made.

While the core team is made up of the three of us, we regularly collaborate with a plethora of freelancers and have built a solid roster of directors. This has allowed us to offer clients more creative options for their projects.

If I were starting over today, the biggest change I’d make would be to embrace collaboration from the start. Surrounding myself with people who challenge my thinking has been key to both my growth as a creative and as a business owner.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Growing up I had a huge love for sketch comedy. In highschool me and some friends were constantly writing and filming videos that we thought were funny. Doing this over time really made me want to try and pursue a career in film. I went to Western Kentucky University for college and majored in TV and Film Production. Most of the classes I had to take had a huge emphasis on broadcast and I slowly realized that is not the realm of video production I wanted to be in but kept it as my major so I could finish school as quickly as possible. After graduation I started freelance work in Nashville. I was extremely fortunate to be able to work on a couple Food Network shows and other various short term gigs I would be offered.
I eventually started Corner Media after working on a small budget show for a few weeks that was run so poorly it truly convinced me that I could start my own company and do things much more efficiently. So, with a lot of blind confidence and way too little knowledge of what I was actually getting myself into, I started the company. I quickly began to realize how much actually goes into running a business. I began to fall in love with being my own boss, growing as a creative and the constant challenges of being a businessman.
The early days of Corner Media were extremely small budget productions filmed by just myself that mainly served other small local businesses. Today Corner Media has grown to become a full service production company that specializes in large scale commercial and music video production.
Nashville has plenty of extremely talented production companies making incredible work so sticking out in the crowd is not easy. So over the years we have tried to stand out by making work that we don’t often see coming from this part of the country. The commercial work we have done this past year is probably what I am most proud of since I’ve started Corner Media. Bringing on different directors that give our projects a look and feel that would not have you guessing it was made in the Country Music capital of the world is something I am so proud of. I want to not only compete with the competition in Nashville but with the production companies all over the world so having work that pushes my typical market creative is so important to me. I love the country music work we get to do in town but my main goal for growth of the company is to bring more commercial projects to Nashville that typically would be executed in a different film market. There is still so much work to be done to get to where I want the company to evolve to but the work we are doing now is definitely laying that foundation down.

Where do you think you get most of your clients from?

Anyone who has started their own business knows how hard finding the right clients can be. The first couple years it seemed that no matter how much outreach I would do companies just weren’t interested because of the lack of portfolio I had to show. What really started to change that narrative was when I started to invest in spec ads that I could put on my website and company reel. You don’t get hired in this industry for work you don’t already have and it doesn’t matter how fancy the gear you use is if you can’t show clients previous examples for the style of work they are wanting. My business partners and I really started to pump out specs for the work we wanted to be doing. Once we had that solid base to show to potential clients our capabilities is when Corner Media started to get taken more seriously. If anyone reading this is in an early stage of starting their own production company then my biggest piece of advice would be to hold off on purchasing the gear you think you need but to invest in making specs for the type of work want want to be hired for. The spec investments we made have come back and really helped us get the work we always knew we were capable of but just needed to be able to prove it to the potential clients that were investing heavily in their own business’.

How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?

As we all know starting a business is not a cheap thing, no matter what industry it falls under. My main priority in the early days of Corner Media was to avoid any debt at all costs. I had heard too many horror stories of business’ that failed because they tried to grow too fast and drowned themselves in debt. I also knew that not taking any loans for me meant a much slower growth but it was something I was willing to be patient on. I knew from day 1 that where I wanted Corner Media to eventually get to was something that would take a lot of time, even if I had a massive loan from the beginning there would still be so much to grow and learn into. As I look back today I am so glad I took that approach. 6 months after I started Corner Media Covid hit. If I was weighed down by monthly payments during those times when no work was happening then I would not have made it out at the end of that all. Paying for everything myself in the early days from the money I had saved my whole life from jobs I had all throughout high school and college was the smartest thing I could have done for myself and the company, Like I said before it definitely means the initial growth is a slower process but it worked out great for me because it really allowed me to learn how to run my business and how to be as smart as possible with the little money I did have to spend for company growth.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.cornermediaentertainment.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cornermedia.ent/
• Other: personal Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/noahcordell/

Image Credits
The first and second photos from the uplaods of multiple photos were taking by Sean Robinson.