How he made 7 figures from starting in freelance

Excuse me. Hi, Vic! Hi, how are you?

Um, what's with the camera?

I wanted to ask you a question.

It's a nice camera.

Are you a business owner?

Yeah, you know me. Well, of course.

Well, you know that I've been doing founder stories here at your studio, and since I'm leaving one, we decided as a team to record your founder story. So I wanted to know if you'll be down for that.

Let's go.

Okay, so we're gonna tour your business, so So Vic and I, we know each other. He is amazing.

We just opened a new studio. We're still working on it. It's not 100% where we want it to be, but it's in the heart of downtown on Pine Street. We've been working on it for like 3 years.

Wow.

I'll tell you why. It's a very crazy rollercoaster of a story, but it's meant for podcasting, for video advertising, and for content creators.

And founder stories. Mm. All right, so we are gonna go inside and we're gonna tour it. So you ready?

Let's go.

All right, let's go.

Welcome.

Oh my goodness.

To the bakery.

I love it. So for— if you guys didn't know, this place actually, it smells like cookies. I always think about cookie crumble. So his branding is so good. Tell us a little bit more about your visioning here.

So I worked for Disney for 10 years, so I'm really big on theming. It needs to have an experience. So since the company started, our theme is that we're a bakery, like a content bakery, marketing bakery, right? So we're baking content. So when we designed the studio, we decided that we're going to go all in on the on the experience, at least on the guest-facing front part, because I really want you to come in and be like, "Am I in the right place?" I wanted ovens on the wall, like we're actually cooking and baking, but I wanted to take it a little bit further. And I had a lot of connections still from Disney, so one day I just drew it on a napkin and sent it to my Imagineering friends and said, "Hey, is this possible?" The next day they messaged me back saying, Yeah, we think that's actually quite fun and we can do it.

Wow.

And then 3 years later we finally installed them.

This is beautiful. I, I love it. So this is clients that you have had?

Mhm. This is content. We haven't decided what we're going to put on the— keep on the loops yet, but it's, uh, we'll have everything that we shot on there. Even if we have a special guest.

Wow.

Like, we'll have your content on here when you come visit.

No, the quality of this is ridiculous.

Thank you.

I love it. I love it.

It's 100% custom.

So you do podcasts and you do video advertising?

Video advertising, client acquisition videos. Yeah.

You do ads as well. So, but yeah, like all these videos are magnificent. What about that refrigerator? It's so cool, it's so on theme, it's so amazing.

It's our retro fridge.

Wow.

We got it from Canada, it took like 4 months, uh, but we wanted it to match the theme. So everything's bakery but also like Atomic, like the 1950s.

I love it, I love it. This is so cool.

We gotta work on the music because we want music in here too, but we wanted to come in and like we want to smell the cookies, and then pretty soon we'll be offering cookies That's amazing.

And you're still under construction. Is there anything that you're like— there is more things that are coming?

Yeah, so we're gonna have a reception desk that is actually a butcher's block, right, like a butcher has. And then the legs are going to be custom made to be cookie racks. And then we'll have—

are you going to put anything on the floor? It's going to stay like cement.

We want to stay like— we made this specifically just for that. That's why it's ugly, because restaurant, you know, bakeries on the back, they're ugly, right? Everything else has a nice nice clean carpet.

I love it. Okay, show me around some more.

We're still gonna have pots and pans on the wall. We're gonna have kitchen cabinets and coffee.

I love this. I mean, I've been here before. I'm not surprised, but this place is so beautiful. Like, the brand is so— like, this is for you, right? Sit in there. Thank you. You're the boss.

So this is going to be our conference room. So we have chairs that we have to pick out. We're gonna get custom acoustics put in, uh, and then we'll have our meetings in here with our clients. This blue is from Tomster Paints. He is a friend, client, and to thank him, we put this dedication on the wall for him.

And how do you come up with that, with that logo? It's so cool.

It was 173 different iterations because we couldn't decide first what the company name was. And then I never had anyone ask me that before, actually. And, uh, we just wanted, we wanted to have something that wasn't Vic Productions, you know. We wanted breadcrumbs, but it was taken. So we landed on Brand Crumbs, so it's a play on words.

I love it.

And at first it was bread, like we were gonna have the B be like a slice of bread, you know, the ends of a bread.

Yes.

And we're like, yeah, it's just not working. And then we saw someone designed the C as like a donut with a bite in it, and we— I'm like, that's it. But we changed it to a cookie.

You're so smart.

This is gonna be the green room. It's a lot of work we have to do, but right now this is where the room where they'll hang out, wait for the studio to be ready for them. They can have a drink, so they can come in here, close the door doors change.

Perfect.

So they'll be able to walk right in here.

Wow, I love this.

And then this will be our more modular room, so we can build sets in here.

So this is the design of like the vision that you had?

Yeah, uh, so we didn't put it here to like— you can just— as like a map. But the guys, the, the husband and wife team that made the ovens, they just— they 3D printed the design, and we use this to raise money. So we actually, I would bring this out in meetings with clients, um, and they would, I would sell them on the, on the future. So it's kind of like our dedication to, it went from this to this.

Yes. And this is all the shows that you have done.

These are shows, clients that we've worked on or work on still.

Wow. Power Rangers.

Yeah. We have each, we have, this is your office. Yeah. My favorite room in the, probably in the whole world.

I think you like Power Rangers. I'm not sure. I think just a little bit. Just a little bit. Look at his collection.

This is just what I brought.

Wow, so you have more at home?

Yeah, yeah, more in storage.

Wow, wow.

But like, there's a reason, because we— one of our shows we do is actually with one of the original VFX artists from the show, and he's got an Oscar for Spider-Man 2. He's worked on Spider-Man 3, Captain America, Green Lantern, all these different movies and shows. So we started a YouTube show with him and I was like, well, I'm gonna take advantage and I got all these signed and we use them as props for the show.

Amazing.

This is where the editors are, the full-time team will be in here editing, grinding, working away. Graphic designer was here too. And then this will be Studio B.

Studio B, yeah. We were just working on it. We were doing founder story for JP and we have a few stuff in here. And yeah, this is the real deal. I've been here in podcasts, I've been here doing founder stories. And what else have you recorded in this place?

A lot of ads. We do a lot of advertising for like home service businesses, lawyers.

Okay, cool. So are you ready to record your founder story?

No.

No? Please.

I'm never on this side of the camera.

I know, I feel you sometimes. Like before I actually started my, my rerun of Kate Violet, I was a creative director and I was doing casting and everything and I was always behind camera. But hey, we get our time to shine and this is your time to shine. So let's do it.

My name is Vic. I'm the owner of Brand Crumbs Media, and this is my founder story. I had it pretty good growing up. I was the only child. I spent 10 years at Disney, and then I job hopped from left and right. When I first started getting into entrepreneurship and I was freelancing on the side, I was basically unemployed for a year. I hated it. I hated not knowing and being in control of my future and my destiny and my life and my finances. And I decided I'm never going to allow that to happen again. So I started my company in November 2019, but it was me. I was working till 3, 4, 5 in the morning every day. I loved it though. It was great. And then in mid-2021, I got really, really sick and I was in the hospital, couldn't do any work. I lost clients, I couldn't fulfill. I was just losing money left and right because it was just me. And there was one shoot that I just couldn't Let Miss. It was actually with the mayor of Orlando, Buddy Dyer, but I was stuck in the hospital. I called in some friends to help me actually make that shoot. They picked it up, they executed it perfectly. The video came out amazing. 2022 was our best year. The profit was incredible. The clients were stacked. Then my phone rang and it was my partner at the time saying, hey, we got to evacuate the building. There's a flood. The pipes burst and there's water everywhere. The studio was gone. The office was gone and the business We had no income, no studio, no plan. Thankfully, we had some savings. I learned a lot in those few years, and we're just now getting out of it. It's been a long, long journey, a roller coaster of mistakes and successes and failures and learnings. But I've had the privilege of serving a lot of people, help them go from one restaurant, one office, to 3, to 5, to 6, help them scale, help them see their dream. And it's just a privilege of being able to be part of that. And I look forward to being part of yours.