Meet Jason Crossman of Kyes

Today we’d like to introduce you to Jason Crossman.

Thanks for sharing your story with us Jason. So, let’s start at the beginning, and we can move on from there.
I’ve moved about 25 times in my life and been to over 40 countries. I’ve always been a huge fan of discovering new places and meeting new faces and, more importantly, having been influenced in a huge way by people’s stories. When you hear a persons’ story, you can begin to relate to their humanity, and you can begin to connect with them.

You recognize a bit of yourself in every tear and every smile. You see the threads that weave us together with everyone; past, present, and future. It was the human condition, the human story and our need for connection to something greater than ourselves which lead me to give up a promising career in Baseball to pursue anthropology, medicine, and ultimately film.

During school, I took an elective TV production class my sister was enrolled in, and I fell in love with it. As there were no other classes at the university I was attending, I asked the dean of academics if I could write some of my own because I knew I wanted to become a director.

I ended up writing four classes which we accredited and graduated with my undergrad in Mass Media and Public Relations with a minor in writing. I attended post-graduate school at Watkin’s Film School in Nashville, Tennessee and, despite my plans to move to New York or LA, remained there, founded my first company, Quixotic Media LLC.

Over the course of the next fifteen years, I directed, shot or wrote music videos, commercials, TV shows, 35 short films and had the pleasure of working with amazing artists like Carrie Underwood, Faith Hill, Jake Owen, Blake Shelton and more. My efforts culminated in an Emmy win for a show I developed for The Dave Ramsey Show in 2014.

In 2015, my wife Rei Kennex, my daughter Arianna, and I moved to Los Angeles to join a production company, Examine Colab, started by a long time friend of mine. We worked on several projects together before I left to join my current business partner Tori Kyes at Kyes and Co as a founding partner where we fund films, develop shows, and market the shows using some pretty new and exciting technology.

Over the past three years, I have also been teaching at the New York Film Academy in their Masters, BFA, and 1-year programs. Additionally, I’ve recently finished writing three films, a book entitled, After Happily Ever After, started a co-production on an animated feature from Norway and am putting the final touches on a Short film my wife and I collaborated on called, Lark.

Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
It’s been an insanely challenging road. In 2006, my wife left me, took our daughter, I lost three grandparents, and had a number of contracts I was working on fall through. I got into over 100,000 dollars in debt paying for attornies and school all while building and running my own company.

A number of years later my ex-wife was planning on leaving the state and taking our daughter with her. I contested the move, and we went through another year and a half of court. I was able to gain custody of my daughter and became a single dad, working full time and raising our little one. It was a wonderful blessing, but a full-time challenge.

It was during this time that I started working with Dave Ramsey, developed and sold a pilot for a TV show, started another short-lived company, Loaded Deck Entertainment, and finished my book. I was determined to press on and forgive. Being bitter was not in the cards for me and forgiveness was paramount.

I met my now wife, Rei Kennex when I directed her first music video. We struck up an awesome relationship, and five years later we were married in New York City. She’s a musician, and we lived apart with an apartment in NY and the house in Nashville. I’d fly up and see her when I could, and she would come to me as we worked to grow our brands.

Three years ago, we had the opportunity to come to LA. I literally took everything we owned, put it on the front lawn with a free sign, packed our car, and headed west, no looking back. When we arrived in LA, the company I was supposed to be working for lost all of its funding and I was left without a job.

We had a 2500.00 a month rent, cars, and all and no way to pay it, so the hustle began. I was an Emmy winning director, knocking on doors and shooting BTS videos for no-name artists when I had been working with huge named talent for years. Another friend of mine Tori and I started our own company and in 2017 opened our office in Hollywood on La Brea and signed a 100 million dollar film fund.

We hired people, an attorney and everything that goes along with opening a business and the day we were supposed to close the fund, all the bankers were on the line and the papers were signed, the investor was a no-show, he sold out all the assets to another company and told us to sue him. We worked for the next year and a half to pay off the office space, rebuild our company, and reinvent ourselves.

We learned a lot of hard lessons, especially as someone from Nashville where the only contracts we ever did were a handshake. We’ve come a long way to the point where we now have a 30 plus project film/TV slate, several shows in pre-development, a marketing contract with a huge company and new tech in Las Vegas and on the verge of something truly exciting and world-changing.

Kyes and Co. LLC – what should we know? What do you guys do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
I am most proud of where we have come as a company. It’s in the early phases of actuation, but we didn’t give up, and we were relentless in our passion and execution.

I’m proud of what we have learned. I’m proud of where we are going, and I’m excited to see what the next few years have in store!

What moment in your career do you look back most fondly on?
I would say the proudest moment of my career so far has been seeing the students I have been teaching, fall in love with the craft, get excited about storytelling, dig deeper into who they are and why they believe what they believe and then go and make award-winning content, which they have.

I’m also proud of who I have been during the incredible journey. I haven’t compromised on who I am and haven’t bent my morals to achieve my dreams. I’ve had an amazing 20 years, but I am supremely confident my proudest moments are just over the horizon.

Contact Info:

• Website: jason.run
• Phone: 323-708-6888
• Email: jc@kyesand.co
• Instagram: wanzabanza

Image Credit:
Dmytry Bockarov, Jason Crossman, and John Frost

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