Meet Jayson Duncan of Miller Farm Media

Today we’d like to introduce you to Jayson Duncan.

Jayson, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
I grew up on the Canadian border in the state of Maine. I have always had an entrepreneurial mindset. As a kid, I tried to open a bike repair shop in my parents’ shed.

We lived out in the country and the closest neighbors were my grandparents, who lived about a quarter of a mile away. Needless to say, the market wasn’t buying what I had to offer. As a teen being a filmmaker had crossed my mind but it wasn’t something I spent much time thinking about. I come from a very musical family and, growing up, that was my focus. I wanted to be a musician. I loved to play my guitar, sing, and write songs. I felt the message of rock and roll was empty, yet it had a lot of influence on all my peers.

After a few short tours with a band, my music career was put on hold. I found myself looking for a job.

My brother and I had been playing with video and creating videos for some local nonprofits, so I thought I would make that my job while I worked on finishing my album and got ready to tour again. In 2003, corporate video production wasn’t a popular career choice. After a few years, I realized that there was not a lot of need for video production service in northern Maine, so my wife and I talked and we decided to move. We had lived on the east coast all of our lives. After a lot of prayer and discussion, we picked a place on the map and decided to move. We didn’t have anything to lose. We didn’t own a house or have any car payments. We sold most of what we owned and, with $8,000 in our pockets, we bought one-way tickets to California, without jobs or a place to stay. The week before we left, my wife got a call from a potential employer and they met us at the airport and got us a place to stay for a few weeks. Within two weeks of being in California, she had a job and I had a steady freelance gig. We had cars without rust (this is a big deal if you have ever lived on the east coast) and a place to live that was only one block from the beach.

Has it been a smooth road?
I gave up my consistent freelance gig and got my first direct client for my business. The client went bankrupt and I never got paid for some of the work I did. I struggled for what seemed like a long time to find clients. Things got so bad at one point that I took a job in a toy store to help pay the bills. Little by little, I met people who introduced me to other people and my business grew. I reinvested that money in other types of marketing and I soon found myself flying around the country working with some really big brands.

So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the Miller Farm Media story. Tell us more about the business.
Orange county video production company Miller Farm Media is a story first video marketing agency.

We help brands tell their story and delight their target audience with creative videos. What sets us apart is our ability to not only create a video but to create a campaign around the video to make sure the brand gets a return on their video investment. For a lot of brands, video is a vanity play. Our goal is to give that video a purpose. We are really excited about our new reality show Shoot for Broke. It gives a behind the scenes view of what it is like to tell stories for a living. We did a pilot episode and are now looking for brands that want to be featured on the show.

What is “success” or “successful” for you?
When it comes to work, all work has meaning and purpose. Even the jobs we may not like to do make a difference in the world around us. At the most basic level, success is reaching a goal that has been set. I have known many “successful” people who have lost everything at various stages of life, even after reaching their goals. Myself included. I know a lot about failure. It has been hard but it takes failure to succeed.

I believe true success is found when you find your purpose. Your purpose is bigger than your goals. It’s not about being happy or making lots of money. Bob Dylan said ‘happy’ is a yuppie word. A true mark of success is about choosing to be joyful, even when things are hard. This comes from knowing your purpose.

Contact Info:

• Address: 7545 Irvine Center Dr.,#200
  Irvine, CA 92618
• Website: www.millerfarmmedia.com
• Phone: (949) 288-3061
• Email: [email protected]
• Youtube: 

Image Credit:
Joel Gabrielsen

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