CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Mike Clum, CEO of video production company Clum Creative, didn’t go to film school. He didn’t finish college at all.
The Westlake native dropped out of Miami University at 18 and bought his first camera for $600. He started cold-calling Cleveland companies and asking if he could make them videos.
Eight years later, his video production company, Clum Creative, made Case Western Reserve University Weatherhead School of Management’s Upstart 100, which measures the area’s fastest-growing small companies. Clum Creative has 20 full-time employees and more than $3 million in sales.
Clum is 26. The average age of a Fortune 500 and S&P 500 CEO is 58, reports Business Insider. The average age for the owner of a small business is 50, according to most recent numbers from Experian.
Clum thinks his lack of experience at an established production company helped him approach video content from a new angle.
“You know, in 1950, you would make one TV commercial every year and put it on TV and that’s it,” he said. “Now you need so many videos, you need to make them so quick and cost-effective, and they still need to be good and interesting and relevant to the viewer.”
There’s no shortage of content marketers in Cleveland; the city is home to Content Marketing World, a leading industry conference, each year. And video marketing is huge on social media like Facebook and Instagram.
Clum hopped on that trend early, shooting videos on his iPhone and putting them on Facebook before starting his business. He hired marketers, not film-makers, to staff his team.
“I think a lot of my competitors are still modern, they still do good work, but they’re still kind of rooted in the thinking of how old traditional media works,” he said.
The agency has made videos for clients like American Greetings, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Original Mattress Factory.
In the early stages of growing a company -- “limping along," as he put it -- Clum said the key is waking up every day and finding a new customer.
“Regardless of where you’re doing the work, you make cupcakes, you make T-shirts, whatever, you have to be obsessed with getting customers. You know, you want your customers to be happy. But if you have one customer that’s happy, you’re broke.”
Clum’s is the type of story that the Cleveland business community longs to replicate, hoping to keep Millennial entrepreneurs in the city with the promise of cheaper housing and office space and a supportive start-up system.
Part of the reason the early-stage business accelerator Flashstarts gave for closing its micro-venture fund was Millennials founding fewer businesses then the generations before them.
Clum took advantage of Cleveland’s real estate, even though the company seeks out clients nationwide. His company is based out of an office on St. Clair Avenue near Midtown. Clum says there’s a great marketing talent pool here to work with.
But he balks at the idea that there’s a silver bullet to encouraging entrepreneurial growth in Cleveland, instead saying that it’s more of a numbers game. The more people there are, the more successful businesses are developed. It’s a difficult thing to overcome.
Grants and tax breaks can be helpful, Clum said, but there are still entrepreneurs that will take them and do nothing with them.
“Let’s say the Cleveland economy is supportive of you. Well, eventually to grow you’ll be competing with other economies that aren’t supporting you,” he said. “So is support even a factor or is success just a ratio of human existence?
“I guess it’s a non-answer. But if there’s one practical thing, I guess. if someone cold calls you, just be nice to them. Unless they’re a robo-call. Then you can just hang up. But if they’re a Cleveland entrepreneur, just be like ‘Oh, absolutely. Not in the market, but best of luck.’”