When we first started, I remember sitting at my desk over at Shear Media Studios. The studio wasn’t quite fully developed yet. We were in our fourth month of producing Rhonda Shear’s Up All Night, and we’d been using the show to test the studio.

Not only is Up All Night a great show, but it’s also an amazing comeback story about a female entrepreneur who started in Hollywood, became a successful entrepreneur, and is now bringing her roots back to Hollywood. Which is really cool.

I mean, that’s what Shear Media Studios, and really a lot of Shear Enterprises, is about. Entrepreneurship.

So, there I was, working on this new studio they had brought me in to design, when I got a call from a young entrepreneur from an EDM event group called Desire.

I was like, let’s go!

They were looking for a large space. Originally, they were interested in my building at 211 North Meridian Avenue, the creative studio hub I developed back in 2021 in Channelside. That’s another building I designed around entrepreneurs, giving them a place to create and build their businesses.

And when I think about it, almost everything I’ve done has been driven by that same entrepreneurial spirit.

My whole life has been about entrepreneurship, starting with a wedding company, then creating Tampa Film Group, a group of young filmmakers who would meet once a month, show each other our films, talk about projects, and see how we could help each other.

Because none of us really knew what we were doing.

We knew how to pick up a camera. We knew how to write, plan, and come up with creative things to do. But we didn’t really know how to make a business out of it.

Then, when I was working out of Tampa Digital, it was the same thing. Another group of entrepreneurs.

The funny thing about Tampa Digital is that we all worked together, eventually went our separate ways, but most of us still work together today, now with our own companies.

And that’s what made this phone call from Desire so interesting to me.

I’m sitting at Shear Media Studios that day, now working on my fourth studio and my second major studio build, and another entrepreneur calls me from a completely different industry. But really, we’re still in the same entertainment business.

He’s looking for a space to host what would probably be one of the biggest parties he and his team had ever put together for Desire.

They wanted a large space where they could start hosting even bigger EDM events.

I didn’t know much about them, but I knew what he was asking for, and I knew I could help him out.

So I showed him the 211 space. But even though it’s in the city and a really unique property, I knew what he was actually looking for was my new studio build over at Shear Media Studios.

And the timing was perfect.

We had just installed the lighting grid, developed much of Studio G, added the power, and were building out the infrastructure to host large-scale productions. Everything from broadcasts and television shows to commercials, photo shoots, and, yeah, events.

I thought, this is perfect.

This is what entrepreneurship is. One entrepreneur growing his studio while helping another entrepreneur grow his business.

And that’s what excites me about working with other entrepreneurs. I’ve been doing this for so long, and to realize that so much of what I’ve been designing and working toward is about helping other entrepreneurs and businesses grow is pretty incredible.

That’s what studios are. I don’t care how you look at them.

They’re places where people come to create.

And in Desire’s case, that meant taking a production studio and turning it into a nightclub.

We built a 40-foot LED wall in Studio G. They brought in stages, speakers, lighting, and everything else needed to put on a major EDM event. Then, when the party was over, we had to turn the space back into a production studio.

That’s the beauty of having a space designed to do so many different things.

How many businesses can you run where you can tell somebody, “I created a business that works with other people who want to create businesses and do great work”?

From entertainment to podcasts, television shows, Barstool Sports, and EDM parties at night.

It’s all the same.

People wanting to do great work.

And when I got that phone call, we were still developing Shear Media Studios. I had really just gotten started in February 2026. It’s October now, so that wasn’t very long ago.

I remember thinking, this is why we built this space, and this is why it’s going to be successful.

And it’s not just happening at Shear Media Studios.

My other space at 211 North Meridian Avenue is now home to A Land Remembered, an amazing four-part film series.

And once again, there’s another filmmaker behind it, Todd Wiseman.

I met Todd years ago. He’s a great filmmaker, and I tell people all the time that he’s one of the hardest-working filmmakers I know. He goes above and beyond to get things done.

Now he’s working at 211 with his whole team.

And I’m over at Shear Media Studios, working with a whole other team of entrepreneurs, business owners, and content creators. And I’m meeting more of them all the time.

When I look at what’s happening at both properties, and think about all the people I’ve worked with over the years, it reminds me why I got into this business.

You know, I got into filmmaking thinking I was doing it for the art. But I slowly realized I was also getting into it for the business.

And not just the money-making part.

The business of making connections, building relationships, and figuring out how to make things work for all of us.

And it’s the greatest feeling in the world.