People ask how a video production company in Michigan ends up being run by a former professional wrestler, and the honest answer is that it was never two different careers. It was one career, telling stories to a crowd, that changed venues. This is how The Studio Creative started, why we work the way we do, and what nearly twenty years in the ring taught me about producing video for businesses. Some of this first appeared in an interview with VoyageMichigan, and it is worth telling in full here.
At a glance
- One career, two venues. Nearly twenty years in the ring as Chaz Montana, then video production: both are telling stories to a crowd.
- Founded in 2015. The Studio Creative started as a full-service marketing agency based in Grand Blanc, Michigan.
- Known for live event production. Content recorded, edited and delivered while the event is still happening: 264 finished videos at one three-day conference.
- Efficiency is the point. Clients leave with their content ready, and the crew goes home without weeks of editing.
A band nerd who wanted a bigger stage
I grew up in Michigan drawn to storytelling, performing, and making people laugh. The first outlet was music. I was a proud band nerd, and I spent years on saxophone, trombone, and piano. Music gave me discipline and a creative toolset I still use, and I would love to find more ways to work those instruments into our video work someday.
I was not an athlete. I was a skinny kid who was embarrassed to wear a wrestling singlet in gym class. At the same age, I could climb into a professional wrestling ring in front of a crowd wearing nothing but shorts and feel completely at home. The difference was that in the ring I was not me. I was a character. Wrestling let me transform, entertain, and connect with people in a way that felt bigger than life. At one point I even brought the trombone into the act, years before a certain trombone-playing character made it a trend on national television.
When I left high school I knew that if I wanted to take wrestling seriously I had to build myself into someone who belonged in that ring, so I started training.
Nearly two decades as Chaz Montana
For close to twenty years I traveled the country as "Chaz Montana," a cowboy with amnesia who believed he had been living life on the rodeo circuit, complete with a bull named Sammy the Bull. It was over the top on purpose. That is the art form. I wrestled in local halls and on nationally televised events, and along the way I built a YouTube series as Chaz Montana that gave fans a deeper look at the character and grew a loyal audience online long before anyone called it content creation.
Wrestling demanded toughness, but what I actually carried out of it was showmanship:
- how to hold a room's attention,
- how to improvise when the plan falls apart,
- and how to tell a story people do not forget.
Every live event we produce now runs on those three skills. The ring also gave me a later chapter I did not expect, contributing to the first season of VICE TV's Dark Side of the Ring, which let me revisit that world from the other side of the camera.
The injuries, and the overnight career change
Wrestling ends the way it ends. Injuries forced me out of the ring and into a completely new career almost overnight. Wrestling had been my identity for most of my adult life, and suddenly I was starting from the ground up. It was the hardest transition I have made.
I landed in marketing, at a credit union, as the entire marketing department. One person responsible for strategy, design, video, events, and everything in between. Over time I built that one-person desk into a five-person team by creating the processes and systems that let a department grow without breaking. Then I did it again somewhere else. That build-it-up routine became a pattern, and eventually the obvious next step was to build one for myself.
2015: founding The Studio Creative
In 2015 I founded The Studio Creative as a full-service marketing agency, based in Grand Blanc, Michigan and working across Metro Detroit and the state. It started as a small idea and grew into a company producing video, live streams, photography, and social media strategy for organizations of every size. We have been fortunate to work with the Detroit Auto Show, Habitat for Humanity, the Leadership Experience Tour, HRUnite!, the Attorney's Resource Conference, the NFL Wives Association, TEDx Detroit, and a long list of national events, each one a different story that had to land with a different audience.
Walking the room before a broadcast.
What we discovered along the way is that the thing that truly sets us apart is live event video production. We built a workflow that records, edits, and delivers content while the event is still happening. At one three-day conference this year, my team ran three interview rooms and one stage room at the same time and delivered 264 finished videos to the client on the spot, with no post-production waiting on the other side. That is what we are known for: our team's skill combined with smart automation, producing professional results in real time.
Why efficiency is the whole point
Growing a company while staying profitable enough to pay a team has never been easy. There were 80-hour weeks and long nights where I questioned whether it was worth it. I kept going because I believed in what we were building and knew it could last.
The truth is I was used to those hours. Early in my career as an employee, I worked late nights and weekends because when my bosses were stressed, I felt it and matched it. I do not think they ever meant to put that on me. When I started my own company I promised myself I would treat people differently. I wanted my team to have balance, to have a life outside of work, and to know their value was never measured in late nights.
At the program position during a live broadcast.
That promise is why efficiency sits at the center of everything we do, especially on live events. I want clients to walk out with their content ready the moment the event ends, and I want my crew to go home proud of the work without being chained to weeks of editing. Success, to me, is building something sustainable for the business and for the people who make it run. It is also why we built our own software, Studio Projects, which turns a basic script into a scene-by-scene breakdown, a per-character shot list, and generated backgrounds before a shoot day starts. You can see it at work across our Hot Cheap Comedy behind-the-scenes series.
CRM Connect: the same idea, applied to the whole business
Efficiency did not stop at content. I am the co-founder of CRM Connect, built with Larry Miller of Connected Geek, and it came from the same frustration. We kept seeing small businesses running on twenty different apps, which made everything harder than it needed to be. CRM Connect combines communication, marketing automation, scheduling, invoicing, and more into one platform. It is the system The Studio Creative runs on every day, and it is the marketing system we recommend to every client, because great video earns attention and the system is what turns attention into revenue.
Part of the crew at an event.
What we are most proud of
Not the growth, though the growth has been real. The reputation. Quality, reliability, and trust, whether we are covering a major conference like the Attorney's Resource Conference or a community organization like Habitat for Humanity. Same energy, same attention to detail, same commitment to the story.
Everything ties back to mindset. I do not just want to make content or software. I want to design systems that make life easier, work more efficient, and results more impactful. That came from wrestling and marketing, two worlds where performance and connection with an audience are everything, and it guides both companies today. The goal has always been to build businesses where the work speaks for itself, where clients can depend on us, and where the team has the freedom to do its best work without burning out.
Where the story goes next
Alongside The Studio Creative and CRM Connect I have built and advised ventures in logistics, finance, and e-commerce, and I still get in front of the camera now and then, including in our own sketch series, where a cast of current and former wrestlers turned out to be exactly the right people to perform against a green screen. Different venue, same job: hold the room, tell the story, make it land.
You can meet the rest of the crew on our About page. If you are a business in Michigan or Central Florida with a story that deserves better than a phone on a tripod, tell us what you are making. You will hear back from me, a producer who has spent a career learning how to keep an audience's attention, usually the same business day.
