Breaking Into Backbone: Building Creative Businesses from the Inside Out // Tyler Burr #5251

Bret sits down with operations expert and Syzygy founder Tyler Burr to explore the critical—but often invisible—role of infrastructure in the creative industries. With a career spanning film and TV production, the arts, hospitality, and business operations, Tyler brings a systems-first mindset to every challenge she tackles.

As the founder of Syzygy, she leads a team dedicated to empowering creative entrepreneurs by transforming back-office functions—like accounting, HR, and operations—into strategic assets. Her approach helps small businesses grow with clarity, confidence, and control. Known for her pragmatic leadership and sharp operational instincts, Tyler is a firm believer that strong systems create space for bold ideas.

In this episode, she and Bret dive into what it takes to build sustainable businesses behind the scenes, why operations is often the secret to success, and how professionals with disabilities can lead and thrive in every part of the business world.

Join our conversation on social media:

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https://www.linkedin.com/company/18149713

Interested in being a guest speaker? blieberman@yicunity.org

Transcript

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I want to welcome everyone joining us tonight on the Breaking the Biz Podcast with the Yes I Can crew. We have got a great guest with us. We have Tyler Burr, who is the CEO and founder of Syzygy Film TV Production.[Narrator] - Stay tuned for today's episode of Breaking the Biz, an informative podcast where we dive into the world of entertainment by interviewing seasoned professionals who have made their mark in the industry. Gain invaluable insights as they share their personal journeys, offering advice on navigating the dynamic landscape of the entertainment industry. Whether you're an aspiring actor, musician, filmmaker, author, animator or any creative soul, tune in for expert career guidance, insider tips and firsthand accounts on breaking into the entertainment industry. Get ready to unlock the secrets behind successful careers and fuel your own passion for the limelight. Please remember to like this video and to subscribe to our channels for more great conversations.{Host] - Greetings from Breaking the Biz brought to you by Yes I Unity Through Music and Education. I'm William Felber, your navigator through the intriguing universe of the entertainment industry as revealed by the visionaries and creators who bring it to life. Stay tuned as we delve into diverse insights from the forefront of entertainment. Hearing from pioneers, creators and agents of change. Prepare for a journey filled with tales of innovation, resilience and the undying quest for artistic brilliance.[Bret] - I want to welcome everyone joining us tonight on Breaking the Biz Podcast with the Yes I Can crew. We have got a great guest with us. We have Tyler Burr, who is the CEO and founder of Syzygy Film TV Production. Throughout her career serving industry from film television production to arts to hospitality to business operations to accounting. Tyler's curiosity about how things work and the desire to make them work better are the common current. I wish more people had that approach. That's obviously how we make some perfection and we fix the problems. Though nobody would accuse her of being soft spoken, she's a soft sold. A foot soldier at heart. She approaches everything in a business from operations, first perspective, building processes, brick bright brick by brick to bear the weight of ambition, growth. Ask any of her colleagues and you're likely to hear a similar message. This chick is somebody you want on your side. Amen. You want someone on your side, not on the other side. Syzygy supports small businesses with a range of services like I mentioned, from counting to human resources and operations. Their mission is to empower creative entrepreneurs by transforming their back offices from necessary functions into a foundational center for strategic decision making, allowing them to grow their businesses with command and confidence. So Tyler want To thank you for joining us, I apologize if I butchered that intro, but it's darn impressive. Great job. So let's jump into it. First question I always ask our guests are, when you were the young girl, what was the dream job? When I grow up, I want to be sure.[Tyler] - So I kind of grew up in a bit of an unconventional household. My father was a jazz bassist and my mother was an actress, so she primarily acted in commercials, mostly doing voiceover work. So I never grew up with an example of a sort of nine to five world. I didn't understand how salaries worked. Self employment was the only thing that, that I ever saw. All of that sort of resulted in. I wanted to be a performer, an actor from when I was a tiny, tiny little bean. And there are videos of me at three and four singing songs from musicals and things like that. So that was actually kind of the dream and the only dream throughout my childhood and even through adolescence and high school. I went to a performing arts high school in midtown Manhattan, then went to NYU's Tisch School of the Arts as an acting major for a year before I made a major course change that led me down a series of winding paths that got me to here. I want to hear it all. We got time for it tonight to hear those paths. What's great though, is being raised by individuals who are already in a gig economy. Like you mentioned, you didn't know what the salary, the nine to five, the every day where sometimes people go, oh my God, I can't stand my job. I do the same thing every day. So jazz musician, an actress. You definitely don't have those parents who say you will only be a doctor or you will be a lawyer and you're going to go to business. Right. Like you have people who are creatives who bless the creative spirit, which I absolutely love. They certainly didn't have much basis to tell me that I needed to seek more stable employment. That's. That's for sure. I love that though, that, that's great because we do sometimes have guests who are like, my parents wanted me to have that safe job where I'm going to get paid well and then do all of this schooling and then go, okay, that's not for me. Now I'm going to pursue something that I'm passionate about and make that flip change. And it sounds like you did those windy roads which lead you here, which we're going to get to. So you go to a performing art high school. And from the performing art high school, I imagine you did Theater. You did shows at this time? Are you acting? Do you have an agent? Are you doing commercials on your end? Yeah, so I. I started at. At a performing arts school in Manhattan my sophomore year of. I stayed there through my senior year. And, yeah, I was performing in shows at the school. My junior year of high school, I was in a musical and I was Mrs. Lovett in Sweeney Todd. And I met somebody through that who worked in management. And so she and I kind of started working together. And I started auditioning at that point professionally. And it was an interesting process for me because I was doing a lot of auditions in kind of Off Broadway theater, guest spots in film and TV. But at that point, I was only 16 and I looked much older. And there was a sort of weird timing element to all of it. All of that kind of culminated in the summer before I started college. I'd been admitted to nyu and I was committed to going there. And I was in final callbacks for a play off Broadway at Lincoln Center. And I had this moment. I had for a long time not wanted to go to college and just wanted to kind of pursue performing and start that right away. And I had this crazy moment right before I walked into the final callback where I was like, I think I want to go to college. The idea of sort of having to sacrifice that in service of this job that it sort of seemed increasingly likely I might get actually kind of pointed me toward what I really wanted, which was not what I expected to want. And so I wound up, I mean, appropriately going in and completely blowing the final audition, which set me on the path of going to nyu. So I spent a year at NYU in the conservatory run by the Atlantic Theater Company, which was a really great, super formative experience. My dearest friends to this day were people that I met that year in school. Throughout that time, I was still periodically auditioning, but there was a sort of challenge of being in school full time and not really having the flexibility to go on auditions. And what wound up happening was I decided after my first year at NYU to leave school for a year, strike out on my own, get a job waiting tables, and just audition a bunch. And I did that for about five months. And what I sort of saw happen for myself is that my. My work auditioning got progressively worse the more I hated my job waiting tables. So every audition that I went on, the stakes felt higher and higher and higher. I was more and more desperate to get that job. And my performance was therefore weaker and weaker and weaker because I was bringing all of this other kind of emotional content into the room with me. And so I think that was sort of part of the crossroads I hit. And I think the other crossroads was that I sort of started to wrap my head around the fact that I was likely to be doing this job, waiting tables at a restaurant for the indeterminate future while I was trying to make this dream happen for myself. And I think day by day, it felt like there were probably other options for me that would allow me to start what felt like a really good life for myself sooner. So all of that drove me to decide to go back to nyu. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. I thought maybe law, maybe academia, maybe I wanted to be a writer. I had a sort of mishmash of ideas in my head. In my first year back to college, I just took a bunch of different courses across a bunch of different sort of disciplines to see if I could figure out what really stimulated my interest and stop me, Brett, if at any point. No, I'm loving it. Because you're nailing so much important stuff sometimes, right? Like, it's really hard to be that creative, but at the same time, you're working a job and you're trying to make ends meet, and you're realizing you got the pressure of school and papers and deadlines there. New York, I. I can only imagine. I've seen the auditioning in, like, California and where you have to get around, but New York just seems like a real big cluster of hard to get from A to B, So that's. That's hard. And then there is a lot of rejection. And sometimes you don't even get the rejection. Sometimes you just don't get that callback, which is a form of rejection, and that. That, you know, you have to be resilient. I think the people that we see and, you know, they're like, oh, my God, they made it. No one makes it overnight. Everyone has to to do this road. Some people get breaks and things, Doors open. But the amount of auditions you really have to go on before you land something, it's just. It's really not realistic. So, yeah. And I would say the way that I've kind of phrased it to my friends who have continued to pursue performing is that it really is a numbers game. And the number one ingredient that's required to be successful in that industry is tenacity. And the people that I went to college with, who are now working really consistently, the thing that sets them apart isn't necessarily that they were the most Kind of breathtaking, raw talents of my group of peers. It's that they were the people who had enough confidence to walk into a room, do the work, walk out of a room. And if somebody said no to them, it was like water off a duck's back, and they were ready to wake up the next day and do it all again until somebody said yes. My, you know, going back to kind of my parents and what their background was, the interesting thing is they had a lot of insight around how difficult it can be at the beginning. And so the thing that my mom always said to me when I, you know, when she knew that I wanted to be an actor is if you can see yourself being happy and feeling fulfilled doing something else, do that, because it's going to be an easier path. If this feels like your reason for breathing, your reason for living, then go for it. And I think that was always the sort of the metric that I was measuring myself against. Does this feel like my only path to feeling truly, like, fulfilled and excited and passionate about what I'm doing every day? And over time, and I think as I matured and as I got life experience and sort of broke out from this very narrow track I had been on since I was quite young, I realized that there were maybe other opportunities out there that would kind of satisfy the same itch that acting and performing scratched for me while also offering me a lifestyle that felt a little bit more aligned with what I saw for myself as an adult. I absolutely love that. And, you know, mentioning those people who could just, like, get rejected, and then, you know, the water slips off and they're on to the next. I always watch those type of people at the bar who will hit on every single girl, get rejected, and then they're like, they're still going, right? Or I was like, I finally get the nerve to talk to someone, and they're, like, kind of over it. And you're like, all right, that's it. I'm done. I'm not going to talk to anyone else. But you could see those people with that tenacity who are like, they could be the slimiest of slime. And in the end, someone buys what they're selling. Unearned confidence is definitely a key ingredient, for sure, 100%. So let's move back to you decide. Okay. I'm gonna go to NYU Tish and figure out what it is I want to do. And college is a great opportunity to explore. Obviously, you could save a lot of money if you could kind of figure out what you're passionate about before you go there and you spend a lot of money and then do that flip of this is not for me. That's why we obviously have this program where people can kind of get an insight of what that job looks like and go, yeah, I could see myself grinding, doing that day in and day out and feel fulfilled. So talk us through career exploration at nyu. You're back there. You're ready to find what it is that is going to make you happy, fulfilled, and enjoy your career. Sure. So I signed up for a bunch of different courses with maybe an inkling that, you know, I knew that STEM probably wasn't going to be, for me, it was going to be something in the liberal arts. But that could be law. It could be something having to do with the English language. It could be linguistics. I had a really kind of open mind and a lot of curiosity, particularly because I had gone to a performing arts high school with very little academic rigor. And so I didn't have a lot of exposure to what else was potentially out there in the world. And, you know, what I found is that I immediately gravitated towards the English literature classes that I was taking and to the creative writing classes that I was taking. Those were the two courses in my first semester back in school that I found myself really excited to go and do the coursework for, where I found myself feeling really engaged during the lectures. And so that kind of became where I narrowed in. I wound up as an English major. And in the first year or two that I was back in school, I was sort of toying around with kind of, what are the options around that? And I thought, well, maybe I want to work in creative writing. Maybe I want to be a writer. And then I sort of thought, well, that's kind of just replacing one type of instability with another type of instability, so maybe that's not the lifestyle I want. And then I thought, well, maybe I want to get my PhD. Maybe I want to be an academic. And then I thought, well, that. That doesn't offer a whole lot more stability either, to be fair. So I was sort of kind of toying around with. I think I was starting to get a better idea of perhaps like, you know, rather than following this path that I had watched my parents walk down of, sort of starting to understand that I actually wanted a little bit more structure in my life. I wanted more routine. I wanted more predictability. I wanted more stability. I wanted to be able to plan those kind of elements of my personality. I sort of started to let, like, seep into the lifestyle that I wanted to cultivate for myself. And it became about then finding something that would satisfy me creatively but would also allow me to have that lifestyle that started to feel really important to me. And actually a friend of mine in college was in the dramatic literature major, which was basically kind of an English major for specifically film, TV and drama. And she sort of suggested that maybe creative development for film and TV was what I was angling for. And what that is, is you're really kind of, you know, you're reading scripts, reading pitches, and sort of trying to understand what movie or TV show they're trying to be, whether there's value there, whether it's something that, you know, the specific company you're working for might be interested in, and then working with writers and, and eventually with, you know, producers to kind of craft the writing creatively. So that sort of became a really appealing path for me. And I wound up doing an internship the summer before my last year of college at a very, very small film production company. And what I was mostly doing there was reading scripts or reading. The producer that I was working for specialized in, in youth, like young adult fiction and children's movies and things like that. So I was doing a lot of reading books, a lot of reading scripts and providing coverage which is basically summarizing the plot content of what you've read and then providing an opinion on the quality of the writing, whether it might be a viable property to explore that then the producer can sort of use to evaluate whether it's an interesting thing. So I was doing that for about three months over the summer and really got hooked on it. And just through a series of kind of random connections that parlayed into another internship at a company that did, at that point, primarily sales for film. So they would, you know, take either movies that had already been made or movies that were ready to be made and sell them in various territories to hopefully get financing to help make the movie. But they also were producing their own work and financing films and things like that. So that was like the first real grown up film job that I had. And I was an intern there for the first semester of my last year of college. And it was intense. I was doing, you know, three to four novels and screenplays over the weekend and doing coverage on those. And the demands were kind of high in the office. And I was really starting to get exposed to the culture of film and TV production, which, you know, I think is had the structure that I was looking for. And there was also an intensity to it, that, that actually felt really appealing to me. So I was planning on staying on and interning for another semester at that company. But there happened to be a production executive whose company was primarily based in la. She was based in New York and she had a part time assistant who was leaving. And so the my supervisor at that internship referred me to that job. And I wound up spending 30 hours a week my last semester of college as an executive assistant to a production executive, which was extremely unglamorous. It was all just admin, scheduling coverage, dealing with difficult personalities, listening in on calls and doing grunt work. And interestingly at that point, up until that point throughout college, I had been working at an event space just to make money doing service for kind of private dinners and things like that. And at the height at that job I was making around $35 an hour. And then I went to my part time assistant job and I was making 13. So there was this huge kind of shift for me to kind of formally entering the corporate ladder into in the film industry, but definitely starting on the very bottom rung. So I did that job for a semester. I graduated from college and that job and the sort of connections that I made there parlayed into another executive assistant job, which is the most common kind of first job to have in the film industry. Except this time it was for a of years, couple company that was headquartered in London with offices in LA and New York, that primarily did commercials, commercials and music videos, mostly with some film and tv. And so I worked for the CEO there for two years. And interestingly I sort of went in with this interest and emphasis in creative development. And he kind of very quickly noticed that I had a proclivity for like process, problem solving and operations. And so he sort of pitched to me that maybe that was the avenue that I should explore longer term. That, you know, perhaps even though creative development was kind of a satisfying thing and it's fun to read work and give notes on it, and that feels really enjoyable that I had this skill set that was maybe a little bit more rare and that I might be able, if what I was really looking for was career growth, that I might be able to parlay that a little bit more strongly into career growth. So that was a really kind of valuable insight that I gleaned in that role. And that shift then began to happen where I sort of, I realized that a kind of more executive role was the direction that I was heading in rather than something that was necessarily like creative in nature. And I think at that point I Was sort of like I was pursuing ambition, you know, my ambition to become successful and make good money and all of those things. I had not yet, at that point, found any kind of way to connect the path that I was going down back to the passions that sort of initially set me along the trajectory in the first place, finding kind of the creativity in it, or what is similar between performing and creative writing and film and TV development, and then now business operations. How do you draw a through line amongst all of those things? And so that, I think, was something that hadn't occurred to me yet necessarily as an important thing to figure out. But looking back, I think that period was, like, characterized by a lot of ambition and a lot of energy and kind of forward momentum without a real kind of connection to purpose, so to speak. Should I pause there, Brett? Yeah, talk about a windy road, right? But I do want to point out some things. Internships sometimes don't always work for what you think, but if you do a good job in your internship, it can parlay into another internship or it can parlay into a letter of rec. In your case, what's fantastic is actually finding a mentor who took the time to go, hey, Tyler, you got some real good skills on problem solving. You like the structure. These are all the things that you're really good at. And instead of spinning your wheels over here, this could really be your path. And someone, a good mentor, can see the skills that you're bringing to the table. Usually that could be a college professor, but in this case, it's the boss at the internship who goes, hey, this is really what you should be doing. So from there, what comes next for you? I'm sort of on this operations track. And something I would say at this point, too, one of the things that drew me to film and TV is that there's a bit of a glamour factor, right? You, you know, you read a script and there's an actor who you've seen in all of these movies attached to it. Or you go to intern at a company and they've produced a movie that you really love, and it feels kind of flashy and impressive to your friends and family. To be able to claim kind of those companies or those projects is something that you've had something to do with. And in this job, I went to the Toronto Film Festival. I went to Cannes, I went to Tribeca. I was doing kind of all of these sort of super glamorous feeling things, which felt to me like a really big goal when I started in that space. And I actually Wore out on them very quickly. And so I think the other thing is, as I was sort of wrapping up at this job and getting ready to look for something else, I was super burnt out. You know, I'd been working 70 hours a week. I didn't take a vacation for two years. I was like, very much on the hamster wheel. And I learned a lot, but I also was exhausted. And so I think after I left that job, there were two big shifts for me. One was that I realized I needed to achieve better work life balance, because I was 23 at that point and already completely out of energy. And I also realized that I was ready to let go of the glamour a little bit of the film and TV industry. I didn't feel quite as much of an attachment to the kind of prestige and the shininess of it. And so what sort of wound up coming into my lap as I was looking for something else was a job that was primarily operations focused at a company that did accounting for production companies. So I knew at that point nothing about accounting and finance. I had always been really interesting and interested in understanding how accounting worked and how finance worked, because to me, it sort of seemed like this, like, secret language that could unlock a lot in terms of understanding how businesses worked, understanding what makes a business valuable, what makes a business successful. So I had had this curiosity and this kind of sense that I was going to need to figure out how all that worked at some point. And this felt like a really good opportunity for me to kind of go in with this skill set that I had developed, but enter into an environment where I could kind of see how that sausage was getting made and develop an understanding of how that work was done, which could then inform whatever I did next. And at that job. And I was there all the way up until we started Syzygy. So I was there for another two years. I wound up kind of by the seat of my pants learning how to do accounting, coming into an understanding of how finance worked and all of the sort of the nuances of accounting for commercial production. And. And I kind of enjoyed it. I didn't realize up until that point that accounting is kind of problem solving. It's puzzling. It's not super math heavy. And so I sort of found myself gravitating toward accounting and wanting to do that more and more and kind of doing these logic puzzles. And for the first time, I had sort of like fallen into this rhythm. I had a boss that I worked really well with, and I was just kind of like grooving you know, I felt like I was leaving work at a reasonable time. I was making good money, I was able to save, I was learning, I was growing. It was this kind of like, really, really nice sweet spot. And then March of 2020, of course, Covid happened, and there were very quickly massive changes at the company where we worked. And I think in such a way that it sort of felt like, oh, this isn't. It's not going to go back to what it was before. Like, that sort of, you know, those dog days of the six months right up until Covid hit were. Were now in the past, and we needed to figure out kind of what was next. And it was actually my. My direct boss at that company, who was its CEO, and I that wound up deciding to leave that company and start Syzygy together. And I think where it came from for us was at that point, there was a lot that was happening in the world, right? The death of George Floyd, Black Lives Matter protests, this kind of global sort of call to action around, really reckoning with, like, with a history of brutality and violence in our country. There was a lot of action around that. That was happening in LA during COVID and because we were in la, there was this, like, epicenter for the pandemic anyway. And it just really felt like we were at a fever pitch in the country and in our city. And I think it sort of. It felt like there had to be a little bit of a reckoning in that moment, certainly for me, but I would assume for many people of like, who am I? Who am I devoting my energy to? Whose livelihoods and lives am I using my talent to support and to promote? And is that energy placed where I want it to be placed? And I think my business partner and I were sort of having similar kind of crises of conscience at the same time, and that moved us to start a business. And I think for us, at the beginning, it was really, as my partner put it, about lives well lived for ourselves, our clients and our staff, an idea of cultivating a work environment that was totally remote, that was diverse and inclusive, that allowed people to be fully human at their jobs. When scary things were happening in the world or awesome things were happening in the world without feeling like they needed to compartmentalize. And funnily enough, as we started kind of talking about and modeling what this might look like, what we were actually going to do, the services that we were going to provide for me felt secondary to the culture that we wanted to build and the kind of place that we wanted to go to work every day in a way that reconnected me to my purpose, my sense of purpose for the first time in, in a number of years. And I think I sort of, I. I started to realize that in creative development, in producing, in writing, in acting, there was always this kind of through line for me of like understanding creative people and then trying to kind of help them express, express their creativity in the fullest possible way. And that sort of became just the nature of the work that we do at Syzygy. But what was sort of surprising to me is that once we got in there, what I realized actually connects me to a sense of purpose, is being able to offer an environment to the people that work at my company that I wish I had been able to find as an employee myself, where I don't really have to think about my career progression or my work. I don't have to worry if I'm having a bad day or my kids sick or I've gotten a piece of bad news and I just need a little bit of latitude. It's really about kind of creating an environment that feels really human and supported and psychologically safe. And that is the thing that has wound up connecting me to a sense of purpose in a greater way than anything else that I ever kind of touched on up until this point. And I think the biggest piece of advice that I sort of give to people now who are kind of starting to try to figure it out or who feel like they're at a crossroads career wise, is that, at least for me. And I would, I would probably venture to say for many people that what you're doing day in and day out, the tasks that you're performing on a day to day basis, are actually going to drive and inform the sense of purpose that you feel in your work far less than the impact that you have on the people around you, whether that's a client, whether it's a, you know, an audience, whether it's coworkers or employees, that impact is really the thing that drives your sense of purpose. Rather than what buttons am I clicking and what am I typing into a computer? Super well said. Very, very profound as well. One of the things that I just love is, you know, looking at Covid, how it changed the game structures changed, you know, being able to work virtually not having the, the office, so to speak. Right. And knowing that it's probably not going to go back. Right. There's a lot of people who are always like, but when it goes back, it's never going back. Right. We learned Technology has changed, things have shifted, there's new ways of doing things and we've progressed into a better, easier way of doing certain things. So I think you're very intelligent on the fact of understanding, let's change the way we deliver our services. I love how you get your that feeling of purpose and in helping, I mean, no matter what, you're still helping individuals. The accounting, one of the things that I really do love is the fact, and I read it in your bio, like you are one of those minds who are ambitious enough to go, how does that work? And you have a strong growth mindset to hey, I've never done this before, but I'm going to go learn as much as I can and engulf myself into the budgets and how do movies get funded or the commercials, whatever. It so be where others are. Like, I've never done accounting, I'm not a cpa. I can't do this job right. Like sometimes you got to put yourself in a position where you're uncomfortable and success can be on the other side of your comfort zone, which it happened for you. I also love that you were like, hey, this isn't working. It's not. I'm not feeling fulfilled. So I'm going to create something where I know I'm fulfilled and I'm going to bring people that I love. Being a boss where you've dealt with aggressive bosses, you've dealt with those who don't communicate properly, don't treat you right, are always trying to catch you messing up right to where you go, hey, I don't want that. This is the environment and it's so healthy when you can now be in that position as the boss to, to create what you really were looking for that entire time. And another thing that really stuck to me is finding that balance of, of personal time and work time. And when you're a boss and you're running a company, even with a partner, no matter what, your brain is always constantly on work. And there has to be that time where you turn off that creative brain, you turn off that problem solving and it's family time. How do you now where you're at with your company, find that balance? You know, it's interesting because for me, I think it's been a progression because of this, this sort of hyper intense relationship that I had always had with work as an employee and because of how much of I think my sense of self and my value I attached to my identity as like a worker. So, you know, so to speak. When we first started the company. If I was going to go out of the office or on vacation or even over the weekend, I had to completely disengage from everything altogether. I couldn't know what was happening. I couldn't see an email, I couldn't see a slack message. I needed to be totally blind to what was going on because if I found out about one thing, that would become all consuming for me and completely kind of break my ability to disengage. That, of course, was less about needing to block out the noise and more about how the noise kind of spiraled out of control in my own head. And so as time has gone on and I've managed to, I think, like develop more confidence and a little bit more maturity and a little bit more kind of self assuredness around how I show up to work. That's also meant that now when I'm on vacation and something urgent happens and somebody shoots me a text, it's not a big deal. It's very easy for me to kind of help solve the problem if I need to solve the problem and then go back to my piece. So I think that all of that is to say that, you know, the environment that you're working in has a huge bearing on your ability to disconnect. Right. Obviously. You know, and I've worked for people before who are not supportive of your right to disconnect. It's incredibly important that your boss is supportive of that. And also you have to be supportive of that in yourself as well. So, you know, no matter how much you're being given permission, if you aren't able to really kind of let go and be okay with the separation for a period of time, then it's going to be really, it's going to continue to be really, really difficult. So it's interesting because now, you know, my work sort of becomes trying to kind of coach our staff into figuring out how they can actually let go when they leave. So it doesn't feel like the stress that you're adopting by taking time away or taking the weekends off or taking, you know, a two week vacation is so huge that it totally negates the rest that you get from actually doing it. Makes total sense. What are you most proud of with your work at Syzygy? I would say, I would say our growth in two ways. You know, we started the company just under five years ago and now we work with 40 clients and we have 32 staff. And so just the. I think the scope of the growth is something that I'm really proud of and I Think, you know, it still feels very similar small to me. So when I talk to people and kind of tell them about what our trajectory has been and sort of see their eyes go a little like, whoa, that's, that's fast. That it's always nice to see that reflected back, I guess. But I would say more than anything else, and this is kind of going back to what I was saying before, that I really do see that the people who work at our company are, they grow professionally, they grow personally, they're in an environment that's safe. And I, I see how wonderful work becomes and, and you know, the work that people contribute becomes when they feel safe to be humans. And so that I think really is kind of like our secret sauce. Secret sauce. You have grown. That's, it's huge growth, first of all. So kudos to you. You're still solving problems for other people, correct? Yes, that is kind of my job still. Very much so, yeah. And then you're bringing on staff to train them how to solve problems and how to work with clients. Who's. Could you say who your largest client is? No, I can't. That privacy. NDA. But what I can say is that we work. So all of our clients pretty much work in, in the advertising industry. So commercial production is kind of the most common post production editorial, some advertising agencies. But our largest client Basically bill's about $50 million a year. So we've, we've got quite a spectrum in terms of size and you know, some of our clients came to us big already, some of them were fairly small and have grown. So it's a, it's a, it's a nice mix certainly. And kind of maturing alongside some of those companies has been a real treat. That's absolutely fantastic. And I mean that is straight there. You know, you talked about like the work when you're chatting with people and you're like what, who's it, who's it acting in it or who's the writer of it? Right. Like 50 million is a pretty solid number. Pretty impressive beer talk over the weekend with friends. So. And making them have to guess who that client is. Fantastic. One of the things I want to point out to our listeners is when you work hard and you do a good job, the word spreads and you get repeat customers and you get people who trust what you're doing and they see that growth. And I want people to also know referrals work. You know, it's not always the lucky break. Hard work is how you get the lucky break. And I think everything you've shared tonight really does show that you can have growth if you're willing to put in the time and work hard. And if you build it, they will come, especially if you build it properly. And I think all those ups and downs and that windy road that you talked about has led you to exactly where you need to be. I love when people share their stories and. And you could go back to working at the restaurant and waiting tables and taking care of people and making them feel good, too, when you're doing it with a company of $50 million and continuing to take care of them. So the lessons you learn early on can come full circle, and that's obviously happening for you. I have one last question, and then I'm going to turn it over to a few questions from our listeners. What's the biggest piece of advice you would give to a young Tyler with your journey, your career roadmap from the very first time to I want to be on the stage and auditioning to what you're doing now? Yeah, I would say don't be afraid to change the plan. You know, don't be afraid to kind of to take a left when you think you're going to keep going straight. Because to your point, I mean, when I. When I got kind of my first job out of college and it was only a couple months after graduating, one of the reasons that I was hired for that job is because of the experience that I had had and kind of the growth that I had shown in a career, you know, waiting tables and then kind of becoming a manager and then a service director. The fact that I had had this sort of lateral growth in a completely different industry was one of the draws that. That kind of got me my first, like, big kid job out of college. So I think, like, sometimes, right, the soft skills end up being really all that matters. If you're dealing with somebody who's not willing to train you on the hard skills, that person lacks imagination, you know, So I think allowing yourself to explore different things, understanding that, you know, a kind of survival job that you're doing during school or to make ends meet while you're interning, that can actually be something that's going to be a very, very powerful tool in your career growth on your sort of intended path. So, you know, say yes to everything. Opportunity is opportunity. I love that. Opportunity is opportunity. It's amazing. Bianca, go ahead. I see your hand up. Hi, Tyler. Hi. I'm good. How are you? I'm well. Thank you for asking. Thank you so Much, Professor Brett, for getting us connected. And I really like, for. I really like to work with you somehow, even though I'm not a television. I'm not in the TV business. That was my major. And one of the things that stood out to me during your. While you were talking was how you realized that your major wasn't for you and how you switched your major. That's something I regret that I'm not doing. And I realized too late because I took my. Like, I knew. I mean, I had. It was. It's a long story. And like, I see people have questions too, but I. I think my question is, like, how do you go. Like, we're not getting much older. I mean, we're not getting much younger. We're getting older and we're progressing. And how, like, Like, I'm like, like, how. How do you realize what you want to do in life? And like. And, like, like, did you. Like, I can talk to you about this. I could. I really need help because, like, I'm like, in the crossroads in my career. I know what I want to do. But, like, do I go back to school and, like, pursue something else? Because that's. That's where I'm at right now. And I'm like, think. Thinking about pursuing something. Like, that's not entertainment just to, like, make money. Because, like, I've explored radio, explored tv, I've explored acting. None of them got me anywhere. I have my BA in television production. That didn't get me anywhere. I was like, what do I do? Like, where do I go from here? Like, I graduated. Amazing. But, like, it's like, these are things like, I think about all the time, and then, like, I regret all. I think. I don't know. Do you have any advice? Yes, I do, actually. So one of the. One of the things that I would suggest you do is go back to every piece of work experience you've ever had. So that could be like, any job that you've ever done, any internship that you've ever done, and in education as well. Go look at. Go back and look at the classes that you took in college and try to make a list that is as essential as possible on where you felt those experiences really aligned for you. What were the moments that you felt, like, really kind of dialed in and engaged and interested and stimulated? And then what were the moments where you felt like, I cannot believe I have to go do this thing right now. I. I need to be doing something else. And once you have kind of that, you know, cumulative list and really try to be as essential as possible, you know. So, like, for me, you know, one of the things would be, like, when I was in college, writing a paper and finding a way to connect a play that I had read with a movie that I had seen, finding the kind of the creative connection between two things that seemed totally separate. That was something that, at its essence, like, really, really made me feel excited. Once you kind of get a collection of things in one place, start to almost chart out what those things have in common, and it's going to become more and more essential, more and more, like, thematic. And then, you know, I think you start to make decisions about where to look for work, whether to go back to school by getting yourself to a point where you're not so much caught up on the what, but it's more about the why. What's driving you to do the things that you've done before. And that'll give you a roadmap for what do you do now. Solid advice from Tyler. How many times have we talked about the why is so more important than the what and the who? The thing is that the people who are running the film industry and the TV industry are. They're in 1985. Yeah, exactly. Are and have always been out of touch. Right. There are always a few steps behind technology. There are a few steps behind young people. It's because they're of a different generation and they always have been. In the 80s, you know, when, when these guys were cutting edge, there was another ruling class. This is just the. The way that things cycle. What that does, Noah, to your point, is it creates opportunity, right? If you're independent, if you're young, if you understand how to use social media, if you understand where kids and young people are consuming content, it actually gives you a huge opportunity to get yourself seen, because the gatekeepers are keeping the wrong gate right now. Tyler, I want to thank you, first of all, for making time for us tonight. You are exceptional, very knowledgeable. I think you are in a great example of how you find your passion, how you could take different roads. Sometimes you got to veer left. Opportunity is opportunity. I will not forget that. But what you are saying is so right on. The one thing that really resonates with me is if you're a creative, continue to create. When the time is right, you will be ready for what comes next. Don't think about what studio's going to put this out, when are they going to contact me? Stay in your lane. Do you be creative? Noah brought up something that I really didn't think about. But I remember a time when cable got so expensive that we were like, I'm just throwing it out. I can't afford cable. And then these streaming things were like, oh, it's so affordable. I'll do this streaming. But you start adding up your Hulu and your Netflix and your Disney plus and, you know, your Paramount and your YouTube. You're exactly right where we were when we were complaining about not being able to afford things. So my point of the matter of where I'm going with this tangent is those that are free and things that are accessible to you, use them, get it out there. There is an audience who is dying for free stuff. And the more stuff you put out there. Again, I'm going to go back to Tyler because she's knowledgeable. It's a numbers game. So it's really about the. It's really about, sorry, you can put out. Oh, sorry, Right. I think you froze for a second. It's really about the democratization of content. Right. So we now live in a world where content is no longer seen solely as a corporate asset. Right. It's now something that you can own. And that means. And there are many, many channels where you can publish it. That means that creatives are more empowered than they ever have been before. Right. So be bold. I love that. I hope you all leave here inspired. I'm inspired. And you're hearing it from someone who is making moves and understands how to make the moves. So on that note, again, Tyler, thank you so much for joining us tonight. You have been an excellent guest speaker. Everyone, have a wonderful rest of your evening. Thank you for joining us on Breaking the Biz![Host] - As we conclude another enriching episode. We hope you've found inspiration in the stories shared today. Let's take a moment to honor Yes I Can's role in bringing Breaking the Biz to life. Yes I Can's commitment to empowering young people with disabilities through education, advocacy, and mentorship shines brightly, paving paths of opportunity and dialogue. This podcast celebrates the organization's dedication to nurturing talent and facilitating impactful discussions. Breaking the Biz is more than a podcast. It's a part of Yes, I Can's broader mission to amplify voices, dismantle barriers, and craft a world that's more inclusive and accessible for everyone. Each episode is a chapter in our shared narrative of progress, education, and empowerment, driven by the spirit of Yes, I Can. Thank you for spending your time with us on Breaking the Bizarre. Continue to challenge the status quo and share stories that resonate until our paths cross again. Let's keep transforming aspirations into achievements and infuse every endeavor with optimism. Here's to advancing the landscape of the entertainment industry one episode at a time. I'm your host, William Felber. See you next time.