“If you never try, then you’ll always wonder,” says Jayson Whitmore, executive creative director and founder of We Are Royale. In 2007, at 27 years old, Whitmore founded the company that has called brands such as Nike, Amazon Prime and Toyota—among many others—as clients. Today, We Are Royale has offices in both Los Angeles and Seattle.

With 19 years experience, Whitmore knows a thing or two about longevity in entertainment marketing and promotion. Not just that, he knows how to explore his own talent and opportunities, pivot when needed and have fun at the same time.

Daily Brief sat down with Whitmore to hear his story in his own words. He talks everything from his early days of wanting to be a musician, rejection and launching his own creative studio.

Daily Brief: What made you believe, in 2007, that founding a company was the best decision?

Leading up to that point, I had been in the industry for just about seven years. At one point, I honestly never thought I would start a company. I never thought I’d become a freelancer either, which I had done earlier in my career. When you meet the right people, something inside of you just clicks. It just makes sense to want to take all of the knowledge and experience that you’ve experienced from various different studios and clients and, with the right business partners, make a new studio that is your own vision.

I met [Managing Director] Jen [Lucero] and [Executive Creative Director] Brien [Holman] when we were all working together on a project for Apple. At the end of this project, we were all still really good friends, which was a good sign because I thought it was a pretty brutal project. We were still laughing and having fun and I thought it was a good time to approach the two of them to say “Would you want to go out on a limb with me and start a company?” And they said yes.

That was a great culmination of events that all came together. It seems to have been perfect timing.

Just listen to your gut. Your gut is correct. Running a business is really difficult and you really have to have an incredible relationship. It’s like getting married. You want to make sure that you really love the person or people that you’re getting married too. With Jen and Brien, I absolutely adore them and I knew we could get through anything together. This is based on our work ethic and who we are as human beings and the shared vision of what we wanted the studio to be. Entering into something like starting a studio is real scary, and you never know if it’s going to work. But if you never try then you’ll always wonder.

Right. At this point, you’ve worked with everyone, top-tier companies people would dream of working with such as Amazon, Nike, Starbucks, Toyota, the credits list goes on and on. But before this, there was a point where you thought you were going to be a musician. How’d you go from that dream into entertainment marketing?

Part of what’s incredible about the journey we’re all on is that it can change. I was super into so many things music that I thought for sure my destiny was going to be something inside of music. But that all changed because I decided to go to a more industry-focused college versus Berklee School of Music where I was accepted to.

I was drawn to a school in Winter Park, Florida, called Full Sail that was all about the entertainment business. At the time, when I was 17 years old, I thought I would go there and learn how to produce my own music. It just made sense for me to understand the behind the scenes and how to formulate and navigate my way through this crazy music industry because I had no idea where to even begin. But through that transformation, while in college, I wrapped my first degree in recording engineering fairly quickly. At that point, I was almost eighteen years old and I still had two more degrees to go. I ended up going to film and video, and learned so much about directing, writing and the nuances of telling a story visually.

Then, I went into digital media which took all of my love and passion and then pulled it all into the computer where I could express myself visually. That’s when the music really complimented the art form that I was creating through motion.

I’ll be brutally honest. When I came out to Los Angeles, and after my degree at Full Sail, I never thought of myself as ever becoming an animator. I remember taking a class in After Effects, and I was like “No way will I ever use this program. It’s horrific.” And because you’ve got to eat, and there was a place that was open and needed an After Effects artist, that was exactly what I did. My plan was to just become really good at that. Just master that, become known for it and then branch out into doing something else. But at that point, I just needed to be good at something so that I was hireable.

At what point did mentors help you to figure out where your niche was? You have three degrees, and worked on all of this, how did you make sense of that? Was it the help of a mentor or even somebody like Nell Thompson?

I think what Nell (his advisor at Full Sail) did was inspired me to be confident and to really know who I am, and to have a voice and to believe in myself and what I wanted to do. Her support and love was wherever I wanted to focus my energy on that I could do it, and I could do it great.

It was through, coincidentally, the marketing of the school, that I actually fell in love with marketing. I thought it was so inspiring. I would sit down to a seminar at the school, it would be so beautifully branded and so well presented to the point where it just made you feel so connected to this university that you were belonging to.

There was this one guy who’s still there to this day, doing all the marketing, Craig Daly. I remember going into Platinum Creative, which is Full Sail’s internal marketing team, and I sat down next to Craig and I was watching him cook up one of those amazing pieces. He was on a website called Design and Motion, which was a long time ago, and he was the one who turned me on to there was this whole business I had no idea existed, which was entertainment marketing and advertising. I only knew that big movies or record companies existed. But I didn’t realize there was a place for people like me who have ADD, who can’t sit on a movie for like three years that needs to just do a 30-second spot in a couple months and be done with it and move on.

You graduated at 19, and moved to L.A. A bunch of people you graduated with didn’t move to L.A. What did you know that maybe other people didn’t?

I think it was because I didn’t know. If I had known what the risks were, I probably would’ve second-guessed it. I was just in this naive bubble. I have to credit myself, though. I did have a plan, it was just instinctual.

What was interesting about that plan is that when I finally came out here in my ’87 Dodge Caravan that was falling apart, and had no money in my pocket, and went on my first interview with a company I really wanted to work for, I walked in there and played my fifteen-minute reel. I didn’t know anything about making reels, but I held it high and proud and I put it in that VHS player. And they laughed at me. I’ll never forget; the owner of that company called me into his office and said that I didn’t have what it took and I should consider going back to school, that I wasn’t going to make it. That was my first interview. Imagine, 20 years old, in Los Angeles, living out of your ’87 Dodge Caravan, no money, being told that you suck, you’re not going to make it, you’re not cool enough for us.

I remember feeling slightly defeated when I walked out. But then I thought ‘You know what? I’m not going back. I just spent three years in school. I was valedictorian of two of the classes. I have some drive, I’m going to be able to talk myself into a job somewhere.’ So I went to the second company, and that’s exactly what I did. I talked myself into a job. I made no money and just did everything with a smile, as helpful as I could be with the best attitude and that’s what it took. That’s what ended up launching my career.

It’s amazing how certain things become drivers for us. It seems as if in our story, there’s always that one moment that happens where someone’s like “You don’t have a chance.” You seem to me like someone who’s so driven that it’s got to happen.

We have to be. Or somebody else is going to take it.

In one of your first interviews, you walked in with that fifteen-minute reel. Now, you run your own company, you get to see it from the other side in terms of hiring talent. One time, you talked about not looking at resumes. If you don’t look at a resume, how can they get across their expertise to you?

I just want to see who they are. What makes them tick? What’s interesting? The number-one question that every student has ever asked me is “What is it that you want to see?”

If I see a reel with a bunch of half-baked, half thought-out ideas of what they think I want to see, I definitely need to see a next level, which is to actually meet them in person. But when they show me this little animation that they did on the side that was from their heart, and something that inspired them, that’s the golden nugget. That’s the nugget that I want to see. Because then I’m like, ‘that’s you.’ That’s you in your form. You love paper craft, and you did this beautiful piece on paper craft. Wow, that’s amazing. What else could you do?’ It just shows me the thought process of actually thinking something through, and it’s not about showing me that you can animate.

Unless you want to be an animator, and you want to show off that technical craft. That’s amazing, but I always love creative people who use their minds. Ultimately, my philosophy in the studio is that when I hire you, I hire you not to be my button pusher or my minion or somebody that I need to micro-manage. I hire you because you have a brain that is interesting, and something that I want to be surprised to see what your brain puts on the canvas when I come back down and see how you think about it, and how it inspires you from the inside.

One last question. What is something that people breaking in, looking for their next career opportunity, trying to improve, what’s the one thing that they can do right now?

Just make stuff. What I’ve found most interesting and the thing I struggled with when I was younger is I didn’t feel like I had enough life experience. Life experience meaning – enough pain, or happiness, or input, to really inform my work. As you grow older, and you have more experiences, your heart’s broken one too many times. Or you go through a death in the family, all of these things that are very much an influence of how you feel and how you approach creative. The most important thing is to keep your eyes open, experience as much as possible, go to the museum, travel, record it all in your head because at some point, it’s going to become important and useful.

Kareem Taylor is a voiceover actor, published author and speaker. As a voiceover actor, his clients have included ESPN, CNN, Toyota and AT&T, to name a few. The Atlanta Journal &Constitution named Kareem “one of the youngest and most successful voiceover actors.” He is based in Los Angeles. <

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