Brayden Figueroa: Quitting His Dream Job To Begin His Dream Company

Brayden Figueroa is the definition of betting on yourself.For five years, he worked as a video producer for the LA Lakers. Then one day, he woke up, quit his job with one of the biggest sports franchises in the world, and decided to chase his dream of starting his own business.As a Barca protege at the University of Oregon, Brayden didn’t have the best video equipment, but he still made some dope shit. And more importantly—he gave a shit. He’s always had that “it” factor. He was a leader among his peers, always learning, collaborating and pushing to get better.Fast forward to today—he’s the host of The 505 Podcast, a hub spotlighting some of the best creators and marketing minds in the world, while helping others learn and grow. Recent guests include industry titans like Gary Vee and Seth Godin.The 505 Podcast is closing in on 200 episodes, with more than 20,000 YouTube subs, 80,000 followers on IG, and 1.2 million likes on TikTok. He’s also the co-founder of Blue Stripe Studios, a full-service creative production company making stories built for mobile.What separates B Figgy from the rest is his generous advice and stories of the mistakes that he has made on his business journey. That this whole thing is more than just being creative with a camera.In this episode, you’ll find out that the time is ripe for creatives to reshape and reinvent how we think about communicating in the digital space. He’ll talk about the beginning of his business journey (6:11), how and why he quit the Lakers (8:19), how being on-the-go early in his career set him up for success with his own company (15:17), how he handled hitting his ceiling in a job (17:42), how sports creatives and workers can toot their own horn more (19:19), did he ever think about what he was worth as a freelancer when he was working for someone else (24:18), how he develops pricing plans for projects (29:29), how he makes money and adds value for clients (35:22), what he thinks about AI in the creative space (40:09), why he thinks sports teams are stuck in their same-old ways when it comes to digital media (45:07), two pieces of advice for people who want to go out on their own (47:35), and how he arranged and secured a podcast with industry leader Gary Vee (50:18). You can connect with Brayden on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/bfiggy/ and on TikTok at https://www.tiktok.com/bfiggy/.This episode was produced and written by Brandon Barca and Andy Boggs.Find us on all of the socials at NLCPod.YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@NLCPodX: https://x.com/nlcpodLinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/company/nlcpodInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/nlcpodTikTok: ⁠https://www.tiktok.com/@nlcpod