Welcome to the first episode of the Focus Puller At Work Podcast, Shifting Focus.
Today I'm happy to talk to Jason Knoll. He's a first AC from Los Angeles, and he's also the founder of Make Your Cart Go (https://makeyourcartgo.com or IG: @makeyourcartgo) , which are electronic wheel kits for any cart, which you can find on set.
FPAW: Welcome Jason.
Jason: Thank you for having me. I'm happy to be here.
FPAW: Maybe you start by introducing yourself
Jason: Yeah, so my name is Jason Knoll. I'm currently located in Los Angeles, California, and I work as a first AC, mostly on commercials, but I do a little bit of everything.
My career started when I was living in Seattle, Washington, attending the Art Institute of Seattle for Video Production. One of my teachers, Glenn Shelton, was an independent filmmaker, and we hit it off as friends, and I started working on her set. With a fantastic crew, with the DP, Ben Kosolke and Gafford, Jeremy Mackie.
Jeremy later became my business partner and co founder on Make Your Cart Go. So we've been working together for well over a decade, before doing this wheel business. I got my start with just working on independent films, as a camera assistant and working my way up and the jobs just kept growing.
And soon it turned into my full-time profession as the first AC. About Five years ago, I relocated from Seattle to Los Angeles as the types of jobs I was doing up in Seattle were starting to get smaller.
It was mostly corporate industrial work. And I really wanted to get back to working on scripted content. And I started working on a TV show that shot exteriors in Seattle called Grey's Anatomy. And then I started flying down working on their Double Up Days here in L.A. Every time I flew to Los Angeles, I grew to like it more.
I realized that a lot of friends and community were already down here. And so it just made sense that if I wanted to continue to work in the industry on jobs that were not, internal corporate stuff that this is the move I'd have to make. And, you know, after being here for five years, the only thing I would have done differently was probably made the move sooner.
FPAW: So you are also the founder of Make Your Cart Go. When did you start the company?
Jason: The company is a little over two years old. It started during the pandemic.
The summer of 2020 and there was no work happening in Los Angeles at the time and summers in Seattle were the best. And so I decided to drive my vintage camper van back up to Seattle, just for a week-long visit. And. My camper van engine went out and I was stuck in Seattle and what turned out to be a one week trip ended up being a three month trip.
During this time, work was just starting to come back from the pandemic and there was a little bit of work happening in Seattle, and I was bike commuting. Because my van didn't work I was riding my bicycle to and from set every day. It started to become the rainy season and my friend that I was staying with had an e-bike at that time and he was like you don't have to be riding in the rain and be hardcore, you know, jump on the e-bike as they're a little bit quicker and maybe you'll be dry when you get to work.
You know, I was reluctant and one day I finally was like fine, I'll try the e-bike and I had a great time riding the e-bike to set and as soon as I got to work I pulled my cart off the truck and started pushing it up this long driveway by myself. In Seattle, you know, I'm lucky if I ever get a second AC, it's a one person camera department.
So I'm really working hard to get my cart to work. And I thought, you know, why don't we have this e-bike technology on camera carts? It made so much sense. So I spent a couple of weeks Googling it, trying to purchase this product and looking for it on the market, and I was blown away that I had no luck.
There was nobody selling anything like this. My friend that I was staying with, is an entrepreneur. I came back and I told him about the idea of like, you know, the e-bike was great. I just wish I had it on my camera cart. And he was surprised as well to hear that it didn't exist and said, you know, if you want it, other people probably want it too.
You should look into making this.
So I thought about it for a long time and I was looking at all these carts on the set that I was working on, like heavy lighting carts with one person pushing it, and it was just like: The technology is here just needs to be applied in this specific way.
The idea really stuck with me and consumed my thoughts for a long time. And I came back to Los Angeles after I got my engine working in my van. And I was hanging out with my best buddy, Jeremy Mackey, who was the gaffer on all the independent films I grew up working on. And I told him about the idea and he just said: Let's make it happen.
So I found what I thought was going to be, the right parts to make this prototype. A month went by and I finally received the parts and I was super excited. And it was nothing what I was expecting. All the parts were completely wrong. But we used those parts to make our proof of concept prototype.
We put it together in a day. It slaps it on my cart and it was really ugly, but it worked, it moved the cart, it moved the cart with weight, and from there, both Jeremy and I were super inspired, to really make this thing go.
FPAW:
That's nice. So did you have the idea first and then you decided to found the company, or was there always some kind of entrepreneur sleeping inside you?
Jason: I think there is something I was lurking in the back of my head thinking about how to be a business person or an entrepreneur or how I can get a little bit of a side hustle or make a little bit of money. But I think, the biggest part of it is that I've always been a tinkerer. I've always found ways to make things better, whether it's like making a small plate that can hold MBR that I can put on the camera in a different way for a specific purpose.
A lot of great inventions in the film industry came from people working on set and had a need. And I think this is a good example of that. But I never sat there thinking like, what business could I do or what could I make that could make me a bunch of money? I don't think that was ever something that I think about or thought about at that point, or even still think about this to this day.
I just thought that If I have a need for a specific solution, other people probably have this need as well. Let`s see if we can make.
FPAW: Like being your first customer?
Jason: Yeah, exactly. I'm my first customer. And tester for everything, the guinea pig.
FPAW: How was the process from the engineering side. Did you do all by yourself or did you get help from others or outsource anything?
Jason:
The engineering process for Make your Cart Go as a business is a little scrappy and it's kind of like how I've done everything in my life, which is: figure it out.
You work, find a solution one way or another, and tap into my network of people and my resources. So I knew that there was going to be a lot of electronics involved and I don't know how to solder. I've tried and it just doesn't work. And I'm lucky that my business partner Jeremy got a knack for electronics and can really understand.
The flow of that and how to make the electronic side work. And I've been a little bit of a mechanical mind of how to make the mechanical pieces work. Together we're a fantastic team. But I don't know how to use CAD software. I don't know how to do metal manufacturing. I didn't know how to do any of that.
So I was very lucky, my father is a CNC machinist and he followed me out to California and for my entire time i've been a first AC I would draw him a picture and send to him.
And he's like, “if you can draw it I can make it”.
And one of the biggest things that we were running up a wall against are beating our heads against the wall is making the fork.
The metal part that holds the motorized wheel that attaches to the cart. We knew that, it had to be done, right.
So I used a captain to my father as a resource and said, Hey, we need a way to hold this wheel at the proper height that can go on to backstage cart on to Jaeger carts, on the Jaeger pro carts. And those are the main focus at the time because that's what most camera assistants that I would be selling to are working with.
So I drew up some drawings and sent it to him. He looked at it, fabricated something in his machine shop that he was working at, mailed it back to Los Angeles. There's no way that I would have been able to do anything without having that resource.
I learned a lot about which materials to use that works best for that. And as far as the throttle goes, the controller, I didn't want to get something off the shelf for that, because I wanted the whole complete system to look and feel like something that belongs on your cart on a film set.
And if I just buy a e bike throttle off of Amazon, it's not going to attach to your cart in a good way, it's not going to look right, and it's just not going to behave in a way that I expected the cart to behave when you press the throttle. So I did a lot of shopping and found the right components that I wanted to use for the physical components, and then to make it a complete thing, I had a friend who worked at, Google for many years as kind of a product developer and he had a 3d printer. And he's like “Yeah, I could make you something that, that can check all these boxes”.
So the first couple, they looked kind of the same, but didn't function quite right.
There's a lot of trial and error with that as well.
Everything along the way is trial and error. Make something – Okay - It kind of works - How can we adapt?
It's a slow process. I'm sure there's other people out there that have a more streamlined system, but I just learned along the way.
FPAW: I can remember you showed me the both, the first version and the current version at Cinegear and you can really see the evolution. It's nice to see products growing, from the first idea to prototypes to the ready to go product.
Jason:
I think what you're referring to is what I showed you is our version two of our kit that we haven't quite announced or released yet. We're really excited. I'm happy to talk about it.
I'm actually very excited to talk about it because it is, it's pretty much the same kit. It functions exactly the same, but every piece. is more refined and It still has the roots to their original version one of my kit.
If you're familiar with my version one, you can see where the growth came from.
Being able to show a more refined, more, dialed in version coming soon.
FPAW:
And you're also using two different kind of motors with the latest version?
Jason:
Version one, I was using, 48 volt batteries for what we call the location line kit. And on version two, we decided to go with 52 volt batteries just to give people a little bit more power or punch or acceleration off the line. And then it has a little bit better cold weather performance. So yeah, that's, that's something that's going to be coming soon on the version two kits.
FPAW: So in the whole process, what where the biggest challenges you had to face? Was it for example finding the right suppliers? Because I guess you're relying a lot on off the shelf products, as we are in kind of a niche market and you can't go to a manufacturer and say, okay I want to have 100 pieces of this product, but normally They make patches in the tens of thousands?
Jason: Exactly, in the first versions we had a lot of roadblocks, and I would say every step of the way was a roadblock or a challenge, but to give some examples, ordering parts from suppliers, we're doing really low run orders.
When I first started out, my first year I had anticipated selling 10 units. So I ordered in quantities of 10. And those first 10 went as soon as I made them, and the word got out pretty quick. And then 10 more people wanted it. I was kind of taking pre-orders, and my vendors that I was getting a lot of my parts from, they don't want to sell 10 pieces.
So I was doing orders of 50, which even at that point was a huge challenge to get them to agree to. They want to sell switches or limo connectors or any connectors that we're using. They wanted to sell them to us in the thousands. And not only could we not afford that, but we were also working in my 100 square foot garage.
That was also filled with bicycles and surfboards and all my other outdoor recreational activities that even if we could afford to order like a thousand wheels, I don't think that I could sell that many nor would I have any place to put them. So yeah, dealing with suppliers has been a challenge that I'm learning to adapt with.
But also some of the early problems was working out of that 100 square foot garage. The entire business is Jeremy and myself. Everything that gets done, gets done between the two of us. And if it's raining outside, You know, we're in the garage back to back. He's soldering and I'm drilling holes on my drill press.
Doing assembly, there just wasn't enough. And then, once we completed the kit, we didn't have anywhere to put it in the completely filled garage. So we were selling them as fast as we could make them, which was good because if we made them faster than that, I wouldn't have anywhere to put them.
It's still a big hurdle today as far as like getting parts at a reasonable price in a small run, but then also getting suppliers to deliver when they say they do.
I have been lucky enough to work in the film industry for over a decade where if it's written on a piece of paper on the script, when it comes to shoot day, it's there.It's ready.
There's nobody saying like, “Oh, I couldn't, sorry. I know we're supposed to shoot it.”
My vendors don`t care about my deadline. I can say “Hey, I need this by this date.” And they will be like “Oh yeah, no problem”, and it'll be two weeks past Monday. And they're like “Yeah, we're still working on getting it to you.”
And that's a huge surprise to me, because I'm just used to working in a field that like things happen a little bit more efficiently or like swiftly, perhaps .
For example we were working on our version two and we just went to, NAB this past year and we didn't have a booth, but we were really excited to go because we had a partnership with Inovative. Inovative was showcasing their motorized Apollo cart with all of our components in it.
We had prototyped it. We knew the version two worked. We had everything except for our connectors that go to the throttle, to the control box. That's the one piece we were waiting on. And we were supposed to get it two weeks before, NAB, which is plenty of time. However, the night before we were supposed to deliver Inovative and we still didn't have these connectors. So I had to call up the connector company and say “Hey, you know, we're supposed to deliver so we can go to NAB, this huge event, for our company and for our industry. And the only thing we don't have is your connectors because you were supposed to get them to us two weeks ago, and I don't know what to do.”
And they're just like, “Yep, we'll get them to you when we'll get them to you.”
And we got it at the very final countdown, the very last minute possible for us to deliver.
That was a huge stressor for both Jeremy and I.
FPAW:
That`s aweful, but I can assure, almost every company has been there. Like big show is coming up, NAB or IBC and they have this prototype they want to show and they're working nonstop the weeks before, and it's getting ready the night before the show starts. It's really fresh out of the oven most of the time.
Maybe it's these events, what we need, or the industry needs to really get the products finished because otherwise they wouldn't finish it ever. But everything comes together, even if it's in the last second.
Jason: Yeah, so I don't think that we're alone in that, but it was definitely our first time running into that, and it sure was exciting.
FPAW: Speaking of trade shows: you've also been to the Cinegear 2022 and you told me, that that was a key milestone for your company. May you can share, what was so special about this?
Jason: So Cinegear 2022 was a huge milestone for me because we had only launched and announced the company a couple of months before. And we did that just through social media.
We didn't do any sort of publicity. We just started making some Instagram posts showcasing our motorized wheels and we knew Cinegear was coming up and I wanted people to be aware of us.
So we made the decision to go to Cinegear in 2022 and we were still a brand new company and we had our products pretty dialed in and I was feeling really confident and excited to go.
And for me, it was a huge milestone, as I saw so many people coming to our booth and trying out the cart. Pressing the throttle and see how easily they moved. And every single person's face lit up huge smiles. After test driving these carts, they would come up to me and tell me stories of like, “if I had these motorized wheels on this job”, “when I was working on the movie ranch”, “my life would have been so much better”. “I would have been able to focus on being a technician and not being sweaty, moving my cart, being tired” “This is what I push every day”, “this is why I got a bad back” and “if we had this like my career would be extended”.
So it was really rewarding for me to see how many people were excited about this and the way that they thought to apply this product and the way that it would make their lives better. For me, that made Project of Make Your Cart Go, feel like this is something really important to keep pushing forward on and try to keep making it better, try to make it more affordable for people, because I think that a lot of people want this. And a lot of people have told me that they had the same idea 10 years ago or five years ago, or they thought about this all the time and it's nice to see it out there. So it's really exciting for me to be able to share that experience with strangers.
One of the first working prototypes
FPAW: Let`s talk about the sales side, because there are always two sides for a successful product
The first one is to make it, the other one is to sell it.
Through which channels are you selling the products right now? Is it exclusive on makeyourcartgo.com ?
Jason: I think that's a great question. Right now, we are doing, direct to consumer sales off the website alone. We don't have any, retailers or distributors selling our product at the moment.
And it's kind of a two fold thing. The first reason for it is especially in the beginning, a lot of the sales came through word of mouth. You know, we only have an Instagram, a website and other people talking about our product. But second is, I'm not a business person. I don't know a lot of like business savvy things.
There's a lot for me to learn in the business side of things. And with our version one, we just don't have a thick enough margin to cut in retailers and distributors, cause our margins are so thin, we're just keeping the lights on and getting enough money to order another round, while learning on how to get our margins a little bit better.
So for version one we had only direct to consumer sales. We've learned from that and hopefully our version two, we have a little bit more room to get it to retailers and distributors, so we can expand our sales network.
But doing directed consumer sales is fantastic. You know, who you're selling to. The customer can ask questions or even come into the shop and see stuff in person. But it's a pretty narrow, sales window and it would be really nice to be able to broaden that and maybe get the product out to more people that aren't on Instagram, aren't on social media. So that's something that we aspire to do. And I'm, I'm learning how to walk that tightrope.
FPAW: I can imagine there are a lot of other things to learn as well, like running a company, stock keeping, working with suppliers and manufacturers?
Jason: Yeah. There's so much, it's a never ending learning opportunities with running a business.
It's still a two person operation. It's just Jeremy and I, and so everything that needs to get done gets done by one of us or both of us at once. And do have some hired help for some soldering.
I have had to learn how to be a web developer.
Jeremy and I do all of our own product photography ourselves, which is great with our background in film and commercial work. But then we have to edit that, and then we have to, get it to the web. And so, learning how to be a marketer, a web developer, a graphic designer, handling the accounting is like something that just spreadsheets. There is a lot more to learn.
And there's a lot more responsibilities than I had anticipated. I am happy for the challenge, but sometimes it is pretty overwhelming. There's a lot around keeping stock and inventory, like you said, okay, we're running low on this, let's order more. Also how to get the cash flow to order that and once we get it, where do we put it?
How do we organize it? It's just building blocks and they kind of stack on top of each other. What I didn't know at the beginning, I do know now, like learning things about like profit margins and what margins are acceptable or what kind of margins retailers would want. Maybe I'm naive and I should have known before starting a business. I just thought more about the product and the product development and getting this in the hands of people, making their data on set better. I was kind of blind to all these other business things in the beginning that I'm kind of playing catch up on to.
FPAW: So you didn't have a business plan or did you make a business plan? I mean, business plan can be. Can be one page or can be 50 pages.
Jason: I did come up with a business plan. I did get some really good help from a dear friend of mine who I was staying with in Seattle. He has started many businesses and he was a huge asset in the beginning. I had a product but now what do I do and he's like, well, you got to create a business plan. You have to create a website. You have to register your business.
He really helped me out through all of that. I think you got to have a business plan if it's going to be a business, because even though Jeremy and I are a two person team and we've worked together, for years, there's still, some some communication which can be lost in translation, and having something written down in paper is easier. Like, this is what our goal is, this is what we're moving forward on.
So a business plan was absolutely essential, whether we're sticking true to that business plan now, but I don't think business plans need to be like set in stone. I think it's just like kind of a loose map on how to get it going. And I think that's good if you're going to have a partnership to get that at least the first steps in writing to make sure that we're moving in the same direction.
FPAW: Absolutely. I also think a business plan is good to kind of visualize the things which you need to do, but it's not something which never changes. It can change like every day or any day.
Jason: Yeah, absolutely.
FPAW: Where there any big challenges or failures, which, if you could turn back the time, you would do differently?
Jason: I'm sure there are plenty. For example, when you start the first prototype. But that's, that's kind of a different thing because it's an evolution of the product. But honestly I don't think that there is. I've always been a hands on person. I want to figure out things for myself. Failures, small or big aren't fun, but you need to learn from them. Like: That didn't work? What can we do to adapt?
So I don't think I would have much to say besides prepare to no longer have any free time.
FPAW: You are still working as a first AC, which pays the rent or pays for the living, I guess. How is the ratio between working on set and working on the company?
Jason: It's a, it's an ebb and flow, because being a first AC is a freelance career. And well, this year specifically with the strikes, and also previously when we were starting out during the pandemic, there wasn`t a lot of work. And so I have a lot of time to work on the business and do product development.
Jeremy is also a working director of photography, and I'm a working first AC. So it ebb and flows depending on how busy we are on set. Thankfully, we haven't been super busy at the same time, but we both have taken long jobs. Last year I went to Europe for three months on a job and Jeremy ran the business and Jeremy took a job for like a five week movie out of town and I took it over.
But it is turning into more than a full time job. Luckily one of us can kind of steer the ship while the other one's out. I have always wanted it to be the side hustle where being a first AC is my priority. And unless something drastically shifts and Make Your Cart go will become that successful and I'm selling so many kits that I don't have time to go to set, which I hope is not the case, I love working on set.
When I get called for jobs, I jump on those jobs, but, just because I'm on set, the business is still going, I'm still getting messages, and questions and orders, and things to manage. So, yeah, it's like having two full time jobs.
FPAW: And it's welcome to the world of a lot of people who are starting their own business. I mean, it's good because often the best way to start a business is, when you have a current job, either it's freelancer, or if you do anything else, because starting a business the first three to four years, you won't see any money coming out of the business.
Jason: Exactly. Yeah, we're two and a half years in and I haven't taken a paycheck or a cut from the business yet. The first couple of years in the business, any available cash that we have, we put it right back into the business so we can be ordering more parts, making sure we have inventory on hand when sales come in.
And the first couple of years that, I hear it's real tough and it has been tough financially, but, I think it'll be worth it in the long run.
FPAW: I think so. Absolutely. One question regarding the shipping and orders: Are you taking orders worldwide? So you do ship worldwide?
Because I can imagine they ship with batteries and shipping batteries can be quite challenging sometimes.
Jason: Yeah, we do worldwide sales, take worldwide orders from our website and we are learning - never ending learning curve. We are learning how to ship lithium e-bike batteries to different countries and every country kind of has its own parameters.
Jeremy took a class from UPS on shipping batteries. So he learned a lot about what we can and can't do as far as shipping, but also it's dependent on the country that it's going to as well. But yeah, shipping batteries can be very challenging.
FPAW: Because the industry or the work you do is it's so diverse and every situation, every day is different. So there are a lot of people in our industry who come up with solutions for their problems they currently have, because the solution doesn't exist yet. And as you said, if you like the product or you need the product, probably someone else, would too.
And that`s why you can see a I see a lot of people coming from set like, Ratworks or, Laird, from Focus Bug. They've all been working on set and then finally they switched a hundred percent to, to the industry.
Anything you would like to share or any advise from your experience to give them as a push to jump the rope and start a business?
Jason: I think that working on set and working as a film technician can bring great innovation. I think that a lot of skilled technicians that I've met in the field have fantastic ideas and, you know, if somebody has an idea, they may feel strongly about it.
Put it on paper, tell everybody you know about. Make a prototype, put it out to you, see if it works, because you never know, like I said, I had this idea, I really wanted this, there's probably other people that want it too. If you have an idea and you think it's going to make your life on set better, it's going to make, a small part of your job easier.
Take it slowly in the beginning, like don't dump your life savings into trying to make a business. Start small, make a prototype or make a drawing and make a 3D printed prototype and put it into use. Make some for your friends, hand it out if it's small or whatever and see what they think, get feedback on it.
Take baby steps. But if you, if you have something that you really think is a great idea, follow through with it at least a little bit, because you never know where it's going to go. Make Your Cart Go is just an idea that I talked about until somebody else was like, that's great, let's do it.
Somebody out there might have an idea just like that. That could be the next, who knows what, the next innovative, fantastic film product. Just sitting in somebody's head on set right now. And I for one would love to see it, whatever it is.
FPAW: How long, was the process from when you had the first idea, to make the decision to start it and to have the first prototype and first sale?
Jason: It was six months from the idea of conception to ordering the parts for the first prototype. And then it was a year of prototyping, getting the right parts.
All these parts look the same on the internet. Like there's a hundred wheels that look just like mine I've discovered, on the internet, but I've learned that not all of them function the exact same way, or not all controllers are the same.
So yeah, I would say a year and a half from conception to having a product to sell. Six months of from idea, conception of idea to working prototype. And then from there, after we had a working prototype, it was about a year of R& D and assembly. And it seems like a long time when I say a year and a half, but in fact it was a pretty quick turnaround of coming up with something that, I didn't have the pieces for shipping a product.
But, We weren't working on set at the time, so we had a lot of available time to focus towards doing this. I think if we were working a lot, we probably wouldn't have even pursued it.
FPAW: I do have one last question for you. I think at the moment you're seeing yourself mainly as a first AC and Make Your Cart Go is still kind of a side business.
Where would you see yourself in 5 or 10 years from now?
Jason: That's a great question that I get all the time. I think I really love working on set and so I hope to never not be working on film sets.
But as far as the progression and growth of the company is, , in the next five years, we really want to grow this and to be the best possible product that we can make, while getting our costs down so it's accessible to everybody that wants it, as well as getting it to lighting carts, grip carts, craft service carts, anything that has wheels on set. Hopefully people shouldn't be pushing their carts anymore in the next, you know, who knows 10 years, whether that's my product or somebody else's, That is kind of what we envisioned.
But also when we started this business, I was told by somebody that has started and ran and sold multiple businesses, that at the beginning, at the stage of the business plan, come up with an exit strategy. And Jeremy and I said, you know, let's do our best possible job to make the best possible product. And let`s try to get out of the business in five years. So we're really hoping that we build a brand that's recognizable product that's in demand that a larger company that can really take what we've started and really run with it, refine it and hopefully they purchase it and maybe we consult for a little while. But Jeremy and I both have plenty of other ideas and interests and projects that we would love to get off the ground.
This might just be the first of many. And we're still going to give it our 100 percent attention. But yeah, that's the goal in five years. Hopefully we'll be making a sale. Whether that's realistic or not.
FPAW: I think that was a very interesting Answer to it. It is a good advice to have an exit strategy.
Jason: You know as much fun as this has been, I can't do it forever. I gotta do other stuff. That's why I work at freelance careers. I need to continue to moving forward and seeing and doing other things.
FPAW: I think that is a good time to wrap up this episode. So thank you again. I wish you all the best for the launch of the next version. I'm sure a lot of people will love it and hopefully no one will need to push the carts by themselves anymore. This is really something, every cart in the industry should have, so well don!
Jason: I'm hoping so. Thank you. Thanks for having me. This was a great first interview and I'm glad to be a part of it. Thank you.