We had the good fortune of connecting with Jack Kelley and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Jack, we’d love to hear more about how you thought about starting your own business?
Ever since college, the most appealing career imaginable was being a writer. That didn’t seem like a reasonable option off the bat for repaying student loans. Through a convoluted series of events, I wound up working in commercial real estate in NYC soon after finishing undergrad at Yale. Time passes. Upon leaving Wall St. in 2014 and moving to LA to pursue my writing dreams, it rapidly became apparent that freelance script writing and pitching producers was a fast track to nowhere.

Around this time, I met the actor John Ruby, brother of a college classmate. Rapidly fueling one another’s ambitions from small to large, we decide to start our own production company, take control of the means of making films, raise capital, and write a really fun puzzle-based mystery film that would be family-friendly and harken back to the simpler times of the Hardy Boys, etc. Choosing that path resulted in an incredibly steep learning curve for both of us. It was one of the hardest things we ever attempted. We ran over budget, and encountered innumerable challenges along the way. However, the result was that we achieved international distribution on our first feature, and actually earned money, rather than sinking capital into a film school, where we might not have learned half of what we did.

What should our readers know about your business?
It’s usually said that to fully succeed at one aspect of business or life, you need to drop other things. I haven’t found that to be true. While earlier in life, devotion to what’s in front of you is critical to develop skills and abilities that will serve you in the future, you can also drink from the entire ocean at any coast on the globe – as a buddhist monk once told me in South Korea. The point is that the path of personal development can begin anywhere. Once you have developed the character, skills and vision, you can export and transplant those to other industries and fields. In my own life this principle manifests itself in a balance between “business” and “creative work”, where the discipline of one and the creativity of the other combine and synthesize into a way of problem-solving and creative management of challenges that would probably be found lacking if just composed of one branch.

Nothing about the path I’ve chosen to take in life has been easy. It’s a bit like a workout: if you don’t challenge yourself, you don’t grow or improve. That doesn’t mean you don’t rest, have recovery days, or occasionally take some time off. But it does mean that if you don’t choose to cut your own path on your personal quest, you won’t reach the grail.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
Downtown LA and the west coast have always been the barbell ends of my interest in LA, apart from one special place: the Museum of Jurassic Technology. It is, bar none, the most interesting place in LA. Downtown I always enjoyed the secret burger bar inside the SCIARC building, and 82 the barcade, among others. On the coast, Playa Vista and Playa del Rey always felt like escaping to a different world.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
The person most to thank for my success is without a doubt my father, who unfortunately passed away in 2024. From an early age, he instilled traits that are the opposite of what most pop culture preaches today: total self-reliance, taking full personal responsibility for one’s own life and choices, hard work, seeking out the wisdom of great books and ancient cultures, choosing those you trust with care, not blaming anyone but yourself for failures, tackling nonsense and illogical ideas head-on, standing up for what you believe in, treating other people the way you would like to be treated, having an openness to the ideas of all cultures while at the same time remaining firmly rooted in your own beliefs… the list could go on.

Website: empirebuilderproductions.com

Instagram: @solverfilm @theatlantispuzzle

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jack-kelley-395b009/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/solvermovie https://www.facebook.com/theatlantispuzzle/

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wV0RmBNGkNA&t=7s

Other: Our brand new documentary “The Atlantis Puzzle” is on the cusp of release – if you love ancient mysteries, follow the brand-new social media pages for more as the distribution date nears.

Image Credits
Bryant Marcontel Katerina Sarantiti

Nominate Someone: ShoutoutLA is built on recommendations and shoutouts from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you or someone you know deserves recognition please let us know here.