Today we’d like to introduce you to Silas Randles.
Hi Silas, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
For me it started with a GoPro back in eighth grade. I thought it looked fun and my friends and I started messing around while mountain biking. We’d make bike edits and posted them to YouTube, and something clicked, it was just really fun and fascinating.
That led to yearbook class, borrowing the camera for the summer, then eventually buying my own. Shortly after, I was asked to film a wedding at age 15, had no idea what I was doing but had a mentor to lean on for advice and figured it out!
After that wedding, my parents took a gamble and bought me a MacBook to handle the editing. It was incredibly generous of them, and also a risk. What if I got bored? Well, I didn’t, and looking back it was instrumental in my path, them stepping in and supporting me so I could continue to advance. That’s just one small example of their never ending support throughout the years.
Where I really got my start was connecting with Matt Higham, the creative director at The Fellowship at Bend (my local church). He took me under his wing and we’d get coffee almost every week, then he started bringing me on shoots, and on Sundays he taught me how to operate in the high intensity world of live production.
That relationship became the catalyst for my career; five years later he’s like family and we still talk nearly every week.
Having that foundation in live production was a great accelerator in leadership skills, making fast confident decisions and managing a team of volunteers. It led to me going off on two tours with CIY (Christ in Youth), traversing the U.S. across 3 months in a minivan. Man, I’ve never worked harder but also never had so much fun, we were one of 11 teams on tour and we quickly grew very close through trauma bonding haha. 7:30am call times then working till 3:00am loading out the semi truck, the dad lore is crazy.
I’m born and raised in Bend, Oregon, with a short stint in Missoula, Montana from 17-18 years old.
Fall of ’24 I moved back to Bend and came on as social media manager at Backporch Coffee Roasters, splitting time between coffee production and creative. Getting in those weekly reps while being inside the company quickly grew my understanding of how business works, what founders really need, and the challenges they face.
The experience and connections there grew my freelance roster to a point where I could go from evening side hustle to launching my company full time in June of ’26.
I cautiously considered the leap for 2 months, but pulled my hair out over committing for the 2 weeks leading up haha. It was not easy by any means but absolutely worth it. The 5 years of freelancing and working with a diverse range of clients all culminated in the perfect timing and skillset for as smooth a transition as you could hope.
I feel incredibly grateful I’ve never had to resort to cold calls and door to door sales. I know it’s a necessary skill I’ll eventually learn, but looking back, I can’t take any credit for this crazy journey. All of the random coincidences and amazing connections that have led to one crazy gig after another, some call it “luck,” man it’s 100% God’s guidance in my life.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Going full time, the best way to describe it is a roller coaster. I’ve just been taking it one week at a time and each day presents its own unexpected challenges, and I’m learned the skill of pivoting quickly.
The largest struggle I’ve faced in general was moving out to Montana for a year and a half and having to rebuild my business.
I was starting from scratch in terms of freelance while working remotely for a marketing agency as a content creator. During that time, I thankfully had the security of the agency position, so I was able to get inventive with my own passion projects.
I produced a short film about my good buddy Drew Stilson as a star track athlete, and started making YouTube videos about my Dad’s and I’s overland expeditions in western Montana.
It was instrumental to have the space and time to just focus on my craft and not worry so much about clients. I developed a lot of my style and expanded my skills exponentially in that season, and I’m still reaping the benefits. It was pretty sucky at the start, but I can now see the results of that year.
Coming out of that, it was like a shot out of a cannon. I hit the ground running since moving back to Bend and haven’t looked back.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I’m the founder and creative director at Randles Creative, a boutique creative agency in Bend, Oregon, specializing in video-first marketing and social media strategy for founder-led brands.
We develop strategic visual campaigns to elevate your business through video, photo, and social media, building brand awareness and authority. While also having an expanded team of contractors to provide paid media services and brand strategy for our clients.
I’m the most proud of a recent project traveling with Backporch Coffee Roasters to Hacienda La Minita, a coffee farm in Costa Rica. We spent a week there experiencing the bean-to-cup process, meeting the farmers and growing to understand all the hard work that goes into producing specialty-grade coffee.
Backporch has been built on long-term partnerships with producers, so to capture the story of their 16-year relationship with La Minita and bring that home for customers to experience was a huge honor. It was a bucket-list project and experience, working with a brand we’ve partnered with for years and being able to tell such an impactful, deep story.
What sets us apart is that we sit between two worlds, we’re not a typical social media agency churning out lo-fi content that all looks the same, and we’re not an out-of-reach production house either.
We come on as a strategic partner and bring real cinematic quality to brands at a cadence and price a local business can actually use.
Any advice for finding a mentor or networking in general?
Absolutely, like I said earlier, having mentors has been critical to get me where I am today. For me it was my local church. There was an established media team, and I went up and expressed interest in getting involved, and they immediately saw the potential in me and spent countless hours training and equipping me. I owe a lot to The Fellowship at Bend and Matt Higham.
I found that once I connected with a mentor, that led to another connection, which led to another, and soon enough I was able to get to know most of the founders in the local film industry.
My biggest piece of advice is to be humble, offer help in any way, running the coffee or wrapping cables, and not be worried about the money. This industry is built on relationships and you can’t put a price on what it takes to build long-lasting, meaningful ones.
See if there’s a local production society or networking group, start talking to people, ask them questions, see if there’s a possibility to come on set just to watch, learn, and run coffee orders.
If you have strong work ethic, fun personality, and are willing to hustle, they’ll keep inviting you back and pass your name around.
Mentors in this field are absolutely critical, and I would not be here today without them.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://randlescreative.com
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/silas_randles
