From $1M to $10M Business: What Actually Changes in Branding, Hiring & Growth

What separates a $1M business from a $10M business?

In this episode, Ryan Naylor sits down with Kayden Muzila, founder of Musilla Creative, to break down what actually changes as companies scale—especially when it comes to branding, creative strategy, and understanding your audience.

Kayden shares his journey from creative director in the Hollywood film and advertising world to building a fast-growing agency from scratch after multiple layoffs forced a reset in his career.

Together, they explore:

Why most brands fail to scale their messaging past $1M
The shift from “what we like” to “what the audience actually wants”
How delegation becomes the real bottleneck in growth
What hiring and trust look like inside a scaling creative business
How content strategy should actually be structured for results, not just virality
Why authenticity beats trends in social media marketing

If you’re building a business, leading a team, or trying to break through your next revenue ceiling, this conversation is packed with real-world insight from both the agency and operator side.

Follow Kayden Muzila on IG: https://www.instagram.com/kayhaos/

Follow Ryan on IG: https://www.instagram.com/ryan.nylr/
Follow our Podcast on IG: https://www.instagram.com/built.to.grow.podcast/

Learn more about AvaHR and get a free trial of our ATS: www.avahr.com

Watch the live Interviews on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@avahrsoftware

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hey, I am Ryan Naylor, and I'm excited to be back with another phenomenal guest aimed at helping you grow your business. I know a lot of us are trying to build that playbook. We just finished Q1 2026. A lot of people are trying to figure out like how did I get, you know, that first quarter under my belt and my kind of on track to hit my New Year's goals, but I've got a great guest with us today. I'm super excited to introduce to our podcast Caden Muzilla. Thanks for being here. I really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_02 0:28

Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm super excited to uh talk about everything and get to know you more and uh yeah, hopefully uh spread a good message.

SPEAKER_01 0:36

Awesome. Hey, I like to dive right into kind of a hard-hitting question, and then I'll get to know you just a little we'll introduce you and get to know you just a little bit better to uh our audience here. But the question I want to lead with is this, Caden. What is it that a$10 million a year company does with their branding, advertising, design work that a million dollar a year business does not do? What is the difference that you see between a$1 million a year and a$10 million a year company?

SPEAKER_02 1:05

I think delegate, I think relating to your audience rather than to yourself. There's a mixed communication a lot of times with founders and entrepreneurs and creative directors that they push out content that they think they enjoy, you know? But I think what will transfer from a 1 million to a 10 million is putting out the content, putting out the products that the audience and the consumer really want and relating it and then repeating that pattern.

SPEAKER_01 1:34

That's such a great point. I think there's that point in every business. We're building businesses with services and products that we think the customers want, and then there's that transition to where we actually hear what they really want, right? We think we know what they want, and then we start to get to a point where like, nope, this is what they really want. This is the price point, this is the low-hanging fruit, this is the easiest way for them to say yes to us, and now we're able to scale into that. Would you agree with that?

SPEAKER_02 2:01

Yeah, absolutely. I think there's there's that caught up in that big transition from the the one mil to the 10 mil, you know, and it's about listening as a founder, you know? It's about listening to what your audience really wants. And I think it's kind of almost letting go of your ego a little bit and saying, okay, this is what my audience wants. I've built this company or built this uh brand from zero to a million. I got this whole cult following, whatever it may be, but how do I scale it to make it to that 10 mil? It's that transition of letting go of what your vision was and then putting it into what the actual consumer really wants and just listening to them, you know?

SPEAKER_01 2:47

Yeah. Caden, you recently started your company, Muzilla Creative. I'd love to hear a little bit about your journey, kind of what brought you to that point. I think a lot of us can relate being founders or business owners, what it took to get you over the hump to actually start your business. But maybe you can give us a little backstory, kind of who you are and and uh kind of where you're at in your chapter.

SPEAKER_02 3:08

All credit to God for this. You know, I have uh 10 years of experience in the advertising world. I started as a graphic designer and worked my way up as a creative director in the Hollywood LA scene. I was, you know, art directing, creative directing for the major film studios, doing theatrical and movie releases for social content, and then I was also launching celebrity e-com brands, you know, from the ground up. So the full branding to the execution to the advertising for those brands, too. When was this? About two years ago, maybe longer, there was a big strike happening in the film industry with all the actors and writers and everybody. And uh not only did that hurt the film industry, it hurt the advertising agencies that worked for the film studios. And um, so there was a bunch of layoffs happening there, and I was part of one of the layoffs, and you know, I picked up another creative director job at a tech firm, and it was uh tech education, and man, that was a huge transition for me, you know, working on these theatrical movies, doing some really cool content, and then switching it up to uh tech education. And uh, I was there for over a year, and then um I got laid off from that job, you know, and then I found myself stuck, you know, and people were just kind of asking, you know, hey, like, can you help me with this? Can you help me with that? And it was just little by little, and I was applying to jobs constantly, and then the job market was just not there for me, you know. But one day I um went to my buddy's house uh out in Norco, California, and he's a legit cowboy. Uh he's a team roper, he's a world champ. And I told him, Hey man, I want to bring my camera and take some photos of you. And he's like, Yeah, come on. And so I took some photos and I posted them on um Instagram, and then slowly but surely some uh Western brands started seeing that. And my cowboy buddy was like, Hey, dude, you know what you should do is go to NFR in Vegas in December, and uh I think this was in 2024.

SPEAKER_01 5:28

Is this the national rodeo that you do?

SPEAKER_02 5:31

National Finals rodeo. And for for people that don't know what the NFR is, it's like the Met Gala for uh Western fashion. You know, every Western fashion brand is there, and everybody is dressed up to go to the rodeo and do all these other events all out in Vegas, and it's like a two-week thing where Vegas turns into a whole Western realm of entertainment. And my buddy told me about this, and I was like, Yeah, I'm I'm down. And um, so I went to NFR back in 2024, and I literally went booth to booth and said, Hey, this is what I shoot, this is the kind of content I shoot, I would love to shoot for your guys' brand, or this is what I can do for you guys. And I got a lot of clients like that, um, the old-fashioned way. And yeah, it started to you know, snowball effect, right? And I would work with one client, and then other clients would start seeing that work from and coming from that client, and this snowball effect of okay, this guy is creating some really cool stuff for in the Western realm, and it just started getting bigger and bigger with clientele, and um now I technically started my advertising agency in January of 2025, and it is uh April of 2026 now. So uh fairly new, but it has scaled quickly, and uh I have about four employees under the Mozilla Creative uh agency now.

SPEAKER_00 7:09

That's fantastic.

SPEAKER_02 7:11

Yeah, so what we do at Mozilla Creative is I like to have it as a one-stop shop for uh brands, and um what we do really well at is obviously we create the content and then we also strategize for organic and paid media, right? So we have a really good team of guys that know what they're doing on the organic side and guys that know what they're doing on the paid media strategy.

SPEAKER_01 7:39

Help us understand, Caden. I I think I think I have a lot of brands that listen to this show that are on the other side of the table that maybe be hiring someone like you to come in and actually shoot for them, help them build some media strategy. How do you price for this? Like, are you a time and materials company, or is it kind of like stick our finger up and kind of see which way the wind is blowing and kind of come up with a price at that point? Because I think that's kind of the way a lot of us feel that that maybe it just feels like because there's such a wide range of pricing out there, like we don't know who's who's legit and who's not, who's making it up and who's actually telling the right story. But how do you price something like this?

SPEAKER_02 8:18

Yeah, you know, I actually understand because obviously, you know, I started as a small business and I'm scaling up, and I understand that you know, there are brands out there that are small businesses, there are brands that are medium-sized businesses, and there's brands that are very large corporate Fortune 500 businesses, right? When I'm approaching a brand or having conversations with a brand, I kind of want to see where they're at, right? Where they're at on the level of tier, if they're a small brand, if they're a medium-sized brand, or if they're a huge brand, right? After I get to know them a little bit more and see like what they're struggling with, then I kind of like come up with a package structure that matches what they kind of make revenue-wise. And because I don't want to come to a small brand with a huge budget, you know? That's not fair at all. I want to work with you guys, so I like to understand what kind of revenue is working with you guys, what kind of marketing budget it is, and then we kind of meet in the middle of like packages, like how much content you guys are wanting to be pushed out, how much can we afford? What kind of stuff are you struggling with specifically? And then I'll customize a package to what you guys are needing with the price range that fits you comfortably, you know.

SPEAKER_01 9:44

Yeah, yeah, that's fantastic. I know you're still kind of in the ear I would consider it early days, and maybe you don't feel like it's the early days because it's been such a grind, but but maybe what's been harder than what you expected, kind of getting off the ground.

SPEAKER_02 9:58

You know, I still think I have a hard time with this, and I'm I'm going to in the future as well, delegating a little bit because I am such a hands-on creative, you know. I love to do my editing, I love to do my photography, I love to do the video stuff, but I see that slowly getting less and less. You know, I'm starting to hire like editors or like photographers for shoots, and and it's a little sad to me because to make my business grow and uh scale more, I need to do the operations and sales of it, right? I can't be so focused on you know creating all the assets or you know, editing the photos, everything like that. But I've been in doing it for so long that I'm able to teach my team how to edit in my vision for the brand or whatever campaign that we're doing or whatever social media management we're doing too, you know. But that's been the harder, hardest part, I think. Um is kind of like what we were talking about in the beginning is like, okay, I gotta let go of my ego a little bit and trust my team, trust that they can see out my vision and teach them as much as I can. But I need to be able to scale my business, scale it up more because I got employees to pay for.

SPEAKER_01 11:21

You know, Caden, I think one of the things I've seen a lot of small businesses really struggle with is letting go, is letting go of not only control of the system, the process, the product, the service, whatever it is that they're doing, but not only struggle letting it go, but but fully educating the team that does it. I see a lot of small business owners, they'll recruit in people that have great resumes, they promise the world of experience, and then they trust that, and they'll do this halfway let it go, halfway not let it go, and then they judge that employee based on the quality that they're expecting to deliver themselves. And this is where the big disconnect is, especially in service-based businesses, is fully taking the time to onboard and train in a very, very diligent way to that new employee of my way of doing business, my way of doing the service, my way of doing it. This is how our brand standard is. And I think it makes a lot of sense, right? If you go into a big corporation, you're sitting down for a two-week, a 30-day program, a 60-day training program, whatever it is, you know, when you go to Disney and you go into the creative team at Disney, there's no way they're gonna say, Well, you've been here a week, go ahead, get after it, let's see what you can do. Not a chance in the world, right? But I know that time is crucial. And so as a small business owner, it's hard to devote that time into training. But that is where the world of AI can actually benefit us a lot, is by putting all of this knowledge base systems and processes into documents and building up a robust training program. So when we onboard our reps, they can fully be integrated my way, my brand's way, and consistently. And I think at that point it's a lot easier to let go of those systems and processes. Do you do you see that as kind of a true factor?

SPEAKER_02 13:20

Yeah, definitely. I think the biggest um thing for me is like trust, right? Because like what you're mentioning is like they're not gonna get it, uh maybe a new employee is not gonna get get it down in a week, you know, not been in two weeks because you don't have the same amount of time as like a Disney to fully convert this person into the exact worker you want, you know. So I think it's more on a on a trust level, like when I'm hiring somebody, and I've always done this, even when I was in the agencies. I always ask myself, is this person willing to listen and to work on new skills? Right. And can I hang out with this person eight hours a day? You know, that was my vision when I would hire somebody, right? I wasn't really crazy about oh, this person's so talented, like this person's skills are so sick, because I found it as when their skill sets are crazy and like um totally perfect skills, right? I find it harder to work with that type of person because they are not able to listen, right? And to take direction. And that's been uh part of my hiring process is like, is this person teachable? Right? Can I trust this person to be teachable by me and and be led so that we can make all of our clients' brands thrive, you know?

SPEAKER_01 14:55

You know, I think this is one of the things that's missing a lot in job descriptions is that ability to actually outline that in the job posting. I mean, we see tens of thousands of job postings going through Ava HR right now, and almost no one is including anything about onboarding and identifying what does your onboarding process look like. Now, to an A player, to someone that's really, really wanting to step in and be an impact in your brand and your business, that is going to just get all the feels that's gonna hit hard is knowing that you've thought through that and you're building a playbook for success within the company. A C player, they look past that and like, I don't really care. I'm just focused on the compensation section and how many PTO days I'm getting, and you know, can I hit these skills and requirement minimums? But really, the A players love structure, and I think that that could be a really great place to set those expectations at the beginning of a relationship is starting at the job posting level of here's the expectation, here's our onboarding and training, and here's our how we continually do our KPIs and personal improvement with our company.

SPEAKER_02 16:06

Yeah, and I think you know, just taking it as a personal level, right? It's like, what can I do for the company rather than what will the company do for me? And that's just a simple question of life, right? You know, with relationships, spouses, what can I do for this person rather than what can this person do for me? And I think, you know, as society, we are so caught up in ourselves that we become a little bit selfish, always want, what can I get? What can I get? Rather than um, what can I give? You know, and uh that's kind of how I see it, you know, even with my employees, like, you know, when they come on board, I usually ask them, like, what do you see yourself learning in the next year or two? Right. And they tell me what they want, and I make sure that like I have time with them and like I teach them exactly what they're wanting and if they've if they want to get more into photography, like I'll have some sessions with them. Like, I want to be able to you know grow that employee into what they want to be rather than right, this is my employee, they need to do what I want, you know, because they're they they have a life of their own and and I want them to thrive as much as I do.

SPEAKER_01 17:25

Yeah, absolutely. Well, Caden, your your experience in social media is phenomenal. And I think it would be I'd be remiss if I didn't ask you to give us some tips, some advice, some content direction. If if there's someone out there that's saying, hey, I want to drive a a couple more leads or some eyeballs to my brand via social media, what what are some of your tips and advice that uh you could share?

SPEAKER_02 17:50

Authenticity would be a one-word explainer for that. I think a lot of brands get caught up in creating content for that's just trendy or viral or whatever, and they really lose the brand messaging, right? They either become a like a spam page or a meme page, and that's not the route you want to go because you won't get any leads or conversions organically if you just become a meme page, right? Um so it's all about testing and all about content buckets and pillars, and pushing out all the pillars that are your core messaging for your brand, right? Sometimes we we push out content that we know isn't gonna do the best engagement-wise, but it is part of our core messaging, whether it's like explaining about a product, showing details of a product, we know engagement-wise, it's not gonna do the best, but we know that to build trust and authentic authenticity with the consumers, we need to still push out that that core messaging, you know?

SPEAKER_01 19:02

So if you're a roofer listening to this, give us some advice, Kate. And what type of content would be authentic, bringing out that authenticity? Is it you standing on a roof, giving roof advice and roof tips? Would it be in satin next to your truck? Like, help help me us walk through what it's gonna take to get those extra eyeballs.

SPEAKER_02 19:22

Well, I would love the roofer guy to come talk to me and maybe I could help them out. But uh, if I could explain it at a very high level, you know, what we would do is understand what his audience is already there for, right? We would also research, see what other roofers are doing out there that are doing really well, and then we would break it down into a four-content bucket um strategy, right? It'd be A through D testing, is another way to establish this. With these four types of buckets, we would have, I'm spitballing this, but it may be an entertainment bucket, an educational bucket, a personal bucket, and a shareability bucket, right? And what we would do, we would push out all four of these testers and see what the audience is uh enjoying, what is getting more engagement, what are the followers liking, what's getting more comments, and then we'll say, Oh, if uh option B is doing best, let's push out option B a little bit more uh ratio-wise, right? And then we would still push out A, C, and D because we want the audience to know that this is a full brand rather than just a meme page, right? Um so we would push out all four types of pillars when a follower sees it on the algorithm, they see one type of video, and then they go to the profile, and then they say, Oh, I got cool personal content about this guy. Maybe he's a family man, he's showing uh pictures of his family. He also is super educational about roofing, like what type of oh, anything about roofing, but what type of roof roof stuff you need, you know. He's also creating some some shareable content, you know, that I can share in the future. You know, it's creating that value, understanding the full picture, right?

SPEAKER_01 21:26

That's really great advice. A lot of these service-based businesses are such locally focused, you know, service providers. So they're gonna be serving a specific area, San Diego, uh Phoenix, uh, you know, Oklahoma City. They're not necessarily nationwide brands with e-commerce play where they get sell and ship to anyone. What's one of the ways that you can help be more relevant in a local community on social media?

SPEAKER_02 21:53

For the local businesses, I would honestly, if I wanted conversions, I would do some page strategy behind it. Right. And then for the organic side, I would, you know, develop this authentic brand that's super related to the location that I'm in. Say we're in San Diego, maybe one of the content buckets, or like, you know, after roofing, you know, we go to lunch at a local San Diego spot. So we're building this community around the location through organic content. That creates a personal message, a personal value to the local niche of um that city.

SPEAKER_01 22:33

Fantastic. Well, Caden, you've been a tremendous guest. I really appreciate it. Help everyone understand a little bit more about kind of how they can get in touch with you, follow you, you know, see your story and your journey.

SPEAKER_02 22:46

Yeah, absolutely. So most of my content and most of my you know active uh online and uh social stuff is through my personal Instagram, which is chaos. It's spelled K-A-Y-H-A-O-S. My advertising agency is Muzilla Creative, M-U-Z-I-L-A creative. Uh, you guys can reach out on my personal, send me a DM. Uh, would love to work with you guys or would love to hear what you're struggling with if you're a brand or have an online digital product. We scale small brands, medium-sized brands, and large brands constantly. And um, you know, really looking forward to hearing from you guys.

SPEAKER_01 23:28

Awesome. Caden, I'm following you right now. So I'm super excited to watch your journey and see all your content. Thank you so much for being on. And until next time, we'll make sure we link up to all of your content in our show notes. Um, but really appreciate you joining the playbook show.

SPEAKER_02 23:44

Thanks, man. Thanks for having me so much.